'South Sudan can still be a successful country, but it requires leadership that is prepared to do that and so, on both sides of the current dispute between Riek Machar and Salva Kiir, both sides need to find it…
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The president of South Sudan said his guards fended off renegade soldiers who were attempting to overthrow the government, a clash that exposes the oil-rich nation's fragmented and fragile political situation. Dressed in military fatigues, President Salva Kiir told…
KHARTOUM, Sudan — The United States has demanded negotiations. Uganda has threatened to intervene. China has called for an immediate cease-fire. The conflict in South Sudan has attracted attention from around the world, but nowhere are leaders watching the…
Countries in the East African region are sharply divided over military intervention in South Sudan, as the talks in Addis Ababa flounder over political detainees and the presence of Ugandan troops… Kenya and Ethiopia have resisted [President] Kiir’s appeal…
On Friday 10 January leading South Sudanese civil society institutions came together to discuss the current situation [in South Sudan]… According to David Deng, Director of Research at the South Sudan Law Society, human rights violations in the past and…
A Hungarian researcher in Juba explains how a sixty-year-old letter in the National Archive of South Sudan led him to a prescient piece of reportage by Wolfgang Langewiesche, an American journalist of the 1950s. …I reached the last pages of a…
Summary: There are a limited number of UK-based research institutes that include a focus on conflict and development in Sudan. Experts indicate that the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) is the main organisation involved in Sudanese research. Other research institutes…
A leading scholar of South Sudanese affairs said Saturday that federalism is not the same as Kokora. Giving a lecture on federalism during a debate at Juba University, Dr Douglas Johnson of the Rift Valley Institute said that Kokora should not…
South Sudanese Intellectuals have called on the government to involve chiefs in decision making process since they play a key role in enhancing policy formulation and implementation. This call came following a two days public lecture on culture and…
Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch reviews the Sudan Handbook. In 2004 the Rift Valley Institute organised its first Sudan field course. The course was conceived in a spirit of cautious optimism and motivated by a simple idea. Already by that time it…
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