ABSTRACT This paper explores the history and ongoing transformation of the South Sudanese Sudd marshlands as a buffer zone in a variety of subsequent projects of domination and their sub-version. Its argument will be that the contemporary geopolitics of the Sudd cannot be understood properly without unwinding the historical layers of contestation and conflict around these projects of control and their reversal, projects which have sought to shape and have been shaped crucially by the…
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CSRF Research Repository
The CSRF Research Repository aims to support greater contextual knowledge for policy makers, programme managers, and implementers by providing a searchable repository of research, analysis, and resources, and providing periodic updates on new research and analysis.
Abstract Over the past two decades, the rangelands of Eastern Africa have experienced sweeping changes associated with growing human populations, shifting land use, expanding livestock marketing and trade, and greater investment by domestic and global capital. These trends have coincided with several large shocks that were turning points for how rangeland inhabitants make a living. As livelihoods in the region’s rangelands transform in seemingly paradoxical directions, away from customary pastoralist production systems, greater insight is…
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 state of social and economic crisis that has gripped the borderland region of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal. Breaking Out of the Borderlands takes the phenomena described in the authors’ earlier work—the monetization of land, life and work…
This study assesses jobs in businesses and NGOs in the towns of South Sudan. It is based on a 2019 business survey that includes informal and micro enterprises, as well as a dedicated survey of foreign-owned businesses. The business community is typical of a low-income post-conflict country, but with a particularly weak productive sector and an outsize importance of NGOs and foreign-owned businesses. Two in five commercial businesses are foreign-owned; they employ far more South…
This study assesses the state of markets and of jobs in market-linked agriculture in the towns of South Sudan. It is based on a 2019 market trader survey end extensive qualitative work. Agriculture provides most urban livelihoods, and there is high potential for raising production. However, insecurity has disrupted all elements of agricultural markets, from production to the transformation of produce, trade networks, and demand. Market activity is recovering, but food system value chains are…
This study assesses jobs outcomes in the towns of South Sudan, based on a 2017 household survey and a dedicated 2019 youth jobs survey. It discusses how years of conflict have touched nearly all livelihoods, leaving few productive jobs, and causing high poverty. Most urban households diversify their job activities little, and rely on household work in agriculture, commerce or personal services, or they depend on a household member’s work for NGOs or as a…
This study assesses the macro-fiscal framework for jobs in South Sudan, working with the limited macro-fiscal data available on the fiscal years 2019 and 2020. The macroeconomic environment can hardly be more difficult for South Sudanese looking to make a living. For workers, the dramatic contraction of non-oil output since the beginning of the conflict reflected a loss of job activities and a breakdown in market demand. A 60-fold increase in prices since before the…
The population dynamics presented in this paper have serious implications for South Sudan’s human development and political stability. Using census data and UN estimates, this briefing paper highlights South Sudan’s recent demographic patterns and trends, starting in 2008 into 2050. The projections presented are based on an exponential growth regime, and the analysis seeks to provide key insights for the aid community to stimulate their thinking on the nature and level of support likely to…
Displaced Tastes is a research project run by the Rift Valley Institute in partnership with the Catholic University of South Sudan under the X-Border Local Research Network. The project examines the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in the context of the country’s economic transition and place in the regional, cross-border economy of grain. In the urban centres of South Sudan, people increasingly depend on markets to buy grains imported from South Sudan’s neighbours—particularly…
This research project was commissioned in response to a growing concern among civil society, faith-based organisations, affected communities, and refugees about the negative impact of logging on local communities in South Sudan, particularly in the Equatorian Region and Greater Bahr El Ghazal. It was envisaged that through the initial research and deeper understanding of the issues involved, opportunities for engagement would be identified to inform strategic programming in a subsequent phase. This document therefore is…
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