Focusing on the Ethiopia-Sudan borderlands, this article aims at unpacking the dynamics underlying agricultural commodity production in the area. One of the main findings is the reliance on migrant labour and cycle of exploitation, enabled by a number of dynamics: land grabs, landlessness, conflict, climate change, etc. These cycles of exploitation are not only found in migrant or seasonal migrant workers, with families and local communities also subject to it. As this article uncovers the…

South Sudan and Sudan’s borderlands are run by a patchwork of armed authorities. This report reflects on the Sudan-South Sudan borderland economic systems to understand the impact of disrupted oil income on state stability. The research found that economic system and public authorities in the borderlands are relatively stable within their zones of control. However, issues of water, flooding and pollution, alongside the resulting resettlement aimed at accessing market incomes have deeply affected the population,…

The devastating war in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has also had a profound impact on the country’s neighbours, particularly South Sudan. This is especially the case for areas that border Sudan, including Upper Nile, the Ruweng Administrative Area, and Northern Bahr el-Ghazal (NBG). RVI has been working in NBG under the XCEPT programme since 2018, producing a body of work on the borderland economy and systems of…

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…

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