Film Africa 2012, the largest UK-based African film festival, is due to take place from November 1—11 2012. The festival will host more than 70 films, among them David Tosh Gito’s Nairobi Half Life, about an aspiring young actor…
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A year after the independence of South Sudan, RVI Executive Director John Ryle gave a lecture on Africa’s newest and most contentious border at the Centre for Federal Studies of Addis Ababa University on 25 October 2012. Demarcation of…
On 23 February world leaders gathered in London to discuss Somalia. Commentary by RVI Fellows and associates included Mark Bradbury in Open Democracy, Can the London conference on Somalia get it right this time?; Sally Healy, in the Financial…
The British Institute in Eastern Africa will hold this year's second Nairobi Annual Lecture on 23 November 2012. The lecture, entitled 'Enforcing Social and Economic Rights', will be given by Justice Albie Sachs, a former Judge of the Constitutional…
On Friday March 9, RVI founding Fellows Jok Madut Jok and John Ryle gave a talk on the current situation in the Sudans at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in Washington DC. The event marked the…
Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007-2012 is the unequivocal title of Eric Reeves' account of the role of the Government of Sudan in Sudan's internal wars. The book comes with accolades from scholars such as…
RVI Horn of Africa and East Africa Regional Director Mark Bradbury and RVI Senior Researcher Aly Verjee will be part of the International Election Observer team observing the Somaliland district and council elections on 28 November. These are the…
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…
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…
Recent Publications

The Political Economy of Coffee in the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji Belt, Southern Ethiopia
September 4, 2026
This report is part of a wider research project on the political economy of coffee in Ethiopia in the context of the political transition since 2018. It focuses on the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji coffee belt in southern Ethiopia, aiming to understand the

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