There were great expectations for South Sudan after it gained independence. Hundreds of thousands of children in South Sudan are facing an uncertain future.Īccording to Unicef, more than 70 per cent of the country’s children are out of school. The Coronavirus pandemic and recurrent lockdowns have brought imports of food and medical supplies from Kenya and Uganda to a standstill. Since 2011, non-oil GDP has fallen by 37 per cent and household disposable income by 70 per cent. The country's currency has depreciated nearly one hundred-fold since independence, and a parallel market for US dollars has developed, with a gap of 100 per cent or more between the parallel and official exchange rates. The World Bank says South Sudan experienced near-hyperinflation because of its civil war, which caused a 60-fold increase in the prices of basic goods in an already fragile economy where most work is self-employment in agriculture. Widespread poverty is the main reason South Sudan ranks 187th out of 189 countries in the Human Development Index (HDI), and also helps to explain why the average life expectancy is only 57, compared with the global average of 72. Today, the typical income of a civil servant is around $2 per day, according to the World Bank. The UN's World Food Programme said it helped to feed about half the country's population last year, with about six million receiving food aid, and the proportion of the population living under the international poverty line rose from 51 per cent in 2009 to 82 per cent in 2016. The conflict, and drought, also plunged the country into famine in early 2017. About 2.3 million people fled to neighbouring countries in search of safety. Nearly 3.9 million people, mostly women and children, were forcibly displaced, many of them more than once. The South Sudanese civil war is believed to have resulted in close to 400,000 deaths, according to a report published in 2018 by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and financed by the US State Department. Some people in the south whisper that they would have voted to remain united with Sudan if they had only known the difficult years that lay ahead, referring to Assawdaniya, which in Arabic means the unity of Sudan. The five-year war caused dire food shortages, all but destroyed the country's fledgling health sector and hit international investment badly – problems that continue to blight South Sudan today The rebels who once fought against a regime that largely marginalised them now fought amongst themselves. South Sudan secured a $174 million loan from the International Monetary Fund in April to help finance its budget and stabilise the currency. Only two years after the hard-won secession from Sudan, the country fell into another deadly internecine conflict in 2013 that continued until 2018.įighting broke out amid a leadership struggle between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his Vice President Riek Machar, who represented the country's two largest tribes – the Dinka and the Nuer respectively – and competed for the country's vast resources.Ī shantytown in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. The National visited South Sudan to see how the world's youngest country has fared during a decade of independence and to investigate what the future holds for a nation brought to the brink by years of brutal conflict. Today, many farmers struggle to sell their crops of millet and maize not because of instability but because of the lack of basic infrastructure and a near-total absence of buyers with any money. South Sudan seeks investment as guns fall silentīut 10 years after independence, visitors to the capital Juba will see a country suffering from underdevelopment and extreme poverty – the direct result of five years of civil war that stymied the transformation of the young country into a viable state.
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