Kapoeta North County, Eastern Equatoria State
Demographics
2008 NBS Census population: 103,084
2021 NBS PES population estimate*: 103,175
2022 UN OCHA population estimate*: 157,435
2024 UN OCHA population estimate*: 103,176
2024 IPC population estimate: 162,158
2025 UN OCHA population estimate*: 162,158
Ethnic groups and languages: Toposa
Displacement Figures as of September 2024: 7,476 IDPs (-1,565 Sept. 2023) and 1,100 returnees ( -95 Sept. 2023). IPC Food Security: November 2024 – Crisis (Phase 3); IPC Projections: December to March 2025 – Emergency (Phase 4); April to July 2025 – Emergency (Phase 4)
Economy & Livelihoods
Kapoeta North County is located in Eastern Equatoria State. It borders Kapoeta East County to the east, Kapoeta South County and Budi County to the south, and Lopa/Lafon County to the west. It also borders Pibor County (Pibor Administrative Area) to the north.
The county falls within the southeastern semi-arid pastoral livelihoods zone. It is mostly arid, and residents rely on animal husbandry as their primary means of livelihood, with some subsistence farming also taking place. An estimated 56% of households in Kapoeta North County engaged in farming, with a gross cereal yield of 0.8 tonnes per hectare in 2021 (FAO/WFP 2022), increasing to 0.9 tonnes per hectare in 2022 (FAO/WFP 2023). Seasonal drought and limited access to water during the dry season have contributed to intercommunal conflict over grazing land when resident herders migrate to the floodplains of neighboring Lafon/Lopa County during the dry season (REACH 2018). Most households rely on the local market for staple foods.
The IPC projected the county to be at a crisis level (IPC level 3) of food insecurity in November 2024, with conditions projected to worsen to emergency levels (IPC level 4) until at least July 2025. Food insecurity has been a critical challenge for Kapoeta North for an extended period. Conditions began to worsen in 2013 and 2014, following months of drought and unusually heavy rainfall that destroyed crops, forcing the local population to rely on wild food sources. A 2017 UNICEF report indicated that acute malnutrition rates in the county were 17.3%, above the emergency threshold. Threats to food security across the state more broadly include conflict-related insecurity that disrupts market access, weather-related shocks, currency depreciation, rising market prices, and dwindling household-level cereal stocks.
Infrastructure & Services
The county’s headquarters are located in Riwoto. Humanitarian actors have faced access challenges, particularly for populations residing in more rural parts of the county due to the poor road network and occasional communal clashes.
Although Kapoeta North’s educational facilities do not currently meet the needs of all its youth, the county is home to eight (8) Early Childhood Education centers, eleven (11) primary schools, and one (1) secondary school. In 2018, REACH reported that only 13% of assessed settlements in the county had access to educational institutions. More recently, OCHA (2021) highlighted Kapoeta North among the counties reporting the weakest education services.
In December 2024, the WHO reported that Kapoeta North County had seventeen (17) health facilities, of which fifteen (15) were functional. These functional facilities comprised thirteen (13) primary health care units (PHCUs), two (2) primary health care centers (PHCCs), and no hospitals. This meant there were approximately 1.2 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 0.62 PHCCs per 50,000 people in the county at that time.
According to OCHA’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs Overview, an estimated 114,936 people in Kapoeta North County are in need, representing approximately 71% of the county’s total population as reported by OCHA for 2025. For comparison, in 2024, OCHA reported that an estimated 68,311 people in Kapoeta North County were in need, of whom 59,253 were non-displaced, with the remainder comprising IDPs and returnees.
Conflict Dynamics
While Kapoeta North County largely avoided the large-scale fighting between SPLA and SPLA-IO following the outbreak of conflict in December 2013, cattle raiding and armed banditry have long been threats to security in the Greater Kapoeta area (Kapoeta North, South, and East). Communal clashes are fueled in part by the widespread presence of arms among community members. Clashes and cattle raids between the Toposa and Didinga (mostly from Budi County) were observed in the area as late as December 2019. A cycle of revenge killings between the Toposa (mostly from Kapoeta North County) and Buya (mostly from Budi County) communities escalated in mid-2019. This led to a peace and reconciliation dialogue facilitated by the South Sudan Council of Churches in December 2019, which resulted in an agreement with local government as a guarantor.
Despite avoiding large-scale fighting between the armed groups in December 2013, the county has been struggling economically due to the overall deterioration of the economy since the outbreak of conflict. For example, in March 2015, prisoners in Riwoto rioted due to a lack of food, and seven inmates were killed in the subsequent confrontation with authorities. UNMISS determined that the contractor had stopped delivering food to the prison due to lack of payment.
One of the deadliest acts of violence occurred in July 2022, when a group of suspected Murle from Kapoeta North raided, resulting in the deaths of approximately 235 (Eye radio 2022). In addition to the high number of deaths, the raid reportedly resulted in the theft of 15,000 cattle (UNMISS 2022).
Administration & Logistics
Payams: Chumakori, Karukomuge, Lomeyen, Mosingo, Najie, Paringa.
Alternative list of payams provided by local actors: Rwotho (County Headquarters)
UN OCHA 2020 map of Kapoeta NorthCounty: https://reliefweb.int/map/south-sudan/south-sudan-kapoeta-north-county-reference-map-march-2020
Roads:
- A tertiary road runs in a horseshoe shape at the southernmost part of the county. The road begins in Kapoeta town (in Kapoeta South County) and ends at a junction in northern Budi County. The condition of the road is unknown.
UNHAS-recognised Heli and Fixed-Wing Airplane Airstrips: None
References
Eye Radio. (2022). Cattle raid death toll in Kapoeta North rises to 235. Retrieved on 22 August 2023
FAO/WFP. (2023). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 31 July 2023. See equivalent versions of the CFSAM report online for data from previous years.
FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
Jesudason, T., Sanders, A.M., Ohidor, S., Delahunt A.S., Deathe, A.R., Boniface, L., Buot, I., Bikis, M., Makoy, S., Bol, Y.Y., Niquette, J., Callahan, E.K., Walker, D., Nash, S.D. (2024). The cost of mass drug administration for trachoma in two counties of the Republic of South Sudan. PLOS. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
OCHA. (2021). Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
REACH. (2018). Greater Kapoeta Cattle Migration and Cholera Transmission Brief. Retrieved 12 March 2025.
UNICEF. (2017). 21 July – 31 August 2017: South Sudan Sitrep #112. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
UNMISS. (2022). UNMISS and state government conduct fact-finding mission to troubled Kapoeta North. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
Reports on Kapoeta North
UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
* Note: The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Population Estimation Survey (PES) was published in April 2023 based on data collected in May-June 2021. This uses a different method from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Population Working Group (PWG) figures, which are based on a combination of 2008 census data and population movement data up to 2022. The large discrepancies are primarily attributable to these different methods rather than changes in the actual population numbers over time, and have been disputed by some civil society and analysts. Although the later PWG figures were produced more recently for the HNO 2023, at the request of the Government of South Sudan, the data and method used by the PES are being used as the basis for the Common Operational Dataset (COD) for the UN system for the HNO 2024 and likely beyond. For further details on this and other sources used in the county profiles, see the accompanying Methodological Note.
