Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, teaches at St Augustine’s School in the village of Isoke, in Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. This is her sixth letter from Isoke. Other letters: No 1 July 2012, No…
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In National Dialogue in Sudan, a paper for the Sudan Democracy First Group, RVI Fellow Atta el-Battahani examines the successes and failures of national dialogue in Sudan and South Sudan, from 1956 to 2012. He identifies a series of recurrent obstacles: the…
KAMPALA, Uganda—The biggest rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Tuesday declared an end to its 20-month insurgency, after government troops earlier in the day drove fighters from their last remaining strongholds near the Ugandan border….
Le RVI a le plaisir d’annoncer la publication des versions françaises des deux premiers rapports du Projet Usalama sur les groupes armés dans l’est de la République démocratique du Congo. Le premier rapport, intitulé Du CNDP au M23: évolution…
The seventh RVI Usalama report on armed movements in the DRC focusses on two groups operating in Ituri District, the FNI and the FRPI. The report, by Henning Tamm, analyses these two mainly Lendu armed groups and considers the…
Somali author Nuruddin Farah discusses his writing—and its relation to Somalia and the African condition—with Tom Odhiambo of Nairobi University. The interview was filmed for the Rift Valley Review. …
John Ryle, Director of the Rift Valley Institute, discusses Tayeb Salih on Sudan National Television, 2010….
Introduction Prophecy among the Nuer of South Sudan is a living tradition. In recent conflicts prophets have played a part both in mobilization for war and in making peace. Historically, the most celebrated of the Nuer prophets was Ngundeng…
On 15 June 2013, Miraya FM in Juba broadcast a feature on the process of digitizing documents for the South Sudan National Archives. The project is a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, RVI, UNESCO, UNOPS and the…
In this essay for the Rift Valley Review, Christopher Clapham, distinguished historian of Ethiopia, discusses the distinctive features and fraught history of the Horn of Africa, its arbitrary frontiers, its contrasting styles of government, and its hold on the scholarly imagination Why is the…
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