Somali author Nuruddin Farah discusses his writing—and its relation to Somalia and the African condition—with Tom Odhiambo of Nairobi University. The interview was filmed for the Rift Valley Review.

Ngundeng Bong, the most famous of the Nuer prophets, lived between c.1830 and 1906. His father, Bong Can, was a kuar muon ('earth-master' or 'leopard-skin chief'), originally from the Bul Nuer in the west of the Nuer area, who came to live among the Gaajok in the east, near the Ethiopian border. His mother, Nyayiel, was from the Lou Nuer. Ngundeng was initiated into the Thut age-set…

Why is the Horn so peculiarly violent? Why is it not a normal part of Africa, like East Africa or anywhere else? To put it bluntly, what is wrong with it? In raising this question, I am very much aware that all of independent Africa has had its problems, and that East Africa–especially Uganda–has certainly not been spared. But these problems have proved relatively manageable, compared with…

The third Great Lakes Course was held in Bujumbura, Burundi from 7 to 13 July. The Director of Studies was Jason Stearns, also director of RVI's Usalama Project and author of the acclaimed Dancing in the Glory of Monsters. The Deputy Director of Studies was Emily Paddon, Trudeau Scholar and Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford. The Director of the course was Aly…

The people of Lakes State, in South Sudan–the majority Agar Dinka in particular–have the reputation among some other South Sudanese of being hot-blooded and short-tempered, a wild card in the wider Dinka confederation that constitutes South Sudan’s largest ethnolinguistic group. The Agar have been the subject of a number of anthropological and archaeological studies, but, until now, no book-…