The Usalama Project is a field-based, partner-driven research initiative that aims to examine armed groups and their influence on Congolese society (Usalama is Swahili for safety or security). It constitutes a source of reliable and public information for a wide audience from policymakers to civil society activists, both in the Congo and beyond.

When Kenyans voted in favour of a new constitution in the 2010 referendum, they endorsed many considerable changes to the country’s political, legal and institutional landscape. This included the introduction of a quota system intended to limit the domination of political offices by one single gender. Known as the Gender Principle or Rule, Article 27(8) of the constitution limits the…

The Rift Valley Institute’s Impact of War on Somali Men (IWM) study is a project which fills a critical knowledge gap on the impact of war and state collapse on Somali men and manhood. It provides important insights for national Somali-led policy and practice, and supporting international interventions. It also widens the lens on gender in conflict to understand the vulnerability of men and…

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 Central Africa. The Forum is a venue for dispassionate examination of contested terrain, where researchers, practitioners, officials and activists–from the region and beyond–…

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 urgent questions of the present, with practical recommendations for those working in the region at policy level and in project implementation…

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 with the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba. Past lecture topics have included law, citizenship, culture, and nationhood.

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 for employment. This demand has led to a proliferation of over fifty colleges and universities in the Somali regions that offer an array of courses…

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, and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, to explore the relationship between Australian South Sudanese communities and their friends and…

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 civil society. However, largely absent from this process were customary authorities—variously referred to as chiefs, kings…