The RVI US office and the Chinua Achebe Center presented a conversation at Bard College on 21 March between Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo and Teju Cole, author of Open City and Every Day Is For The Thief. NoViolet's story…
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In a contribution to a new book, The Golden Fleece: Manipulation and Independence in Humanitarian Action (Kumarian Press), Mark Bradbury writes on the political fallout from the failure of state-building in Somalia. He and his co-author, Robert Maletta, review…
RVI Great Lakes Project Officer Michel Thill writes in opendemocracy.net on the history of anti-government rebellions in the Kivu provinces of the eastern DRC. 'Though triggered by a combination of recent events,' he writes, 'the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial…
Faisal Goes West is a tragicomic drama about a Sudanese family's adjustment to life in the United States. The film is directed by Bentley Brown and produced by Rani Birchfield with a largely Sudanese and American production team and…
On 2 November 2012, the RVI launched the first of a series of reports on the M23 and other armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), part of RVI’s Usalama Project on armed groups in…
In November Fergus Nicoll, the Institute's Publications Manager, won the Association of International Broadcasters annual radio news award for his work for the BBC covering the independence of South Sudan. In their citation, the judges wrote: 'The judges were…
RVI is seeking to recruit two new staff members for the Rift Valley Institute office in London, one entry-level position and one senior post. The successful candidates will join the RVI's small core administrative team in our London office….
Channel 4 International News Editor and RVI Trustee Lindsey Hilsum's Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution was launched in the UK in April to a chorus of praise from reviewers. It traces the history of Gaddafi’s long regime…
A two-day series of lectures was held in Juba on 2 and 3 June 2011, in the run-up to the independence celebrations in South Sudan. The theme of the lectures – the second in an annual series – was…
Taghreed el-Sanhouri’s documentary Our Beloved Sudan (2011) portrays Sudan from independence in 1956 to partition in 2011. Expanding on some of the themes of Taghreed's earlier All About Darfur (2005) the new film includes interviews with prominent northern and…
Recent Publications
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‘THE FUEL IS US’: WATER, OIL AND DEBT ON THE SUDAN-SOUTH SUDAN BORDERLANDS
February 18, 2025
South Sudan and Sudan’s borderlands are run by a patchwork of armed authorities. Since early 2019, when opposition forces were effectively wiped out, these zones of control have remained relatively fixed, even as the war in Sudan drew close to
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Conflict, displacement and children in paid work in the Sudan-South Sudan borderlands
February 17, 2025
In this blog, Manal examines the pressures forcing many displaced people, including children, to seek paid labour to supplement dwindling support mechanisms in camps in South Sudan. The author draws on her research in 2024 as part of the XCEPT
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DOMINANT PATTERNS AND DYNAMICS OF URBAN CONTESTATIONS IN HAWASSA
February 12, 2025
Studying urban contestations in Ethiopia’s secondary cities can help us understand how the urban centres outside of Addis Ababa are evolving during an ongoing period of significant socio-economic and political change. In this regard, Hawassa in Sidama region provides an