XCEPT

Six Years of Cross-Border Insights

From 2019 to 2024, the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) has deepened its understanding of conflict-affected border regions in the countries of the Horn of Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) as well as Sudan and South Sudan. This timeline highlights key research on migration, labour and cross-border economies, shaping policy and peace efforts as the XCEPT project concludes.

 

Six Years of Cross-Border Insights

From 2019 to 2024, the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) has deepened its understanding of conflict-affected border regions in the countries of the Horn of Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea) as well as Sudan and South Sudan. This timeline highlights key research on migration, labour, and cross-border economies, shaping policy and peace efforts as the XCEPT project concludes.

2019: Laying the Groundwork

In 2019, RVI explored the economic and labour dynamics in conflict-affected regions. Our research focused on the cross-border maritime economy between Somalia and Yemen, monetized labour systems in South Sudan, and South Sudan’s transition towards a market economy.

Briefing Paper

2019

War, Migration and Work

Changing social relations in the South Sudan borderlands

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

War, Migration and Work outlines how the changing economy has affected social relations in the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal borderlands, particularly between the old and the young, and men and women. The result is a fraying social system, where intra-family…

MORE >>

Research Paper

2019

Mobility, Trust and Exchange

Somalia and Yemen’s cross-border maritime economy

Horn of Africa

The legacy of Somali piracy, the threat of terrorists transiting between Yemen and Somalia, and the deepening conflict in Yemen, mean international actors tend to view the Gulf of Aden through a security lens. This report outlines the local social and economic relations that criss-cross the maritime border between Yemen and Somalia, and which, despite being less visible to international policy-makers, make an important contribution to the resilience of communities in both countries.
 

Research Paper

2019

Moving Towards Markets

Cash, commodification and conflict in South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Fifty years ago, most households in South Sudan produced the grain they ate, organizing agricultural labour and distributing small surpluses mostly through kinship and other social networks. Now, the majority of households buy most of their food. This transition…
 

Research Paper

2019

Monetized Livelihoods and Militarized Labour in South Sudan’s Borderlands

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, like much of South Sudan, is in a protracted state of social and economic crisis, rooted in generations of armed conflict, forced resettlements, and a shift towards a cash and market economy. Since the 1980s, family…
 
2020: Localised Challenges amid Global Crisis

As the countries around the region grappled with COVID-19, boderlands were not spared. In 2020, our research focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on border economies and food systems in South Sudan and Somalia. We explored how regional instability and crises shaped the resilience of communities, with a focus on migration, gold mining and labor relations.

Briefing Paper

2020

Sudan’s Grain Divide

A revolution of bread and sorghum

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This briefing unpacks the connected political and economic crisis that reached a climax in early 2019 through the contrasting but connected worlds of Sudan’s bread and sorghum eaters. Its conclusion presents the limited options available to the as…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

ثورة العيش

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

يتقصى هذا النص الموجز الأزمة السياسية – الاقتصادية المترابطة التي بلغت ذروتها في مطلع عام 2019 من خلال العالمين المتعارضين ولكن المرتبطين ببعضهما البعض: عالم أكلي الخبز وعالم أكلي الذرة في السودان. وتظهر خلاصة الخيارات المحدودة المتاحة لحكومة التكنوقراط غير المنتخبة.
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Kiir Consolidates Power through Border Deal with Khartoum

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In August 2019 a series of armed clashes occurred in Aweil East state (formerly Northern Bahr el- Ghazal), on the Sudan – South Sudan border between militias aligned to Paul Malong’s South Sudan United Front (SSUF) and…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Security Elites and Gold Mining in Sudan’s Economic Transition

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

A major challenge for Sudan’s new, technocratic administration is reform of the country’s poorly performing economy. Previous attempts, including the lifting of subsidies on bread and fuel in January 2018, were one of the drivers for the…
 

Research Paper

2020

Rethinking Aid in Borderland Spaces

The case of Aboko

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Taking the Ethiopia-South Sudan borderlands as a case study, Rethinking Aid in Borderland Spaces: The case of Akobo argues that the traditional modalities of the aid industry are not fit for purpose in a world where transnationalism is a daily…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

How Sudan’s Gold Boom is Changing Labour Relations in Blue Nile State

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Sudan’s Blue Nile state, which borders Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region on its eastern side, and South Sudan’s Upper Nile region on its south-west frontier, has a long history of small-scale artisanal gold mining. Gold is found in the region’s hills…
 

Research Paper

2020

Epidemics in the African Red Sea Region

A history of uneven disease exposure

HORN OF AFRICA

The sustained movement of people, goods and ideas across the African Red Sea Region has been and continues to be so intense that it binds together communities throughout the region in a unified multifaceted socio-economic system that transcends…
 

Research Paper

2020

South Sudan’s Changing Tastes

Conflict, displacement and food imports

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

South Sudan’s long wars have forced millions of people to leave their own homes, farms and pastures and move to unfamiliar new areas of the countryside, to refugee camps and cities. In the process, they have changed the way…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Conflict, Mobility and Markets

Changing food systems in South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Displaced Tastes is a collaborative research project run by the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and the Catholic University of South Sudan (CUofSS) as part of the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines how experiences of conflict, regional displacement…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

COVID-19 in South Sudan’s Borderlands

A view from Northern Bahr el-Ghazal

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Focusing on South Sudan’s borderland with Sudan, in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, it is clear that the national response to the virus, particularly the border shutdown, has rapidly become a new factor in Sudan and South Sudan’s cross-border political economy….
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Khat and COVID-19

Somalia’s cross-border economy in the time of coronavirus

HORN OF AFRICA

The number of Coronavirus (COVID-19) infections and related deaths is rapidly increasing in Somalia. However, at present it is the secondary, primarily economic, effects of the pandemic that are being most keenly felt. The impact on the khat trade…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

South Sudan’s Food Imports in the Time of COVID-19

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) of 2020 is likely to have profound effects on stressed food systems in already hungry countries. Even before South Sudan reported its first COVID-19 case at the beginning of April, media reports indicated that the…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Grains as Life

The value of sorghum and millet amongst the Abyei Dinka

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In this piece, Deng Kuol explains the significance of grains for his pastoralist Ngok Dinka community—more commonly associated with cattle—in the borderland region of Abyei. To illustrate this, Deng describes the efforts made by his mother to preserve access to a socially valued variety of sorghum—ruath—by travelling into military occupied areas of Abyei while her family was displaced outside their home areas. The story illustrates how, for the Dinka community in South Sudan, grains are indeed ‘life’.
 

Briefing Paper

2020

‘You Can Now Get Engaged’

Meanings of cassava among the Pojulu of South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

n this piece, Luga Aquila explores the history of cassava among the Pojulu in Central Equatoria. He explains how one local cassava variety called yoyoji-yoyoja, which translates as ‘you can now get engaged’, became an important means of bridewealth in the Pojulu community.…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Migrating with Seeds

Women, agricultural knowledge and displacement in South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In this piece, Elizabeth Nyibol describes the lifestory of her aunt, Mary Ajok Wetkwuot, who throughout her life has demonstrated a commitment to growing the indigenous grains of her Dinka community—varieties of sorghum and millet—which she carried with her while living much of her life in displacement…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

South Sudan

Hussein Abdel Bagi deepens his control of the borderland

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In February 2020 Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, appointed Hussein Abdel Bagi—head of the South Sudan Opposition Alliance—as one of his five vice-presidents. Abdel Bagi is a member of the Malual Dinka community from Madhol, on the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Understanding Hussein Abdel Bagi

South Sudan’s vice-president from the borderlands

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Hussein Abdel Bagi’s appointment as the third Vice-President of South Sudan is an important building block for the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU), particularly its relations with Khartoum. Hussein’s long experience of Sudanese politics, and…
 

Research Paper

2020

Breaking Out of the Borderlands

Understanding migrant pathways from Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Breaking Out of the Borderlands is the second report by Dr Nicki Kindersley and Joseph Diing Majok on South Sudan’s changing borderland economy. The first report in the series—Monetized Livelihoods and militarized Labour in South Sudan’s Borderlands—described the protracted…
 

Briefing Paper

2020

Trading Grains in South Sudan

Stories of opportunities, shocks and changing tastes

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In the urban centres of South Sudan, people increasingly depend on markets to buy grains imported from South Sudan’s neighbours—particularly Sudan and Uganda—for their daily food. While this growing reliance on a cash-based regional economy of food is becoming more evident, much less is known about the lives of the people involved in the grain trade—the traders, transporters and millers—who provide South Sudan’s urban areas with staple foods like maize, sorghum and cassava.
 
2021: Borders, Mobity and Trade

In 2021, RVI research focused on understanding the structures and dynamics of informal trade networks, state-making and environmental change across borderlands. From gold mining in Sudan to informal trading between Ethiopia and Somaliland, our research highlighted the complexities of economic governance in these regions.

Research Paper

2021

Contested Commerce

Revenue and state-making in the Galkayo borderlands

HORN OF AFRICA

Situated between Somalia’s Federal Member States of Puntland and Galmudug, the city of Galkayo forms an administrative and social boundary within the broader Bosaso trade corridor, which encompasses Puntland, Galmudug and Hirshabelle. Located at the edge of Puntland but…
 

Research Paper

2021

Regularly Irregular

Varieties of informal trading in the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands

HORN OF AFRICA

In Somaliland and Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State, small-scale informal trading far exceeds formal trade. However, most recent writing on trade in this region has disproportionately focused on formal trade thus neglecting a key area of economic activity. In contrast,…
 

Research Paper

2021

Lasanod: City at the Margins

The politics of borderland trade between Somaliland and Puntland

HORN OF AFRICA

Lasanod is located on the border between the Republic of Somaliland and Somalia’s federal state of Puntland. Now under the administrative control of Somaliland, the city is contested— sometimes violently— between the two polities, which are both products of…
 

Research Paper

2021

From Dust to Dollar

Gold mining and trade in the Sudan-Ethiopia borderland

HORN OF AFRICA

From Dust to Dollar focuses on the borderland region between Sudan and Ethiopia, using gold-mining and trade to examine transnational flows of people and commodities across its semi-permeable frontier. Gold mining has shifted from being part of a long-term,…
 

Research Paper

2021

Chokepoints and Corridors

Ordering maritime space in the Western Indian Ocean

HORN OF AFRICA

In the Horn of Africa there is a dynamic interplay between land and sea that has shaped political, economic and social relationships. Historical and contemporary instances of piracy in the Western Indian Ocean, at different times, precipitated a securitization of…
 

Research Paper

2021

Unequal Adaptations

A history of environmental change in the Sudan-Eritrea-Ethiopia border region

HORN OF AFRICA

The Sudan-Eritrea-Ethiopia border region has long been a place of deep interconnection. Historically, collaboration across ethno-linguistic and religious divides allowed communities to develop life-sustaining complementary strategies for utilizing the region’s natural resources.

 

Research Paper

2021

Trade, Taxes and Tensions in the Somali Borderlands

HORN OF AFRICA

Cross-border trade is crucial for ongoing state building in the Somali inhabited Horn of Africa. This is significantly enabled by revenue collection at border crossings, which forms a crucial part of states’ finances in this region. Cross-border trade is…
 

Briefing Paper

2021

What Next for the Juba Peace Agreement after the Coup in Sudan?

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

The 25 October coup in Sudan saw the military component of the transitional government assert itself over its civilian counterpart. In the weeks since, attention has mostly focused on events in Khartoum, but the coup, which was actively or…
 
2022: Conflict and Commodification

In 2022, our focus was on the politics of trade, labour and conflict in border regions. We explored how commodities such as khat shaped the politics of Somaliland’s trade and delved into peace processes in Sudan and the role of child labour in South Sudan’s border areas.

Research Paper

2022

Social Media and the Transnational Everyday

Mobility, opportunity and risk in Hargeisa, Somaliland

HORN OF AFRICA

Online and social media connectivity has increased rapidly across cities in the Horn of Africa, particularly amongst younger generations. Taking the post-conflict city of Hargeisa—capital of the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland—as its starting point, this report focuses…
 

Research Paper

2022

Baraha Bulshada Iyo Caalami Ahaanshaha Maalin Walba

Isusocodka, fursadaha, iyo qataraha ka jira Hargeysa, Soomaaliland

HORN OF AFRICA

Warbixintan waxa ay taxliilineysaa qaabka ragga da’da yar ee ku nool Hargeysa—caasimadda jamhuuriyadda madax-bannaanida ku dhawaaqday ee Soomaaliland—ay u isticmaalaan madallada baraha bulshada iyo kuwa dijitaalka ah si ay uga helaan fursado shaqo iyo kuwo dhaqaale, iyo sidoo…
 

Briefing Paper

2022

What Next for the Juba Peace Agreement?

Evolving political and security dynamics in Darfur

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan with a particular focus on the future of the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) and the evolving political and security dynamics in Darfur. It is the second of a series of…
 

Blog

2022

What are the Causes of Somaliland’s Drought Crisis?

HORN OF AFRICA

This blog is the first in a series published by the Rift Valley Institute to help understand the causes of the drought-related crisis in the Somali regions of the Horn of Africa. It is a product of the UK government’s…
 

Research Paper

2022

Child Labour, Education and Commodification in South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Until the latter part of the twentieth century, South Sudanese boys and girls grew food on household farms for their families to eat. Under this system, children’s work and education were hard to distinguish. Today, however, many boys and…
 

Briefing Paper

2022

What Next for Sudan’s Peace Process?

Evolving political and security dynamics in the Two Areas

HORN OF AFRICA

This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan with a particular focus on the future of the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) and the evolving political and security dynamics in the Two Areas. It is the third in a…
 

Blog

2022

Drought in Ethiopia's Somali Region and Cross-Border Strategies for Survival

HORN OF AFRICA

This blog is the third in a series published by the Rift Valley Institute to help understand the causes of the drought-related crisis in the Somali regions of the Horn of Africa. It is a product of the UK government’s XCEPT…
 

Research Paper

2022

War, Migration and Work

Agricultural labour and cross-border migration from Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, South Sudan

HORN OF AFRICA

War, Migration and Work examines the history of labour migration and labour relations in present day South Sudan’s Baher El-Ghazal borderlands with Darfur and Kordofan (regions of present day Sudan). Beginning in the nineteenth century, the report charts the evolution…
 

Briefing Paper

2022

One Year after the Coup

What next for Sudan's Juba Peace Agreement?

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan with a particular focus on the future of the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA). It explores how the relationship between two key factions in the conflict has complicated the ongoing discussions…
 

Research Paper

2022

Fixing the Price

The politics of the khat trade between Ethiopia and Somaliland

HORN OF AFRICA

As part of a wider attempt to increase export revenues amidst weak economic performance, Ethiopian authorities doubled the price of khat for exports to Somaliland and Djibouti in April 2022. Following much controversy, the decision was reversed a few…
 

Research Paper

2022

Purchasing Insecurity

The African red sea region and the global food trade

HORN OF AFRICA

The African Red Sea Region does not produce enough food to feed its own population. Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland (Somalia) are each reliant on imports to make up for domestic production shortfalls. This presents unresolved challenges to…
 

Research Paper

2022

The Costs of Peace

Financing the Juba Peace Agreement in Sudan's new political economy

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This is the first paper in a series considering the future of Sudan’s Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) and peace-making after the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. It was commissioned by the Rift Valley Institute for the UK government’s…
 

Briefing Paper

2022

What Next for Sudan’s Peace Process?

Political and security dynamics in the east

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This briefing considers the changing political situation in Sudan with a particular focus on the future of the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) and the evolving political and security dynamics in the east of the country. It considers the role…
 
2023: Tensions and Resilience

During 2023, our research explored the political economies of checkpoints, trade routes and conflict resilience. We examined how trade controls and regional conflicts shaped both local economies and political stability in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.

Briefing Paper

2023

The Crisis in Lasanod

Implications for trade and livelihoods in Ethiopia’s Somali region

HORN OF AFRICA

The current conflict over the contested city of Lasanod has the potential to expand into a crisis affecting several of the Somali-speaking territories. This blog – building on research the author conducted in 2021 – looks at the conflict…
 

Research Paper

2023

Resistance in the Peripheries

Civil war and fragile peace in Sudan & Ethiopia’s borderlands

HORN OF AFRICA

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Historically, the people living along the Blue Nile – Benishangul-Gumuz borderlands in what is now Sudan and Ethiopia have been politically and socially marginalized within their respective political entities. As such they have sought ways to address…
 

Briefing Paper

2023

How Armed Groups Play the Long Game In the Sudan-Ethiopia Borderlands

HORN OF AFRICA

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

Armed opposition groups in Sudan and Ethiopia’s border regions have a history of leveraging support, often military, from their neighbours to aid their political aspirations at home. These dynamics have fluctuated in line with broader changes in the region…
 

Blog

2023

Bay and Bakool

How Somalia’s breadbasket turned into an epicenter of humanitarian crisis

HORN OF AFRICA

The site of recurrent famines and humanitarian crises, Somalia’s Bay and Bakool regions were once considered the country’s breadbasket. In this blog, researcher and former development worker Abdirahman Edle explains how, over the past two decades, the region has…
 

Research Paper

2023

The Price of Life

Revolutionary agency and political impasse in post-Bashir Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In Sudan, the revolutionary upsurge of 2018/2019 signalled the implosion of the country’s postcolonial political order. The political parties of old have seen their social bases wither away and their ideological hold over the Sudanese people corrode under the…
 

Briefing Paper

2023

Hemedti Challenges SAF's Control Over Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This paper focuses on the origins and the political and military objectives of the two main internal actors – the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — in Sudan’s ongoing conflict. It is the first…
 

Briefing Paper

2023

Sudan Conflict

Assessing the risk of regionalization

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This paper focuses on the potential for a regionalization of the conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), including external involvement by Sudan’s neighbours and cross-border spill-over. It is the second in a…
 

Research Paper

2023

Navigating Trade Controls

The political economy of checkpoints along Somalia’s Garissa corridor

HORN OF AFRICA

The Garissa corridor is an essential artery for trade and exchange between Kismayo in Somalia’s Jubaland state, and the Kenyan city of Garissa. Checkpoints along this route were…
 

Research Paper

2023

Brokering Trade Routes

The political economy of checkpoints along the Baidoa corridor summary

HORN OF AFRICA

The Baidoa corridor is a transport and trade route that connects Somalia’s coastal capital, Mogadishu, to Kenya via the border towns of Bula Hawa and Dollow, respectively. As…
 

Research Paper

2023

Paying the Price

The political economy of checkpoints in Somalia

HORN OF AFRICA

This report explores the political economy of checkpoints in Somalia: What drives their formation? What impacts do they have on trade, society and political projects? To explore these factors, new empirical
 
2024: Reflections and Looking Ahead

As we approach the project’s conclusion, our research has focused on the roles of women in South Sudan’s labour market, mobile money platforms in Somali economic spaces, and the impacts of conflict in Sudan. We can look forward to a few more publications this year and into 2025, including a synthesis report that brings together insights from the past six years.

Research Paper

2024

War and the Borderland

Northern Bahr el-Ghazal during the Sudan conflict

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

The devastating war in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has also had a profound impact on the country’s neighbours, particularly South Sudan. This is especially the case for areas that border Sudan,…
 

Research Paper

2024

Research in Displacement

The impact of war on Sudan’s higher education and academic research

Sudan and South Sudan

The outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023 has created immeasurable suffering and damage, threatening critical institutions across the country. Amongst these is Sudanese higher education, which has faced not only the destruction of critical facilities, but also the mass displacement of students and faculty
 

Research Paper

2024

Sudan and South Sudan

أثر الحرب في السودان على التعليم العالي ومجتمع البحث الأكاديمي

خلف اندلاع الحرب في السودان في أبريل 2023 دماراً ومعاناة لا حصر لها، مما شكل تهديداً لمؤسسات مهمة على امتداد القطر. ومن ضمنها مؤسسات التعليم العالي السودانية، التي لم تواجه تدميراً للمنشآت المهمة فحسب، لكن أيضاً النزوح الجماعي للطلاب وهيئات التدريس. يقيّم هذا التقرير مدى الدمار، والكيفية التي ظلت بها هذه المؤسسات تعمل، إلى حد ما، رغم الظروف البالغة الصعوبة. كما أنه يُلقي الضوء على تجارب الأكاديميين والطلاب السودانيين في النزوح، فيما يحاولون أن يواصلوا أعمالهم، ويعيدوا بناء حيواتهم ـ داخل السودان، وفي الأقطار المجاورة على حدٍّ سواء.

 

Research Paper

2024

The Structure of Violence

States, official militaries, paramilitaries and non-state militias in the Northern Horn of Africa

HORN OF AFRICA

 In Sudan and Ethiopia, official militaries are currently fighting against paramilitaries and non-state militias that, previously, had been important battlefield allies. The ongoing violence does not reflect a breakdown in the political order. Rather, these conflicts are…
 

Research Paper

2024

War and the Borderland

Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea at a time of conflict

HORN OF AFRICA

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

This research paper builds on work the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) has conducted on the Sudan–Ethiopia borderland under the XCEPT programme since 2021. This culminated in the report ‘Resistance in the Peripheries: Fragile peace and civil war in Sudan…
 

Research Paper

2024

Transborder Mobile Money Platforms in the Greater Somali Economic Space

HORN OF AFRICA

The informal transborder movement of goods and people have long captivated scholars, policymakers and security institutions in the East Africa region, in particular in the Horn of Africa (HoA). Special attention has been given to the transborder economic…
 

Research Paper

2024

The Triple Burden

Women selling their labour in South Sudan

SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

In rural South Sudan, markets for food, labour, and land are expanding, leading to increased workloads for women. Historically, rural women had two primary labour burdens: producing food for home consumption and providing essential life-giving labour such as…