The killings in Mpeketoni on 15 and 16 June are the latest in a series of violent events that are challenging the security of Kenya and the East Africa region more broadly. The words 'terrorism', 'assassinations', 'tribal clashes', 'violent crime', 'domestic violence' regularly appear in mainstream and social media headlines. Traumatic pictures of the aftermath fill the newspapers and TV…

The Rift Valley Institute organised a forum bringing together leading chiefs from five states of South Sudan in Nairobi last Saturday. The forum brought together the chiefs to discuss the current crisis in the country and the role they and other traditional leaders played where peace was concerned.

The chiefs included Nyuong Danhier Gatluak the paramount chief Nyuong Nuer, Unity State,…

Kenya currently hosts over 500,000 registered refugees, and an unknown number of undocumented refugees from Somalia. In November 2012, following a series of violent attacks on churches, mosques, public transport, and nightclubs in Nairobi, Mombasa and in North Eastern Province, the government of Kenya began calls for the repatriation of Somali refugees. In response to this, the Heritage…

The 2013 RVI Juba Lecture series, held in collaboration with the Centre for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba, were held on 6-8 March 2013 at the university’s New Hall, addressing the theme ‘Building the Constitution in South Sudan’. The three keynote speakers were Professor Akolda Tier, Chair of the South Sudan Constitutional Review Commission, Jacob Akol, Director of…

The Nigerian-American writer, photographer and art historian Teju Cole (@tejucole) was in conversation with John Ryle (@johnryle), Director of the Rift Valley Institute, at Bard College, New York State, on 16 April. Born in the United States to Nigerian parents, Teju Cole was raised in Nigeria and moved back to the United States when he was 17. He currently lives in Brooklyn, in New York City…

On 6 December 2012, the  Nairobi Forum hosted a seminar on ‘Rethinking state-building in Somalia: Negotiated statehood and hybrid governance’. The first discussion was led by Dr Marleen Renders, author of Consider Somaliland: State-Building with Traditional Leaders and Institutions. Subsequent panels included representatives from Somali Peace Line, the Association of European…

On 4 December 2012, the RVI's Nairobi Forum presented the assessments of five members of the International Election Observer team who monitored district elections in the Republic of Somaliland on 28 November. They were the fifth democratic elections held in Somaliland since 2002 and followed several weeks of campaigning. The observers presenting their findings at the event, held at the British…

The Somali Kenyan MP Yusuf Hassan was a conspicuous absence at a discussion on the role of art and literature in social reconstruction in the Horn of Africa, which took place on 10 December 2012 in Nairobi. The MP was injured by shrapnel in an explosion in his Kamukunji constituency in Eastleigh, a largely Somali community in the Kenyan capital, on 7 December. His place as chair of the event,…

On 11 October in Nairobi, Professor Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College, North Carolina debated current developments in Somalia with panelists Amal Ismail, publisher and founder of Bridge Magazine, Jabril Abdulle, Director of the Centre for Research and Dialogue in Mogadishu and Matt Bryden, former Chair of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. ‘A Somali Spring?’ considered the prospects…

In 2011, people in Somalia suffered a catastrophic famine. Since 2012, a group from the Feinstein Center at Tufts University and the Rift Valley Institute has been conducting retrospective research on the famine in Somalia, and in the Horn of Africa region more broadly, with the aim of providing empirical evidence to help prevent or mitigate such crises in the future. The research has examined…