Aerial shot of Juba, the capital of South Sudan (Image: Getty)
South Sudan is the world’s newest country and one of the the poorest states on earth. Political instability has sparked civil war, displacement of people, and economic turmoil.
All this creates the conditions for incredibly low GDP per capita. According to the IMF, South Sudan’s GDP per head is a meagre £270, compared with £41,000 in the UK.
And yet, South Sudan is blessed with oil reserves the UK could hardly dream of. The UK’s combined oil and gas reserves are a probable three billion barrels, whereas South Sudan has five billion barrels in oil alone.
Economic strife has blighted South Sudan since its acceptance by the United Nations in 2011. Inflation in 2016 topped 340 percent, and since 2015 the country has undergone several periods of recession, which is unsurprising given the country was gripped by civil war from 2013 to 2018.
A Sudanese family at transit centre in Renk (Image: Getty)
In 2013, the South Sudanese Civil War kicked off between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO).
Despite ceasefire agreements, by 2018 around 400,000 people had been killed. Estimates put the number of child deaths at more than 10 percent of this total.
More than four million people were displaced, 1.8 million internally. Another 2.5 million fled to neighbouring states, including Sudan and Uganda. Sudan is embroiled in its own civil war which rages on to this day.
Don’t miss… [MONEY] [WORLD]
A woman braids another’s hair in an internal displacement camp following flooding in 2023 (Image: Getty)
Despite the war officially ending in 2018, Human Rights Watch reported in 2022 that fighting continued between belligerent.
According to the UN, more than 7 million citizens will be “acutely food insecure” next year.
“Year after year, we see hunger reaching some of the highest levels we’ve seen in South Sudan,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, the South Sudan director for the UN’s World Food Programme.
“When we look at the areas with the highest levels of food insecurity, it’s clear that a cocktail of despair – conflict and the climate crisis – are the main drivers,” she added.