17 March, 2013 (LONDON) – A delegation of South Sudan’s Traditional Leaders (TLs) has completed a tour of African countries in which a successful synthesis of governance at the local and centralised levels has been achieved. … Between July…
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The people of Lakes State, in South Sudan–the majority Agar Dinka in particular–have the reputation among some other South Sudanese of being hot-blooded and short-tempered, a wild card in the wider Dinka confederation that constitutes South Sudan’s largest ethnolinguistic…
I was in Juba two weeks ago participating in the Rift Valley Institute’s annual series of lectures at Juba University, whose theme this year was historic peace negotiations. Three sets of negotiations were examined: the 1972 negotiations thatled to…
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, is teaching at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. This is her tenth letter from Isoke. Other letters: No 1 July 2012, No 2 October 2012, No 3…
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, is teaching at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. This is her eleventh letter from Isoke. Other letters: No 1 July 2012, No 2 October 2012, No 3…
Philip Winter is an RVI Fellow and Central and Eastern Africa specialist. His account of the Congolese peace process A Sacred Cause was published in English in 2012 and in French in 2015 (Une Cause Sacrée, available from L’Harmattan in…
… 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…
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…
Liz Hodgkin, RVI Fellow and former Amnesty International Sudan researcher, taught from 2012 to 2014 at St Augustine’s School in Isoke village, Eastern Equatoria, South Sudan. For her earlier letters from Isoke see the following: No 1 July 2012, No 2…
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
Writing Ethiopia into the World, Writing the World from Ethiopia
October 7, 2026
The Ethiopian Women Researchers Network (EWNET) hosted an online scholarly webinar on Friday, 30 January 2026, titled ‘Writing Ethiopia into the World and Writing the World from Ethiopia’. The webinar examined how Ethiopia has been represented within global knowledge production
The Political Economy of Coffee in the Kaffa–Bench-Sheko–Sheka Belt, Southwest Ethiopia Region
October 6, 2026
This study provides a critical political economy analysis of the coffee sector in the Kaffa–Bench-Sheko–Sheka belt in Southwest Ethiopia Peoples’ Regional State, the genetic and cultural heartland of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica). Based on 47 key respondent interviews, the study
The Political Economy of Coffee in the Jimma–Ilu Aba Bora–Buno Bedele Belt, Oromia Region
October 5, 2026
The findings of this study reveal a number of critical insights about the political economy of coffee in the Jimma–Ilu Aba Bora–Buno Bedele coffee belt. The coffee economy is shaped by a small number of influential actors, including state institutions,