Applications open for RVI's Annual Field Courses 2017
In June, the Rift Valley Institute will return to Entebbe, Uganda, to hold the 2017 annual field courses. Now in their fourteenth year, each course examines a different sub-region within eastern and central Africa: Sudan and South Sudan, the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa... READ MORE >
They offer a dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars, panel discussions and debates. Bringing together new research, fresh analysis, established and emerging experts, the courses consider current political and development challenges in their historical, social and economic context. The courses are designed for diplomats, development practitioners, researchers and the private sector—both those living and working in the region or those about to start. Applications are considered in order of receipt.
For further information about this course, please contact cou...@riftvalley.net.
Publications
Rift Valley Forum coast series
In December 2016, the Rift Valley Institute held a series of public forums in Mombasa and Lamu in partnership with the Kwani Trust, the Kuza Project, Adam Smith International and the Human Rights Agenda (HURIA). Attendees included members of the public, government, scholars and civil society, who together debated the coastal regions’ past and future within the Kenyan state. The three forums considered the unique coastal identity and history and how this related to contemporary political and economic transformations. Read the reports: Coal: Development, energy and employment, the Big Barrier: Youth unemployment at the coast and the Cultural Identity: Kenya and the coast.
A Year of Protests in Ethiopia
For more than a year now, two decades of relative social and political order in Ethiopia has been disrupted by unprecedented protest and unrest. Long-standing grievances erupted in November 2015, only six months after the ruling EPRDF won a total electoral victory earlier in May the same year. The two largest of Ethiopia’s internal ethno-national groups have been in the protest’s vanguard... READ MORE >
Instruments in Both Peace and War
With the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU) and the subsequent outbreak of violence in Juba in July 2016, the role of civil society in South Sudan is more vital than ever. Can a civil society, confident and well resourced, contribute to the political discourse, engage in nation building, hold public institutions to account and improve the transparency of public life? What can civil society do, and what role can it play in the political transition? A panel of academics, activists, the church, chiefs and press discussed the nature of civil society in South Sudan and its past and future place in the public sphere in a series of public lectures at the Catholic University of South Sudan... READ MORE >
Community’s anxiety about LAPSSET fueled by lack of information
'We first heard about it early last year when we saw Japanese airplanes, followed by strangers (land surveyors) walking around the area, carrying notepads, pens and fancy equipment, just like you' say community members of Isiolo County about the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia (LAPSSET) Transport project.
Awareness of LAPSSET seems to be extremely limited in Isiolo, despite the fact that the project has, over the past couple years, been making headlines as one of Africa’s biggest mega-infrastructural projects... READ MORE >
Upcoming events
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Kenya Elections 2017 course
From 22–23 February, RVI will host this new, customized training course focused on the upcoming Kenyan elections. Designed and taught by leading Kenyan and international experts, the course will outline and unpack the complex electoral processes and political context for Kenya’s second post-devolution election set for August 2017. The deadline for applications is 1 February 2017. Applications received after the deadline will be considered in the event of withdrawals... READ MORE >
