On 23 January 2013, RVI published the third Usalama report on the armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Written by Usalama Project Director, Jason Stearns, PARECO: Land, Local Strongmen and the Roots of Militia…
News
SEARCH
NEWS TYPES
REGION
‘Textiles that talk’, an exhibition of kangas — East African fabrics incorporating Swahili proverbs — opens in mid-April in the RVI office at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of the late Nigerian author…
On 25 January 2013, RVI published the fourth and fifth Usalama Project reports on armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). UPC in Ituri: The External Militarization of Local Politics in North-eastern Congo describes the origins and…
On 21 February 2013, the RVI’s Nairobi Forum hosted a panel discussion on the regional implications of the death of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, in August 2012. The event, entitled ‘Ethiopia after Meles: National and regional implications’, was chaired by…
On 14 February 2013, RVI Fellow Jérôme Tubiana wrote about the continuing conflict in South Kordofan and the Nuba Mountains in a report for the International Crisis Group. In Sudan’s Spreading Conflict (I): War in South Kordofan, he says that…
On 5 April 2013, RVI published the sixth in its series of Usalama Project reports on armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Raia Mutomboki: The Flawed Peace Process in the DRC and the Birth of…
Videos of Nuruddin Farah in conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina at the Nairobi Forum and tributes by the two writers to Chinua Achebe, are now on YouTube. An interview by Tom Odhiambo with Nuruddin Farah is also available….
The 2013 RVI Juba Lecture series, held in collaboration with the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba, were held on 6-8 March 2013 at the university’s New Hall, addressing the theme ‘Building the Constitution in…
The Institute invites applications for the following posts in London and Nairobi. Operations Manager in the RVI regional office in Nairobi, Kenya Programme Coordinator for the Nairobi Forum, in the RVI regional office in Nairobi, Kenya Assistant Programme Officer…
With fighting continuing between rival factions of the M23 rebel movement in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the RVI’s Usalama Project presents a profile of one of the M23’s most important commanders, General Bosco Ntaganda. Despite his…
Recent Publications

SHECONF 2026: International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities
July 9, 2026
Event report On 26 March 2026, researchers, practitioners and academics gathered in Addis Ababa for SHECONF 2026, an International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities in Ethiopia, the first of its kind convened by the Ethiopian Women Researchers Network (EWNET).

State Capture in Africa: How elite networks undermine democracy, development and security
June 24, 2026
Key points State capture has been increasingly recognized as a major governance challenge due to the way it helps to drive many of the most pressing problems facing contemporary states, including democratic erosion, corruption, economic exclusion, insecurity and declining trust

The New Geopolitics of Eastern Africa
June 17, 2026
On 20 May, the British Institute of Eastern Africa (BIEA), Chatham House, and the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) convened a group of experts to discuss the ‘The New Geopolitics of Eastern Africa’. The closed-door roundtable considered the ongoing transformation of