In February 2020 Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, appointed Hussein Abdel Bagi—head of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance—as one of his five vice-presidents. Abdel Bagi is a member of the Malual Dinka community from Madhol, on the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal…
RVI publishes books, research reports, research papers, briefings and meeting reports in a range of formats. Publications cover policy, research, arts, culture and local knowledge in the countries of eastern and central Africa. Research publications—books, reports and papers—are peer-reviewed. Some RVI publications are also available in French and/or Arabic.
The RVI is a signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001); all publications are free for download in PDF format under Creative Commons licences. The views expressed in books and reports published by the RVI are those of the authors, not the Institute.
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Key points • Hussein Abdel Bagi’s appointment as the third Vice-President of South Sudan is an important building block for the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), particularly its relations with Khartoum. Hussein’s long experience of Sudanese politics, and…
Breaking Out of the Borderlands is the second report by Dr Nicki Kindersley and Joseph Diing Majok on South Sudan’s changing borderland economy. The first report in the series—Monetized Livelihoods and militarized Labour in South Sudan’s Borderlands—described the protracted…
Summary The sustained movement of people, goods and ideas across the African Red Sea Region has been and continues to be so intense that it binds together communities throughout the region in a unified multifaceted socio-economic system that transcends…
Sudan’s Blue Nile state, which borders Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region on its eastern side, and South Sudan’s Upper Nile region on its south-west frontier, has a long history of small-scale artisanal gold mining. Gold is found in the region’s hills…
Key Points A major challenge for Sudan’s new, technocratic administration is reform of the country’s poorly performing economy. Previous attempts, including the lifting of subsidies on bread and fuel in January 2018, were one of the drivers for the…
Key Points In August 2019 a series of armed clashes occurred in Aweil East state (formerly Northern Bahr el- Ghazal), on the Sudan – South Sudan border between militias aligned to Paul Malong’s South Sudan United Front (SSUF) and…
This briefing unpacks the connected political and economic crisis that reached a climax in early 2019 through the contrasting but connected worlds of Sudan’s bread and sorghum eaters. Its conclusion presents the limited options available to the as…
RVI Fellow Magdi el-Gizouli’s briefing examines the forms of popular resistance and organization that emerged within Sudan’s uprising in 2018-19. He considers whether the new transitional government, which must balance the interests of Sudan’s different social groups, will…
This Q&A is an explainer on the rapid political changes that have taken place in Sudan over the last month. All 4 contributors are close collaborators with the Rift Valley Institute. Questions were posed by Magnus Taylor, RVI’s Senior…
Recent Publications
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
Peace and Instability: Tigray since the Pretoria Agreement
March 26, 2026
CONFLICT TRENDS ANALYSIS / MARCH 2026 Summary THE ETHIOPIA PEACE RESEARCH FACILITY This conflict trends analysis was produced by the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF). The PRF is an independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian
Political Economy of Cash and Markets in Sudan
February 27, 2026
The research provides a snapshot of the war in Sudan in the period from February to April 2025. However, the war is dynamic, with political alliances and territorial control changing. The April 2023 conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF)