The 2013 RVI Juba Lecture series, held in collaboration with the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba, were held on 6-8 March 2013 at the university’s New Hall, addressing the theme ‘Building the Constitution in…
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On 18 February 2013, RVI Fellow Douglas Johnson gave a lecture on the role of archives in nation building, based on his 40-year experience of working with Southern government archives and his recent work with RVI on rescuing, rehabilitating,…
The headquarters of Sudan's Communist Party is a shabby place. The peeling leather chairs in its meeting room are watched over by dusty photos of its most famous leaders since 1946, most of whom died at the hands of…
The Sudd Institute, founded by RVI Fellow Jok Madut Jok, is a newly established research organisation that aims “to improve the quality, impact, and accountability of local, national, and international policy and decision-making in South Sudan.” The Institute’s first…
By Magdi El Gazouli Four students were found dead Friday in a feeder irrigation canal of an experimental farm next to the main campus of the University of Gezira. The students drowned to death; their bodies carried no marks…
As fighting continues in Kordofan and Darfur, in Sudan, a report by the Kampala-based International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), The disappearance of Sudan? Life in Khartoum for citizens without rights, examines the experiences of people from South Sudan and Western…
Princeton Lyman, US special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, is stepping down. A White House source characterised Lyman’s departure as “the kind of personnel change that is normal at the end of a president’s first term and start…
By Magdi El Gazouli The contradictions ravaging the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM) matured in the folds of its 8th General Conference into an antagonism between loyalists and dissidents, an antagonism that the state attempted to resolve by means of…
The News reported that a last minute oil deal reached between Sudan and South Sudan offers no quick fix for Khartoum’s economic crisis and remains tied to progress on security issues. Analysts said that both sides agreed Juba would…
By Magdi El Gazouli Sudan’s major grain producers, the landowners of Gedaref, complained bitterly to the press this week of an acute shortage of labour and warned of yet another failed agricultural season. The local farmers’ union in the…
Recent Publications
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
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