This book review was written by Richard Stupart. The book, South Sudan: a new history for a new nation, was written by RVI Fellow Douglas H. Johnson. There are precious few history books about South Sudan that look beyond its recent…
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This June, RVI hosted the Institute’s fourteenth Annual Field Courses in Entebbe, Uganda, covering Sudan and South Sudan, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. The innovative, dawn-to-dusk programme of seminars, lectures, group discussions and special events covered…
Following the historic, unprecedented decision by the Supreme Court to nullify Kenya’s presidential election, which international election observers had largely commended, the credibility of observers, and the practice of observation, was seriously damaged. In this article, RVI Fellow Aly Verjee…
In March 2017, RVI Fellow Christopher Clapham published, The Horn of Africa: State Formation and Decay, with Hurst Publishers. In the Acknowledgements, Clapham describes the role RVI’s annual Horn of Africa Course has played in developing the ideas expressed in this book….
As part of its ongoing South Sudan Customary Authorities project, RVI, in coordination with staff and students at the University of Juba, organized an event which discussed the role of chiefs. The discussion centred around the screening of RVI’s…
Founded in 2007, the Hargeysa International Book Fair will mark it’s tenth anniversary this year. This year’s theme is connectivity, and the fair will host a delegation of renowned authors, poets, artists and academics from across Africa, including Djibouti, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria,…
RVI’s ongoing South Sudan Customary Authorities (SSCA) project is seeking to deepen understanding of the changing role of chiefs and traditional authorities in South Sudan. As part of this project, RVI has trained a team of researchers in oral history to…
The Rift Valley Institute, with the support of the East Africa Research Fund (EARF), has embarked on a major research study looking at the leadership and influence of women in politics in Kenya, which aims to map the level…
Aly Verjee is a visiting expert at the United States Institute of Peace and a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. Migration crises in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa reconfigured global politics. So why – as the…
RVI’s ongoing South Sudan Customary Authorities Project is seeking to deepen understanding of the changing role of chiefs and traditional authorities in South Sudan. As part of this project, RVI has trained a team of researchers in oral history to conduct…
Recent Publications
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
Commodification and Conflict in the Horn of Africa Borderlands
April 1, 2026
This report synthesizes findings from the Rift Valley Institute’s X-Border Local Research Network (2019–2025). In the surveyed studies, 25 leading local and international area specialists conducted extensive qualitative fieldwork across borderlands in South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Somali
Peace and Instability: Tigray since the Pretoria Agreement
March 26, 2026
CONFLICT TRENDS ANALYSIS / MARCH 2026 Summary THE ETHIOPIA PEACE RESEARCH FACILITY This conflict trends analysis was produced by the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF). The PRF is an independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian