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…
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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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…
Key points The so-called Arab Spring is not an appropriate analogy: there was no single authority to bring down and there was no popular uprising. The election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as President of Somalia was the culmination of…
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)