South Sudan News Agency

By Garang Achiek Ajak

New York, February 23, 2013 (SSNA) -- I recently traveled to South Sudan and was appalled by the lack of unity among people of South Sudan. People of different ethnic tribes viewed each other as rivals, rather than countrymen, and blamed one another for the hardships they were experiencing. I was saddened that a national identity had not formed for the country. If anybody ask a resident what their national identity is, he would probably respond he didn’t know. At this, South Sudanese do not know who they are. To me, this is troubling. For country like South Sudan that is just in its infancy as a sovereign state, a national identity is of utmost importance. An identity of community is needed for them to realize its objectives as a prosperous, peaceful and democratic country. The reality I witnessed, however, begged the question; who are the people of South Sudan?

It is my opinion that scholarly research and discussion should commence immediately across the country as they try to find an answer. 

At this time in history there are no Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk or Bari people; there are only the individuals who live together in South Sudan. The lack of a national identity should be the calling card for unity and this should start with the elites in the government. A new paradigm for a national identity should be at the forefront of building South Sudanesism. Regardless of different tribe affiliation, upbringing, culture, and beliefs, all people of the nation are first and foremost a South Sudanese.

South Sudanesism must incorporate “interculturalism,” especially given the diverse nature of the populace. Interculturalism is defined as the way to recognize commonalities, reduce tensions and promote the formation of social partnerships among different cultural groups. South Sudan needs a public culture that would employ and encourage cultural diversity because that is what makes up the fabric of South Sudan. The diversity of South Sudan, in this sense, must be the strength and unity to tackle today’s pressing issues. This must be done together.

Interculturalism is critically important in forging the South Sudan Identity. It is inclusive and pluralistic in nature. We, individuals with ancestry in South Sudan, have endured too much struggle, pain, and division within the fight for liberation to turn on one another now. We should not let years of fighting for democracy go in vain. We have a country now and must carve out our identity, one that is build on liberty, cultural diversity, and democratic ideals.

State building is not an easy task. It requires the difficulties of redefinition and fostering an inclusive national consciousness. Although a challenging task, it is times like these where visionary and magnanimous leaders must step forward and take the center stage. It is their duty to unite the people on a common purpose.

South Sudanese leaders must make national reconciliation a national priority. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “the moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come… we must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation-building, for the birth of a new world.” These were words spoken as South Africa looked within to overcome apartheid and Mandela’s words relate to South Sudan today. Our leaders should replicate his wisdom and use it as a call for national unity among the people of South Sudan.

This is not a time to hold grudges against each other in our nation. During the liberation struggle, there were competing interests on how to better achieve Southern Sudan objectives, but that is in the past now. South Sudanese must begin on a new foot. All ethnic tribes must come together as one and forgive each other on past grievances for the sake of unity.

National unity must triumph over everything else.  South Sudan does not belong to any particular tribe; it belongs to all of us. We must stand together, work hard together, build our schools together, build our hospitals together, build our infrastructure together, and become self sufficient in food production together. There is nothing we cannot achieve as a nation if we are united. Nepotism and corruption must be rooted out as evils from the past. They are the root of state failure of every nation in transition. 

In a country like South Sudan that is very diverse, ethnic sectarianism must not have a place. We are one people who have endured too much struggle in pursuit of a just and democratic country. Everybody is equal in terms of rights, religious beliefs, different cultural upbringing, and the pursuit of happiness. These were the principles of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement during the great civil war that resulted in the very formation of our new great nation of South Sudan. These principles must be central to the rebuilding of South Sudan.

The Author is a South Sudanese residing in New York, United States. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By Eric Reeves

February 23, 2013 (SSNA) -- The plea could hardly be simpler, or more urgent: "Just stop the planes." This cry for help came from "Khadija," a woman interviewed by Amnesty International (see below) while standing in front of the bombed remains of her home in a small village in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan.  

"Just stop the planes."

And yet more than twenty months after Khartoum launched its military assault on the Nuba people of South Kordofan, the bombing continues relentlessly.  The same is true in neighboring Blue Nile State.  And yet neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch nor the International Crisis Group nor any other major organization analyzing and reporting on the situation in South Kordofan has proposed actions or policies that will oblige the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum to "stop the planes."  In its latest analysis (February 14, 2013), besides offering the obvious urgings, ICG pleads for a comprehensive response to greater Sudan's interlocking crises.  But its specific recommendation to non-Sudanese parties amounts to a referral to incompetence and ensures inaction—

"To Members of the UN Security Council, AU Peace and Security Council, Council of the League of Arab States, and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the Government of Ethiopia: Demand and work for a single, comprehensive solution to Sudan’s multiple conflicts…."

For its part, the Obama administration has for more than four years responded weakly and irresolutely to the crises most pressing in greater Sudan, including those in the Nuba and Blue Nile.  The administration has done little more than tepidly condemn, with a weary repetitiveness of language, the bombing of civilians by Khartoum; certainly these "condemnations" have been without discernible effect.  Khartoum's aerial attacks have been directed, relentlessly, against civilians in Darfur since 2003, in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan since June 2011, and in Blue Nile since September 2011. These areas are all in (northern) Sudan, but there have also been many attacks directed against civilians in South Sudan—bombings confirmed by UN investigators as well as journalists present during the attacks.  On one occasion (November 2011) Khartoum's military attacked the Yida refugee camp, housing tens of thousands of civilians who had fled the Nuba for the relative safety of the South.  One bomb landed just outside a school where hundreds of children had been in attendance (it malfunctioned); journalists for the BBC and Reuters were present at the time.  The most recent bombings were in the Kiir Adem area of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal in November and December 2012, killing more than a dozen Southern civilians (including women and children) and wounding many more.  Khartoum baldly denies all such attacks, despite confirmation my UN investigative teams and journalists who are eyewitnesses to these extraordinary violations of national sovereignty and international law.

In the Nuba and Blue Nile, attacks have as their primary purpose not direct violent killings—though these occur frequently—but a relentless destruction of agricultural production in the regions.  I spoke recently with Tom Catena, a courageous American physician who has functioned as the only surgeon in the Nuba Mountains since the beginning of conflict.  The shrapnel wounds he has treated and photographed are stomach-turning, but they are also significant because of what they represent to the people of the Nuba (the Nuba are an African tribal grouping, who follow—with remarkable mutual accommodation—both Islam and Christianity).  The ghastly shrapnel wounds and killings have instilled such fear that people are afraid to farm their lands, staying close to the shelter of caves, ravines, and rocky outcrops.

The sorghum harvest this year—the staple crop of the region—was very poor, according to Dr. Catena.  People in large numbers are on the verge of joining more than 200,000 refugees who have already fled to South Sudan and Ethiopia.  Many spot nutritional surveys reveal Severe Acute Malnutrition above the emergency threshold; the most recent of these found a 30 percent Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate among children under five; this is double the international threshold for a humanitarian emergency (see below).  Moreover, a frightening percentage of children under five are experiencing Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), a condition typically fatal without therapeutic intervention.

Let us be perfectly clear: all this is intentional.

It is a campaign of annihilation in response to military rebellion by the indigenous Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N).  The SPLA-N has repeatedly mauled Khartoum's regular and militia forces, especially in the Nuba, and the response has been a systematic aerial campaign to destroy agricultural production.  It is on the verge of success, as people are simply too fearful to plant, tend, or harvest most of their larger fields.  At the same time, Khartoum maintains a complete humanitarian embargo on regions under rebel control (the great majority of territory in the Nuba).

The weapon of choice is the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) Antonov "bomber."  Of course the Antonov is not a military bomber, but rather a retrofitted Russian cargo plan from which crude but deadly barrel bombs are simply rolled out the cargo bay, spreading a hail of shrapnel in all directions on impact.  The have no militarily purposeful precision, but they are extraordinarily efficient in creating civilian terror.  Early on in the conflict, Khartoum also deployed Sukhoi-25 military jet aircraft, also based at el-Obeid, but Dr. Catena told me that the SAF has settled into a pattern of sufficient regularity with Antonovs to keep fear so high that people are unable to farm.

Khartoum is presently concluding a deal with Ukraine to purchase five more Antonovs.

The conspicuous precedent here is the genocidal campaign against the Nuba in the 1990s, which very nearly succeeded in destroying them.  Current efforts are neither surprising not out of character for this regime.  And yet former U.S. special envoy for Sudan Princeton Lyman, in a moment of outrageously ignorant presumption, declared in late June 2011 that,

"Nuba Mountain people are fighting back and I don't think the North is capable of dislodging large numbers of people on an ethnic basis….  Second, I'm not sure that's the objective of the government." 

Lyman has been proved profoundly wrong on both counts of his assessment, and yet there has been no accountability for his egregious misjudgment, even as it sent to Khartoum a signal that has at the very least has prolonged and extended the bombing campaign.  That the regime's goal is to "dislodge large numbers of people on an ethnic basis" certainly can no longer be doubted.

As reported by Amnesty International, "Khadija" did not say "send troops to the Nuba," or even "send food," desperately hungry though her people are.  She demanded only that the world "stop the planes"—and allow her and others to farm their lands.  The Nuba are a fiercely independent people, but they have no way to "stop the planes" and resume agriculturally productive lives.  Despite these cruel realities, all that has come from the Obama administration are perfunctory condemnations of Khartoum's aerial barbarism; here it has much company, including the UN, the EU, the African Union, and other regional and international actors of consequence.  Indeed, so perfunctory have the "condemnations" been that they serve only to convince the regime it will pay no real price for these continued aerial assaults on civilians, all of which are war crimes—and which in aggregate constitute crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute that is the treaty basis for the International Criminal Court.

Many others—individuals and organizations—have called for an end to the bombings, but without offering politically or militarily realistic means for changing Khartoum's behavior.  And until Khartoum is convinced it will pay an unacceptably high price for the bombings, they will continue.  It's long past time to make unambiguously clear that this is intolerable, and that the planes will be stopped.

What must be done

After seeking what international support might be available (likely little), the Obama administration should issue an ultimatum: "Every time there is a confirmed aerial military attack on civilians in the Nuba Mountains or Blue Nile, we will destroy one of your military aircraft at the el-Obeid air base, using a cruise missile or other precision-guided ordnance.  This will continue seriatim until the bombing stops."  Khartoum will certainly test whether there is any resolve underlying the ultimatum—but will likely do so only once or twice.  Their military aircraft are simply too valuable to them, and they have lost many over the past several years.  If the attacks are carried out in the very early morning, chances for collateral damage are minimal.  Firing from the Red Sea off Sudan's northeast coast would entail no violation of any other international border.

A bold gambit?  No doubt, but with a clear chance for success.  Are there risks from retaliation by Khartoum?  Certainly—and most likely such retaliation will be directed against those most vulnerable: international humanitarian efforts in various regions of Sudan.  Contingency planning for any such retaliation must be serious and detailed.  We should bear in mind, however, just how abusive of international humanitarian operations this regime has already been during its 24 years of tyranny.  First in South Sudan during the UN-coordinated Operation Lifeline Sudan, where aid was constantly manipulated and the bombing of hospitals was routine (the Nuba was subject to a total humanitarian embargo, as both it and Blue Nile are today).  Subsequently efforts in Darfur were targeted, where more than twenty major humanitarian organizations have been expelled or forced out of the region in the past four years, and those that remain have an increasingly tenuous presence outside the major urban areas.  Further, just last year the regime expelled from eastern Sudan—one of the poorest and most marginalized of Sudan's peripheral regions—four international humanitarian organizations, including Save the Children/Sweden and Ireland's Goal.  The reasons given were wholly factitious.

Things could certainly be made worse, especially in Darfur; here the responsibility for confronting this challenge should fall to the large, extravagantly funded, and hopelessly ineffective UN/African Union Mission in Darfur.  But it has proved so inept and ineffective that serious concerns must be registered about its adequacy to protect humanitarians (exceedingly few of whom are expatriate) and the UN's World Food Program food pipeline.  A UN response should be forced by the U.S. and EU at the Security Council if Khartoum attacks humanitarian operations, either directly or through its militia proxies.

There are considerable risks here.  But the question is whether we are prepared to allow the people of the Nuba and Blue Nile to be held hostage to what this viciously resourceful regime might do, given the indisputable realities now prevailing in these regions.  Here one would hope that the U.S. would find considerable international support in confronting men who are in fact serial génocidaires, and who feel comfortable using pressure on or violence against humanitarian relief efforts as a means of waging war.

For those uneasy about the unilateral use of U.S. military power, a simple question must be answered: "with no other means of stopping the bombing of civilians and civilian agricultural production, how do you propose halting the attacks?"  Cries of outrage are easy; committing to serious action is the hard part, and so far the Obama administration and others have shown no stomach for such seriousness.  To be sure, President Obama last April convened an "Atrocities Prevention Board" with stirring words from his August 2011 Presidential Study Directive:

"Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States. Our security is affected when masses of civilians are slaughtered, refugees flow across borders, and murderers wreak havoc on regional stability and livelihoods.  America's reputation suffers, and our ability to bring about change is constrained, when we are perceived as idle in the face of mass atrocities and genocide. Unfortunately, history has taught us that our pursuit of a world where states do not systematically slaughter civilians will not come to fruition without concerted and coordinated effort."  (Presidential Study Directive 10, August 4, 2011)

But the "Board" so sanctimoniously announced has been inaccessible, inert, and indeed invisible. To date it has been an instrument of "atrocity prevention" in name only.  But halting further atrocities in the Nuba and Blue Nile—and Darfur—can't be stopped by bureaucracy or committee; it can be accomplished only by actions that Khartoum takes seriously.  No such actions have been proposed by the U.S. or any other international actor of consequence.

Why we must act

The UN estimated last October that almost 1 million people had been displaced or deeply imperiled by Khartoum's aerial campaign—almost 1 million people, and the number has surely grown significantly in the past four months.  Moreover, a great many children, the elderly, the infirm, and others are simply too weak to make the arduous trek southward to join more than 200,000 others who have already fled to refugee camps in Unity State and Upper Nile State in South Sudan (tens of thousands of others have fled from Blue Nile into Ethiopia).  Those who must remain will simply be waiting to starve if current circumstances continue to prevail.

Dr. Catena witnessed a very poor sorghum harvest this November/December, and a great many people are fully prepared to move when their meager food supplies are exhausted.  For over a year, accounts of people reduced to eating leaves, bark, and insects have become a commonplace in reports from both Blue Nile and the Nuba:

• Declaring the situation "incredibly alarming," John Ging, director of operations for UN OCHA, declared last month of Blue Nile and South Kordofan: "nearly one million people are in dire need, but out of reach of aid workers, forcing some to rely on roots and leaves for food." (January 8, 2013)

• Eight months ago reporter Tristan McConnell declared following a trip into the Nuba: "Without any crops, they've started eating leaves. To see a woman sitting down and cooking supper for her eight children and all she's got in the pot is a load of boiled leaves is just horrendous. That sort of thing just shouldn't happen." (PBS NewsHour, May 9, 2012)

• Almost a year ago the warnings were fully explicit: "Local officials say the conflict [in the Nuba] has severely affected agricultural production, and estimate that the next harvest will be only 20 percent of normal, leaving most of the population dependent on outside aid. They warn that unless supplies are brought in within the next few weeks, the onset of the rains will make it virtually impossible to distribute the relief, just when the annual pre-harvest hungry season reaches its peak" (IRIN, March 22, 2012).  Only minimal food aid was provided, and the 2012 sorghum harvest was even poorer than expected.

• Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported from the Nuba last June: "Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people here have no food and are reduced to eating leaves and insects, as Sudan's government starves and bombs its own people in the Nuba Mountains. Children are beginning to die."

• Mukesh Kapila, former UN humanitarian coordinator for all of Sudan and now working with Aegis Trust (UK), reported on the results of his second courageous assessment mission into the Nuba and Blue Nile regions: "Malnutrition rates in Sudan's war-torn border states have doubled to 30 percent as starving people, denied humanitarian aid, eat just one meal every three days, activists said on Friday as they urged the African Union (AU) to launch an inquiry into what they called 'crimes against humanity.'

"'This is one of the world’s biggest humanitarian and human rights disasters,' said Mukesh Kapila of the Aegis Trust lobby group, which campaigns against genocide and crimes against humanity, after returning from a 10-day trip to the region. The 30 percent malnutrition rate refers to the percentage of children under five who are deemed to be critically malnourished. This is double the World Health Organisation's 15 percent emergency threshold for acute malnutrition, which should trigger a humanitarian response." (Reuters AlertNet [Nairobi], January 18, 2013)

Given this exceedingly grim picture of malnutrition, plans for opening an emergency humanitarian corridor into both the Nuba and Blue Nile should begin immediately; indeed, such planning is long overdue.  But these will require both security on the ground and protection from aerial assault.  And for this, the world must first "stop the planes."

*************

"STOP THE PLANES"

January 2013

By Alex Neve

Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada

"Just stop the planes." That was the plea made by the feisty, determined Khadija when I interviewed her in front of the remains of her home in a small village in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state last week.  If only it could be that simple. It certainly ought to be.

A month earlier a lumbering Sudanese Antonov aircraft had passed overhead and unleashed a deadly cargo of five bombs in rapid succession. Khadija was at the nearby market at the time and therefore escaped injury. But when she hurried back to her home, pure horror awaited her. One elderly woman, unable to run, had been literally blown apart and Khadija later undertook the grim task of collecting her neighbour's body parts.

A woman in her twenties, mother to five children and pregnant with her sixth, was cut in half by the vicious and totally unpredictable shrapnel that is the greatest peril of these cruel Antonov bombs. Khadija also found that her tukul had been burned by the bomb and that all of her clothing and worldly possessions had been destroyed. Another woman, just passing by at the time, lay with a shrapnel injury in her foot.

Khadija's story is one among very many that I heard. This campaign of death, fear and destruction against the civilian population of Southern Kordofan has been ongoing for close to 20 months now. Indiscriminate bombs are wantonly rolled out of the back of the Antonovs, flying high above, with no ability to guide them to proper military targets. And, inevitably, many of the bombs fall where civilians live, sleep, grow food, go to market, fetch water, pray or attend school.

I travelled through numerous villages in the parts of Southern Kordofan now under the control of the armed opposition, the Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) and everywhere the accounts and visible evidence of the aerial bombardments were the same.

Sometimes, fortunately, no one had been hurt. Other times nearly entire families had been killed. There was no community I visited that has been spared. And in none of the sites I inspected was there indication of a valid military target anywhere remotely close by [all emphases added—ER]. A father told me of his 10 and 5-year-old sons who ran to hide under the branches of a fruit tree when they heard the unmistakeable drone of an approaching Antonov in mid-November. This time the bomb fell almost directly beside the tree, killing them both. I saw the damage done, massive branches sheared off the tree and the bomb crater only 2 or 3 metres away.

Another man took me to his home at the top of a hill. On 26 December 2012 he was a short distance away from his own house visiting his brother when the Antonov arrived. His home was in sight, but he could not reach it in time. On its first fly-pass the plane dropped three bombs and then returned to drop another three. The first of that second batch of bombs fell in his compound as he watched helplessly from an adjoining hill top. When the plane had left and he was able to rush to his home he found his mother, wife and 5-month-old daughter all dead.

They had made it to the hoped-for safety of their foxhole, but the bomb itself landed less than a metre from where they were hiding. They did not stand a chance.

Neither did the five people – a woman, her daughter, two nieces and a neighbouring boy – who hoped that a foxhole would keep them safe when an Antonov dropped two bombs on 18 December. It was chilling to stand where they would have been hiding and see how close the bomb had fallen: only four or five paces away.

This relentless campaign of death raining down from the skies has killed or injured untold numbers of people over the past 20 months. Its impact, however, is more insidious than the harrowing toll of deaths and injuries alone. Because by now the mere mention of an Antonov, let alone the sound of its approach, is a source of panic and terror. People run for the nearest foxhole (nearly everyone has dug one in their compound) or they run for the safety of rocks and caves in the region’s Nuba Mountains. And they hide and they wait.

And everything about their lives is turned upside down. While fleeing and hiding they cannot tend crops. They cannot look out for livestock. And day by day, therefore, food supplies have dwindled to nothing. Add to that the Sudanese government’s cruel refusal to allow independent humanitarian access to this area so that food and other relief can be distributed and the gravity of this crisis has become beyond measure.

There is absolutely no doubt that this indefensible bombing campaign violates international humanitarian law—the repeated indiscriminate air attacks, as well as possibly direct attacks on civilians, by the Sudanese armed forces, constitute war crimes. So why does it attract so little international attention? Security Council resolutions urge and encourage but do not condemn and deplore what is happening. The Sudanese government plays games with UN, African Union and other officials, promising that aid access will open up, but consistently failing to follow through.

I was asked "why" at every turn. "Why don't we matter? Why doesn't anyone care about us?"

Or, as Khadija put it, why doesn't someone just stop the planes. That is precisely what has to happen.

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, is author most recently of Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012; www.CompromisingWithEvil.org

By Jacob K. Lupai

February 22, 2013 (SSNA) -- The Vision, Programme and the Constitution of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) published in 1998 highlights agricultural production as being aimed at primarily for self-sufficiency in food as well as cash crops for export to earn foreign exchange for farm families and the SPLM. In addition the SPLM would strive to promote the mechanisation of agriculture, beginning with ox-ploughing and then tractors as this becomes feasible. However, since the publication of the Vision, Programme and the Constitution of the SPLM in 1998 South Sudan in 2013 is nowhere closer to being self-reliant leave alone being self-sufficient in food production.

In contrast, South Sudan is a country with vast and varied natural resources that could have made it one of the richest countries on planet earth with a very high per capita income. Nonetheless, South Sudan is a very poor country with about 51 per cent of its population living below the poverty line. Out of the population of 8.26 million about 4.7 million are potentially food insecure. This means that about 57 per cent, which is more than half, of the population of South Sudan is potentially food insecure and in addition about one million are likely to be severely food insecure. These statistics do not make a comfortable reading for a country literally sitting on enormous wealth. What might have been the challenges? People have to search for answers in order to improve food security in South Sudan.

Agricultural policy

The SPLM vision is self-sufficiency in food production in achieving food security. Out of the vision detail agricultural policies can be developed to be applied on the ground for tangible outcomes. This is in order to realize the vision. In Sub-Saharan Africa the agricultural sector on which the majority of people depend represents the most important source of wealth which is essential to economic growth and food security. The development of detail agricultural policies is therefore important to revitalize the agricultural sector for the achievement of food security.

For sustainable agricultural production the detail policies include, in brief, provision of improved technologies to farmers, farmer empowerment, provision of advice and dissemination of information to farmers on research based farming practices to increase yields for self-reliance in achieving food security. The list of the agricultural policies is long. However, with commitment to the implementation of the policies, some concrete steps should have been taken in improving food security in South Sudan.

Implementation of agricultural policies

The importance of the agricultural sector to food security cannot be overemphasized. In the 80s the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) called for African governments to devote up to 25 per cent of government budgets to the agricultural sector. This was because of the relative importance of agriculture to the economy of a country in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa on average the percentage of labour force in agriculture is 70 per cent, the highest in the world and agriculture as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) is higher than in East Asia and the Pacific and double that of Latin America and the Caribbean. This illustrates the central role agriculture plays in economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and in South Sudan in particular.

It can be seen how appropriate it is to implement the agricultural policies developed to revitalize agriculture for economic growth and for improvement of food security for the people of South Sudan. However, the implementation of agricultural policies depends on adequate budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector but not on lip service as when agriculture is sung as the backbone of the economy yet the nation depends almost entirely on food imports from the neighbouring countries. The near total dependence on foreign food imports suggests that local producers are not being supported well enough to increase production to meet the demand.

Reliance on foreign food imports suggests that agricultural policies are not being translated into concrete activities to realize high production to improve food security. The government should be actively involved in programmes such as agricultural research for improved technologies to increase production, seed certification and distribution, provision of extension services, support to development of infrastructures and marketing system, and to provide subsidies for inputs and outputs.

The OAU had set a target that 25 per cent of government budgets should be devoted to agriculture but the budget of South Sudan is hardly more than 5 per cent devoted to agriculture as reflected in the draft budget 2011. This is one explanation how agriculture in South Sudan is under-resourced hence the near total dependence on food foreign imports. With poor budgetary allocation the agricultural sector will face numerous challenges. Due to poor budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector there is an impact on provision of improved technologies and capacity building of farmers. In this scenario farmers are likely to rely on antiquated farming methods that are not helpful in increasing production to improve food security in South Sudan.

Improving food security

Being over ambitious about agricultural development will not be helpful but taking one step at the time will. The vision in the government agricultural policy framework is food security for all with the mission being the transformation of agriculture from a subsistence system into a modern sustainable agriculture. South Sudan’s main goals in the transformation of agriculture included the achievement of food self-sufficiency, reduction of poverty by 30 per cent and the increase of gross domestic product (GDP) by 25 per cent and all this should have been achieved by 2011. However, a critical analysis may show that the goals set to be achieved in the agricultural sector by 2011 were over ambitiously set to say the least.

The goals set to be achieved by 2011 were set in 2005 but we are now in 2013 yet there is nowhere South Sudan is food self-sufficient and neither is poverty reduced by 30 per cent nor GDP increased by 25 per cent. It can only be concluded that the plan was nothing but over ambitious. For now it seems policy makers and planners are not asking themselves the right questions when South Sudan has 80 per cent arable land yet it is dependent on foreign food imports. Talking confidently of food self-sufficiency is only an expression of good intention but realistically it is unlikely to be achieved. People should instead be talking about food self-reliance.

In improving food security the focus should be on the farmer. This is because farmers’ knowledge, inventiveness and experimentation have been undervalued. Policy makers and planners who may assume they are knowledgeable seem to go it alone without farmers’ participation with the resultant over-ambitious goals being set that are not realistic. Often the goals are hardly achieved as it is the case in South Sudan. Focusing on farmers and their needs in the way of partnership in agricultural development is one step in improving food security.

Farmers are knowledgeable and most of the knowledge they apply comes from their own long experience in agriculture. Through their informal research and development activities farmers generate new knowledge and create new technologies. Working together with farmers as partners in agricultural development is therefore of great importance in improving food security. Farmers’ indigenous knowledge is an important complement to formal agricultural knowledge. Farmers may not have the formal agricultural knowledge to know what is possible but policy makers and planners may not know either the local conditions in which the farmers operate. One appropriate way of improving food security is therefore to focus on farmers’ expressed needs in farming for increase in production.    

Conclusion

In South Sudan there is a vast area of arable land with a very small percentage of land cultivated where agriculture is predominantly subsistence. Farmers still depend on traditional farming practices with no exposure to modern production technologies. There is no improvement in yields due to lack of access to improved technologies and services. The problem is exacerbated by lack of improved roads for transportation of commodities from surplus regions to deficit areas.

In conclusion, the scene of improving food security is set. The focus first should be on building the capacity of farmers through training and provision of extension services, and improving roads and market infrastructures. This can be achieved through farmer participatory research and farmer-led extension. Short of this all will be rhetoric. The farmer is central in any endeavour to improve food security otherwise unrealistic goals will be set with South Sudan being unnecessarily exposed to decades of food insecurity.

The author can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it