Haji Abdulkarim Hussein Yusuf, known as ‘Haji Abdi Warabe’, died in Hargeysa, Somaliland, on Friday 10 May 2019. His precise age is unknown, but local reports state that he lived to over one hundred. He was buried in a small village known as Toon, close to Hargeysa. Official delegations from Djibouti and the Somali region of Ethiopia, as well…

In the coming months, the Usalama Project will publish a series of blogs on urban insecurity as experienced by different professional groups and layers of the population, such as female vendors and traders, money-changers and motor-taxi drivers. It will also look at different causes of and responses to insecurity, such as vigilante groups. The…

In June and July, the Rift Valley Institute will hold the 2019 annual field courses in Ethiopia. Now in their sisteenth year, each course examines a different sub-region within eastern and central Africa: Sudan and South Sudan, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. They offer a dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars, panel discussions…

The Rift Valley Institute is pleased to announce the seventh Juba Lecture Series under the theme of ‘Everyday Economies: Historical Perspectives and Present-day Realities in South Sudan’. The lectures will take place from 3:00pm – 5:30pm on 19 and 20 November 2018, in partnership with the Institute for Justice and Peace Studies (IJPS)…

The Institute recently wrapped up its fifteenth year of annual field courses, which were held this year in May and June in Kenya. The one-week intensive courses covered an array of historical and contemporary issues in the Horn of Africa, Sudan and South Sudan, and the Great Lakes regions. They were attended by 83 participants and taught by 32…

RVI attended the Hargeysa International Book Fair in Somaliland, showcasing work on customary authorities in South Sudan. 

The Rift Valley Institute will participate in the Hargeysa International Book Fair (HIBF) panel event ‘The Wisdom of Elders’, to be held on 23 July in Hargeysa, Somaliland. Two South Sudanese chiefs from Aweil and Yambio, with whom RVI has been working as part of its South Sudan Customary Authorities (SSCA) project, will speak…

The Rift Valley Institute and Redsea Cultural Foundation have collaborated to publish We Kissed the Ground as an audiobook. Dr. Jama Musse Jama, Director of the Hargeysa Cultural Centre considers the production of the first Somali audiobook is an important milestone for Somali literature. Its launch takes place on the UNESCO…

In May and June, the Rift Valley Institute will hold the 2018 annual field courses in Sagana, Kenya. Now in their fifteenth year, each course examines a different sub-region within eastern and central Africa: Sudan and South Sudan, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. They offer a dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars, panel…

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 film We Are Here for the Sake of the People. The role of Chiefs and Traditional…