South Sudan

Dr. James E. Sulton Jr.

JA International Correspondent

Many people know  Sudan was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence from colonial rule. That occurred before Ghana raised its own flag under Kwame Nkrumah. It was prior to Guinea telling the French to leave the country behind the leadership of Sekou Toure. Sudan was decolonized before Tanzania, whose independence movement was energized by the inestimable Julius Nyerere. 

Liberation came to Sudan on January 1, 1956.

Few people realize, however,  Sudan was plagued by civil war even prior to its independence as a nation. Fighting broke out between the North and the South in August 1955 – eight months before Egypt and Great Britain relinquished joint control over the country under what was known as condominium rule. So, Sudan was torn by internecine warfare before it could truly be a unitary state. 

The breach between the two regions was so severe that it could not heal despite multiple treaties, agreements or deals that were struck over the course of many decades. Nothing ever worked well enough politically for Africa’s largest country to thrive as “the breadbasket of the continent,” which many people believed and hoped it would become.

Ultimately, the nation divided in two. South Sudan became the world’s newest internationally recognized country when it declared independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011. A referendum held in January 2011 had documented  nearly all voters in Southern Sudan desired independence from Khartoum. Independence was formally proclaimed that summer, creating the Republic of South Sudan with Juba as its capital. 

South Sudan was admitted as the 193rd member state of the United Nations and the 54th independent country in Africa in July 2011. As of 2026, it remains the most recent sovereign state to gain widespread international recognition.

South Sudan has a population estimated at approximately 12.4 million people as of 2026.  It is demographically one of the youngest nations in the world. Roughly half of the population is under 18 years old, with about 38-46% aged 0-14 years. Approximately 78% of the population lives in rural areas, while only 22% resides in urban settings.

Any observer can readily see  this new nation has followed an inauspicious course since its inception. Internal conflict within South Sudan is fundamentally a multi-dimensional crisis rooted in political power struggles, ethnic divisions, and weak governance that has persisted since it gained independence from the North. The conflict exploded into civil war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir (from the Dinka ethnic group) accused Vice President Riek Machar (from the Nuer ethnic group) of plotting a coup. This triggered violence between soldiers from both groups that quickly spread across the country.

Before independence came to Juba in 2011 oil was the major economic driver in the south and the basis for North–South tensions in Sudan. However, it hovered over deeper conflicts about political marginalization, national identity, and uneven development.

Large oil reserves were discovered in the 1970s in what was then southern Sudan, and control over those fields, pipelines, and revenues began vicious disputes between the Khartoum government and southern political leaders. The North declared oil a national resource, routed pipelines and refineries through that part of the country and captured most of the revenue. Southerners saw these practices as the exploitation of “their” resources.

After the discovery of oil in western Upper Nile province and nearby areas of the South, the Khartoum government used military force and allied militias to clear and control oil zones, displacing local populations and tying oil directly to military strategy. Oil revenues funded arms purchases and domestic arms production, further accelerating the war.

A Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 settled matters like revenue sharing and the status of oil-rich “disputed areas.” After South Sudan’s independence in 2011, the new nation controlled about 75% of the oil reserves, while Sudan controlled the pipelines and export facilities. This led to recurrent crises over transit fees, production shutdowns and armed clashes.

Unfortunately, South Sudan has its own intractable internal problems. The core driver of this quagmire is the personal power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his erstwhile Vice President Riek Machar. This rivalry exploded into open warfare in December 2013 after Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup and dismissed him as vice president. Their brawl continued despite a 2018 power sharing arrangement. Kiir and Machar repeatedly clashed over security control, political appointments, and the timing and terms of elections. 

The arrests of Riek Machar and other leaders aligned with his armed faction in 2025 effectively collapsed the power sharing framework. Large scale fighting resumed after that.

South Sudan’s current civil war and its accompanying instability emanate from a mix of long running political power struggles, ethnic manipulation, weak state institutions, and competition over resources. All these weaknesses are sharpened by repeated failures to implement peace deals and hold legitimate elections. These factors interact in a manner that leads elites to mobilize ethnic and communal grievances for political gains and keeps violence recurring even after formal peace deals are signed.