In early 2011, the scale of famine affecting the Horn of Africa was only just beginning to receive international attention, despite early warnings in the previous year. It was not until July that famine was formally declared. The famine…
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 Rift Valley Institute’s study on the impact of war on Somali men looks into a previously under-researched set of questions: What are the enduring effects of more than two decades of war and violent conflict on Somali men…
This report is a record of a Forum event held on 5 November, before the 13 November 2017 election day. Election day itself was largely peaceful, and the international observer mission reported only minor irregularities on election day, including…
Mogadishu has for more than two decades been one of the most highly contested cities in the world. Since the collapse of President Siyad Barre’s government in early 1991, it has been the object of both military and political…
‘This is a vivid account—one of the best I’ve come across—of what it is to be a Somali migrant in pursuit of a safer future elsewhere, away from the precarious life in the Somali Peninsula. I’ve found it a…
On 6 September 2017, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management of the Federal Government of Somalia, in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Office of the Deputy Representative of the UN Secretary General,…
The Rift Valley Institute’s Rural to urban mobility project aims to better understand the dynamics of rural to urban migration and the ways in which this phenomenon impacts the social and infrastructural fabric of cities in East Africa. It is conducted…
Recent Publications
Digital Governance and Security in the Horn of Africa
March 28, 2025
While digital finance—including mobile money—has developed unevenly across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, such technologies are nevertheless transforming everyday economic activities. In some cases, borderlands and cross-border financial flows are central to these digital developments and are driving further innovation. From
Legally Informal: Women, conflict and cross-border trade in the Mandera tri-border area
March 28, 2025
In the Mandera triangle—a pastoralist region encompassing the point at which the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia meet—the reality of local and cross-border trade often diverges widely from official state policies of control. This disjunction has created a grey
Making Sense of Borderlands
March 27, 2025
This think piece is an extract of a longer paper taking stock of the roughly 40 X-Border studies carried out between 2019 and 2025 under the auspices of the Rift Valley Institute’s XCEPT programme. If we are to fully grasp