KINSHASA (Reuters) — Protests that blocked a reform which could have extended Congo President Joseph Kabila’s rule have exposed deep rifts in his ruling coalition and galvanized opposition, increasing the chance of further unrest ahead of elections due next…
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KAMPALA, Uganda—Congolese government security agents arecracking down on pro-democracy activists and sympathetic U.S. diplomats, raising concerns about the intentions of President Joseph Kabila who is due to relinquish control of a country with a history of heavy-handed rule. Dozens…
Thousands of residents are fleeing the last Somalia city controlled by Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group Al Shabab, and there are reports that the militants themselves also are leaving Kismayo ahead of an expected military assault. Defeating the hard-line Islamist…
… One new group of people has flocked to Darfur in recent years: gold miners. From all over Africa, they have left their families, homes and countries, heading to a largely forgotten war zone to dig for gold. Activists…
NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Kenya will not forcibly repatriate some 336,000 Somalis living in one of the world's largest refugee camps, but the government intends to continue with its plans to close the camp within three months for…
Kenya appears to have softened its stance on the imminent closure of a camp hosting more than a third of a million Somali refugees, weeks after the deputy president, reacting to the massacre at Garissa University, announced it…
Men in war-torn Somalia suffer high rates of drug addiction, divorce and mental illness, researchers said, urging donors to do more to support men and strengthen families…. “Men find themselves dispensable, with no meaningful role and no stake in…
RVI Fellow Magdi el-Gizouli on the return of President Omer el-Bashir from South Africa President Bashir’s return to Khartoum after the drama of his ‘missed’ arrest in Johannesburg was to say the least anticlimactic. The microphone set up for…
….The U.S. military can sometimes seem unaware of how inaccessible their African counterparts are to their own civilians. African militaries often serve corrupt dictators and routinely commit grave human rights abuses. In Nigeria, the military is essentially an oil-skimming…
The Rift Valley Institute organised a forum bringing together leading chiefs from five states of South Sudan in Nairobi last Saturday. The forum brought together the chiefs to discuss the current crisis in the country and the role they…
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