Focusing on South Sudan’s borderland with Sudan, in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, it is clear that the national response to the virus, particularly the border shutdown, has rapidly become a new factor in Sudan and South Sudan’s cross-border political economy….
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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The number of Coronavirus (COVID-19) infections and related deaths is rapidly increasing in Somalia. However, at present it is the secondary, primarily economic, effects of the pandemic that are being most keenly felt. The impact on the khat trade…
The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) of 2020 is likely to have profound effects on stressed food systems in already hungry countries. Even before South Sudan reported its first COVID-19 case at the beginning of April, media reports indicated that the…
Displaced Tastes is a research project run by the Rift Valley Institute in partnership with the Catholic University of South Sudan under the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in…
Displaced Tastes is a research project run by the Rift Valley Institute in partnership with the Catholic University of South Sudan under the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in…
Displaced Tastes is a research project run by the Rift Valley Institute in partnership with the Catholic University of South Sudan under the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in…
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…
Taking the Ethiopia-South Sudan borderlands as a case study, Rethinking Aid in Borderland Spaces: The case of Akobo argues that the traditional modalities of the aid industry are not fit for purpose in a world where transnationalism is a daily…
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…
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,