Aims of the Project The Rift Valley Forum for Research, Policy and Local Knowledge, previously the Nairobi Forum, was established in 2012 to provide a new space for critical discussion of political, economic and social issues in Eastern and…
SEARCH
PROJECT TYPES
REGION
Aims of the Project The Contested Borderlands reports are authoritative studies of borders and border communities in Eastern and Central Africa, informed by historical archive work and anthropological field research. The series brings local knowledge and academic rigour to…
The Project Since 2010, the RVI has organized an annual series of public lectures at the University of Juba. These lectures are designed to promote public discussion of emerging political and cultural issues in South Sudan. The lectures are co-hosted…
A growing youth population, high levels of unemployment and limited opportunities for vocational training have led to a steady increase in the number of young Somali men and women seeking higher education courses that will provide them with skills…
The Rift Valley Institute, with support from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Austrialian Embassy in Addis Ababa, is currently working with a group of researchers and scholars from the University of Juba, South Sudan,…
The peace negotiations which preceded the current political transition process in South Sudan brought together the warring factions, former detainees, leaders of political parties, members of the wider South Sudanese political class and representatives of the churches and…
Aims The South Sudan National Archive Project is a multiphase project for the conservation, reordering, cataloguing and digitization of the historical government records of South Sudan, implemented in collaboration with the Archive Department of the Ministry of Culture,…
Recent Publications
The Political Economy of Coffee in the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji Belt, Southern Ethiopia
September 4, 2026
This report is part of a wider research project on the political economy of coffee in Ethiopia in the context of the political transition since 2018. It focuses on the Sidama–Gedeo–Guji coffee belt in southern Ethiopia, aiming to understand the
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