Kapoeta East

Kapoeta East County, Eastern Equatoria State

Demographics

2008 NBS Census population: 163,997

2021 NBS PES population estimate*: 319,112

2022 UN OCHA population estimate*: 169,978

2024 UN OCHA population estimate*: 319,113

2024 IPC population estimate: 175,078

2025 UN OCHA population estimate*: 175,078

Ethnic groups: Toposa, Nyangatom**, and Jiye/Jie

Displacement Figures as of September 2024: 1,720 IDPs (-1,562 Sept. 2023) and 675 returnees ( -1,075 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 East County is located in Eastern Equatoria State. It borders Kapoeta North County, Kapoeta South County, and Budi County to the west, and Jonglei State (Pibor County) to the north. It also borders Ethiopia to the east and Kenya to the south, and its extreme southwestern border also borders Uganda.

The county lies within the southeastern semi-arid pastoral livelihood zone. The Toposa people are primarily cattle-keepers, but they also herd sheep and goats. Subsistence farming is practiced, though on a smaller scale than in other counties in the state – one study estimated that about 54% of households engage in agriculture (FAO/WFP 2018). The same estimate was reported in 2021 data (FAO/WFP 2022). In 2021, gross cereal yields were estimated at 0.85 tonnes per hectare, increasing to 0.9 tonnes per hectare in 2022 (FAO/WFP 2023). Some cereal production occurs, mainly sorghum, but on a limited scale.

Although the border towns in Kapoeta East County are less significant for trade than those in Kapoeta Town (Kapoeta South County) or Torit (Torit County), the Nadapal/Narus border crossing links South Sudan to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and has played a historically strategic role for the government in its border dispute with Kenya and for the humanitarian community as an entry point for Operation Lifeline Sudan in the 1990s. 

Food insecurity in Kapoeta East remained at Crisis (Phase 3) fairly consistent between 2016 and 2022. In November 2024, the IPC projected that the county would remain in Crisis (IPC level 3) food insecurity, with conditions expected to deteriorate to Emergency (IPC level 4) between December 2024 and July 2025. A 2020 REACH assessment found that residents in 32% of assessed settlements were coping with a lack of food by going days without food, and residents in 72% of settlements described the hunger they were experiencing as severe or the worst it can be. 51% of assessed settlements were home to residents who were selling livestock to cope with food insecurity, and 65% of settlements reported livestock disease. A 2022 REACH assessment noted improvements in these indicators, with 27% of assessed settlements reporting severe hunger. However, settlements reported an increase in the selling of livestock to offset food insecurity, which rose to 86%. Since December 2022, the Jie community in Kapoeta East has been suffering from food insecurity due to severe drought, forcing people to migrate in search of food and water (Radio Tamazuj, 2023a).

Infrastructure & Services

Kapoeta East is the county with the second-largest population in Eastern Equatoria State (second only to Magwi County) and has its headquarters at Narus, near the border with Kenya. In February 2021, telecommunications company MTN resumed operations in Kapoeta East after nearly eight years of being off-air due to insecurity. Kapoeta East also hosts the Kuron Peace Village, which was founded in 2005 by Bishop Taban Paride. The aim of the project was to create a diverse community that promoted peacebuilding and sought to address the needs of local communities through education, agriculture, and other services. It has hosted gatherings of traditional leaders, including a three-day meeting in April 2016 of seventeen chiefs from different parts of South Sudan to reflect on their changing role in peacemaking and the political transition.

Kapoeta East is home to twenty-six (26) Early Childhood Development centres, twenty-six (26) primary schools, and four (4) secondary schools, including the all-girls St. Bakhita Secondary and the all-boys St. Patrick’s Secondary. All four secondary schools are located in Narus Payam. A 2014 assessment in Kapoeta East also revealed that the county had one of the lowest enrolment rates of girls in primary school in the state, attributed to pressure to engage in child marriage.

In December 2024, the WHO reported that Kapoeta East County had twenty-four (24) health facilities, of which sixteen (16) were functional. These functional facilities comprised ten (10) primary health care units (PHCUs), six (6) primary health care centers (PHCCs), and no hospitals. This translates to approximately 0.86 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 1.71 PHCCs per 50,000 people in the county at that time.

According to OCHA’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs Overview, an estimated 113,801 people are in need in Kapoeta East County, representing approximately 65% of the county’s total population reported by OCHA for 2025. For comparison, in 2024, OCHA reported that an estimated 161,866 people were in need in Kapoeta East County, of whom 158,315 were non-displaced people, with the remainder comprising IDPs and returnees. 

Conflict Dynamics

Although Kapoeta East has been relatively insulated from the direct effects of the Sudanese and South Sudanese civil wars, the county headquarters of Narus was an epicenter of conflict and displacement at several points during the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005). Narus served as an SPLM/A administrative base and recruitment area following its capture by the movement in 1988, after intense fighting began in 1985 (van Leeuwen, 2004, p. 35; Walraet, 2011, p. 10). Narus also served as a transit point for displaced persons after Kapoeta town was captured from the SPLM/A by the Sudanese government in May 1992, given its proximity to the logistics and humanitarian hub at Lokichogio in northern Kenya (HRW 1993). The town was held by the SPLM/A until the end of the war in 2005, though it was bombed on several occasions by the Sudanese Air Force. Despite the area’s close association with the SPLM/A, tensions and intermittent low-level conflict – including over land – were reported between parts of the local Toposa community and the SPLM/A during the war. As with other areas of Eastern Equatoria, land disputes took on an ethnic inflection – in this case because many of the SPLM/A forces stationed in Narus were from the Dinka community – touching on sensitive questions of ethnic belonging and local residency (van Leeuwen 2004, pp. 36-38). Tensions were often eased through interventions by the Diocese of Torit (which relocated to Narus in 1992) and the Sudanese Women’s Voice of Peace NGO. As noted below, Kapoeta East was also affected by cross-border conflicts during the second civil war, notably along the disputed border with Kenya.

The major threats to people’s livelihoods in Greater Kapoeta (Kapoeta North, South, and East) are cattle raiding, armed banditry, and persistent droughts. Community consultations carried out in 2012 found that competition over water, a lack of healthcare, and poor education were compounding threats to security in the county (UNDP, 2012). They also noted longstanding tension between the Toposa and Murle in Jonglei to the north. Much of the southern border of Kapoeta East County (including the Ilemi Triangle, discussed below) is disputed with Kenya, with these disputes overlapping and feeding tensions and raiding between the Toposa and Turkana pastoralists from northern Kenya (UNDP, 2020). However, co-operation between communities – particularly during times of scarcity – is also evident in the disputed Ilemi Triangle, as is cross-border peacemaking (Snel & de Vries, 2022, pp. 23-25).

In addition to the Toposa, the Nyangatom** community is based in the Ilemi Triangle and parts of Nyangatom woreda in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region. They have historically close and cooperative relations with the Toposa and reportedly positive relations with the Murle. However, relations between the Nyangatom and the Turkana have steadily worsened over a number of decades – in part due to tensions over the status of the Ilemi Triangle, alongside unresolved localised conflicts. Relations with the Nyangatom and their neighbors on the Ethiopian side of the border are uneven, with some reportedly marked by recurrent conflicts, in particular between parts of the Nyangatom and Dassanech communities (Ynitso 2012, pp.355-359; Snel & de Vries, 2022). To the north of the county, the Jiye/Jie have had stretches of both peaceful and acrimonious relations with parts of the Toposa (Simonse 2000, p.51; Ynitso 2012, p.357), while relations between parts of the Jiye/Jie and the Murle have been characterised in recent decades by fluctuating levels of conflict (Simonse, 2000, pp.52-53), as discussed further in the profile for Pibor County. Inter-clan conflicts have also been reported among parts of the Jiye/Jie (UNMISS 2019). As noted above, the Kuron Peace Village was established to promote peace among communities from the area, including the Toposa, Murle, and Jiye/Jie (Angu 2,021).

With the outbreak of the national conflict in 2013, many people fled from South Sudan back to the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya, passing through Kapoeta East and using the Narus border crossing. Although the area was largely spared fighting between the belligerents, road banditry has affected the crucial link between Kapoeta and the Narus/Nadapal border crossing.

A significant portion of Kapoeta East County lies within the Ilemi Triangle, an area claimed by both Kenya and South Sudan and used by pastoralists from the Turkana, Nyangatom, and Toposa communities. The size of the disputed area ranges from 4,000 to 5,400 square miles (Collins, 2005), with revisions among British colonial officials from Kenya and Sudan accounting for the varying sizes (Winter, 2019). The dispute dates back to a (partial) attempt by British colonial authorities to delineate the tri-border area between Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya, which was partially completed in 1914 and later subject to informal adjustments recognition that the 1914 line did not fully account for grazing areas used by Turkana pastoralists. Escalating cattle raiding led both colonial-era and post-independence Kenyan security forces to gradually deploy to outposts further north in the Triangle, at times with the tacit agreement of Sudanese authorities, who had refrained from establishing an administrative or security presence in the area (Winter, 2019).

The Toposa and Turkana have a history of intermarriage, which has served as a basis for negotiating grazing agreements and resolving cases of cattle theft (Johnson, 2010, p. 96). However, during the 1980s and 1990s, the spread of firearms and the increasing severity of both internal and cross-border cattle raiding have placed these relations under strain, while contentious deployments of the Kenyan military have been associated with displacement from the Ilemi Triangle (Johnson, 2010, p.99).

While small-scale clashes between Toposa and Turkana pastoralists have occurred, the discovery of oil in nearby Turkana County, Kenya, has heightened the stakes in territorial claims. As of 2021, both the Kenyan and South Sudanese governments offered bidding on separate oil blocks in the disputed area. However, with no proven oil reserves and the infrastructure needed to produce and transport oil from the area absent, oil production is unlikely in the short term (Snel & de Vries, 2022, p. 26). The area has reportedly been a site of historical alluvial gold panning (Johson, 2010, p. 99). In 2016, South Sudan and Kenya established a Joint Border Commission and appointed a Joint Technical Team to resolve the border dispute; however, to date, no resolution has been reached. This process gained new momentum in mid-2019 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Kenyan and South Sudanese governments, though progress in demarcating the border has been limited (Snel & de Vries, 2022).

In addition to the Ilemi Triangle, the area around Nadapal town is disputed by South Sudan and Kenya. The Nadapal area – located southwest of Kapoeta East and outside the Ilemi Triangle – has been a focal point of sporadic conflict and raiding for several decades. Conflict among Turkana and Toposa pastoralist groups escalated in the late 1990s amid the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005), though a reconciliation meeting was held in 2002. The same year, with the approval of the Kenyan government, the SPLM/A established a customs and immigration checkpoint at Nadapal (Eulenberger, 2009, p. 41). Nadapal served as the SPLM/A border checkpoint after 2002, but its status became an international issue between Kenya and the regional government of Southern Sudan following two incidents in 2009 (Eulenberger, 2013; Winter, 2019, pp. 51-53). Since February 2023, Kapoeta East has experienced renewed cross-border conflict involving Toposa and Turkana pastoralists in the Nadapal area (Radio Tamazuj, 2023b), resulting in demonstrations by South Sudanese residents of the area against the presence of Kenyan forces (Eye Radio, 2023). In a May 2023 meeting between Eastern Equatoria State officials and their Kenyan counterparts, both parties agreed to enhance security in the border area and exchange military attaches while awaiting completion of the ongoing border demarcation (Radio Tamazuj, 2023c). In December 2025 and January 2026, the elements of SPLA-IO attacked Nadapal, the border town, and Narus, the county headquarters, resulting in some deaths and displacement.  However, the SSPDF has repulsed them from these two locations.

Administration & Logistics 

Payams: Narus (County Headquarters), Jie, Katodori, Kauto, Lotimor, Mogos, Natinga

Alternative list of payams provided by local actors: Katodori, Kauto, Koron, Lotimor, Mogos, Narus, Moragebe, Lyoro, Lekawtem, and Lopet

UN OCHA 2020 map of Kapoeta EastCounty: https://reliefweb.int/map/south-sudan/south-sudan-kapoeta-east-county-reference-map-march-2020

Roads:

  • A primary road links Kapoeta town to the disputed town of Nadapal along the Kenyan border. The road was deemed passable during both the rainy season of 2024 and the dry season of 2025.
  • A secondary road connects Narus to Boma in Pibor County (Jonglei State) to the north, passing through Kuron Peace Village. In both the rainy and dry seasons of 2024, the road was deemed impassable.
  • Two secondary roads run parallel in the western areas of the county (one of which begins in Kapoeta town), near the border with Kapoeta North County. The two roads meet at Mogos, then separate again and eventually become a tertiary road to Pibor County. At Kassangor (along the border between Kapoeta East and Pibor counties), the road splits once again, running northwest to Pibor town and northeast to Boma. The road between Kapoeta town and Boma town was deemed impassable in the wet season of 2024 and the dry season of 2025. The condition of other parts of the road network is unknown.a

UNHAS-recognised Heli and Fixed-Wing Airplane Airstrips: None

Additional MAF-Recognised Airstrips: Kuron and Lotimor

References

Angu, S. ‘The Role of Kuron Peace Village in Promoting Social Cohesion and Peaceful Co-existence in South Sudan’, Journal of Sociology, Psychology & Religious Studies, 3(1), pp. 138-154. Retrieved 20 February 2024.

Collins, R.O. (2005). ‘The Ilemi Triangle’, Annales d’Ethiopie (20), 5-12. Retrieved 22 September 2023.

Eye Radio. (2023). EES parliament warns against ‘Kenyan encroachment’ in Nadapal. Retrieved 20 September 2023.

FAO/WFP. (2018). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

FAO/WFP. (2023). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 31 July 2023.

FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated). Retrieved 10 July 2023.

HRW, Human Rights Watch. (1993). Civilian Devastation: Abuses by All Parties in the War in Southern Sudan. Retrieved 22 September 2023.

Johnson, D.H. (2010). When Boundaries Become Borders: The impact of boundary-making in Southern Sudan’s frontier zones. Rift Valley Institute. Retrieved 28 February 2024.

OCHA. (2021). Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2023.

Radio Tamazuj. (2023a). Drought and hunger drive the Jie out of their homes. Retrieved 20 September 2023.

Radio Tamazuj. (2023b). Kenya deploys army to restive area bordering South Sudan. Retrieved 20 September 2023.

Radio Tamazuj. (2023c). Talks underway over ‘Nadapal border issue’. Retrieved 20 September 2023.

REACH. (2020). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profile – Kapoeta East County. Retrieved 13 July 2023.

REACH. (2022). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profiles. Retrieved 13 July 2023.

Simonse, S. 2000. Conflicts and Peace Initiative in East Bank Equatoria, South Sudan: 1992-1999 (draft). Pax Christi. Retrieved via Sudan Open Archive on 19 January 2024.  

UNICEF (2023). Humanitarian Situation Report No.2, reporting period 1-28 Feb. Retrieved 22 August 2023.

UNDP. (2012). Community Consultation Report: Eastern Equatoria State. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

UNMISS. (2019). Jie clans embrace peace for development at an intra-communal forum in Kassengor. Retrieved 20 February 2024.

Van Leeuwen, M. (2004). Local Initiatives For Peace In Southern Sudan And The Support Given To Those By Outsiders. Retrieved via the Sudan Open Archive 14 March 2024.

VOA. (2021). South Sudan Road Attacks Leave Nearly 30 Dead. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Walraet, A. (2011). Displacement in Post-War Southern Sudan: Survival and Accumulation within Urban Perimeters. MICROCON/IDS. Retrieved 14 March 2024.

Winter, P. (2019). A Border Too Far: The Ilemi Triangle Yesterday and Today. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Ynisto, G. (2012). ‘Inter-Ateker discord: The case of the Nyangatom and the Turkana’ in Gebrehiwot, M. and Buthera, J.B. (eds.) Climate Change and Pastoralism: Traditional Coping Mechanisms and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, pp.351-374. Addis Ababa: Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University, and University for Peace. Retrieved 19 February 2024.

Reports on Kapoeta East

AVSI. (2019). Field assessment in Greater Kapoeta East County. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

AVSI. (2024). Enhancing Food Security and Education through School Gardening: A Report on AVSI Foundation’s Initiatives in Kapoeta East and South Counties, South Sudan. Retrieved 28 February 2024.

Eulenberger, I. (2009). Report on the Peace and Reconciliation Emergency Dialogue between Toposa and Turkana Elites of Sudan and Kenya at St. Teresa Community Centre, Lodwar, Kenya, 31 October to 1 November 2009. Nairobi: Africa Peace Forum & PACT Kenya. Retrieved 20 February 2024.

Eulenberger, I. (2013). ‘Pastoralists, Conflicts, and Politics: Aspects of South Sudan’s Kenyan Frontier’, in Vaughan, C., Schomerus, M. and de Vries, L. (eds.) The Borderlands of South Sudan: Authority and Identity in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, pp 67–88. Ney York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Eulenberger, I. (2015). ‘Gifts, Guns and Govvermen: South Sudan and its Southeast’, in Calkins, S., Ille, E. and Rotennburg, R. (eds.) Emerging Orders in the Sudans, pp.153-196. Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa Research & Publishing.

Lotyam, M. (2019). The Ilemi Triangle: Shadows of the Four Lines on the Grassland. ELFSS blog. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Mc Evoy, C. and Murray, M. (2008). Gauging Fear and Insecurity: Perspectives on Armed Violence in Eastern Equatoria and Turkana North. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Saferworld (2020). ‘Like the military of the village’: Security, justice and community defence groups in south-east South Sudan. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Snel, E. and de Vries, L. (2022). The Ilemi Triangle: Understanding a pastoralist border area. Pax Christi International. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Winter, P. (2019). A Border Too Far: The Ilemi Triangle Yesterday and Today. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Wunder, L. & Mkutu, K. (2018). ‘Policing Where the State is Distant: Community Policing in Kuron, South Sudan’ in Security Governance in East Africa: Pictures of Policing from the Ground, Lexington Books: London.

* 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.

** Note: The ‘Nyangatom’ of Kapoeta East are also known as the ‘Donyiro’ in Kenya and (pejoratively) as the ‘Bume’ in Ethiopia (Winter 2019, p.17). As these names are not commonly used by the group itself or elsewhere in South Sudan, this profile uses the term ‘Nyangatom’ alone.