South Sudan: Selling Their Future

Farming in South Sudan's "Greenbelt" (Bild: Gurtong.net)

Everyone is talking about the oil in Southern Sudan. No wonder: About three-quarters of the known oil reserves in Sudan are under the new Republic of South Sudan. But the young State of the White Nile has other goods that soon will have much more much importance than what will be obtained with oil: fertile land - or more precisely: water.


Land with enough water has a greater influence in the global race for resources, it is the new "object of desire". Not only conutries such as Saudi Arabia, where the soil is too dry to feed its own people, are participating in the "big hunt for land", but also international food companies., bio fuel producers and not least financial speculators, hedge (and pension) funds to give their customers long-term promised gains.

For some time, South Sudan is one of the hunting areas for hungry foreign investors. For it not only has the raw land and water, but is also very sparsely populated. Only 4 percent of its fertile country is now used for agriculture. It is especially lacking strong state structures that govern the purchase of land that it can effectively control.
South Sudan is the new "Frontier" ("unclaimed land" - outside of state control). In just four years, between 2007 and late 2010, foreign investors acquired 2.64 million hectares (26,400 km2) land in South Sudan.

Map: "The New Frontier" npaid.org

This is the main finding a the study called „The New Frontier“ of the relief organsiation Norwegian Peoples Aid. The data have be collected in extensive field research by the South Sudan Law Society based in Juba.

The cozy study shows that in the so-called "Greenbelt", the most fertile region in southern South Sudan, actually a quarter of the country is in the hands of foreign investors.

Game Hunting in Boma National Park

It is usually large investors who purchase huge areas. The company Al Ain Wildlife from the Arab Emirates, signed a lease agreement for the next 50 years with the local authorities in the southeast of the country leaving almost the entire, huge Boma National Park for its exclusive use. Luxury hotels and safari camps are planned. But one can assume that the sheikhs from the Gulf not only bought an exclusive hunting ground for a modest price but bought the area of 16,800 square kilometers, above all for its strategic water reserve.

The report by Norwegian Peoples Aid has now made headlines internationally and of course, the South Sudanese government understands that they must ensure that the municipalities, the major landowners in South Sudan, will not sell their country on short-term profits but will insure their future too.

Salva Kiir, President South Sudan

It is one of the stated goals of the government of President Salva Kiir to get away from the dangerous dependence on oil business, which are now around 98% of the state budget dispute. For it is not only depending on the fluctuating prices of the oil market, but also the goodwill of the government of North Sudan that the black gold can be exported via the other’s territory.
The government in Juba also knows that the oil reserves beneath the still-disputed oil region of Abyei on the border between northern and southern Sudan is on the decline. While there is hope for the development of new fields in the south, but there is still nothing concrete.
Diversification is the solution. In addition to the promotion of other commodities (including gold), the government relies on agriculture. For its first objective, the Government formulated an increase in food production by 2013 from 700,000 tons today to 1 million tons. That would make them self-sufficient for once. In the medium term but we can only dream that South Sudan can become the bread basket of Africa to be.
But this is far from reality in South Sudan. Currently, the government has warned of a greater famine coming.
Joseph Lual Acuil, GoSS Minister of "Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management" last week told the media in Juba that the coming harvest will be poor "because of unreliable rains" in connection with the expensive food prices on the world market, "It has led to serious food shortages. He hoped that 1.3 million people, every seventh South Sudanese, would be dependent in the near future of food aid deliveries from abroad.