Southern Sudan must focus on agriculture
Southern Sudan, which votes on independence in January, must develop its agricultural and hydroelectric power industries to overcome a “50-year lag in development” as it emerges from civil war, said a top World Bank official.
While the autonomous Southern Sudan government now depends on oil earnings for 98 percent of its budget, a strengthening East African Community offers Southern Sudan a huge market for future agricultural and electricity exports, Obiageli Ezekwesili, the bank’s vice president for Africa, said in a Sept. 4 interview.
“What you need is a growth strategy that is broad,” she said in Juba, Southern Sudan’s capital. “For South Sudan, or Sudan in general, hydro-potential and what it can contribute to the power pool is enormous” while an emphasis on agriculture would be a “most fundamental alternative” to oil.
Southern Sudan currently imports most of its food and lacks electricity outside a few main cities. The second of two long civil wars between north and south Sudan ended in a 2005 peace agreement granting Southern Sudan self-rule leading up to a January 2011 referendum on whether to secede from the rest of Sudan and form a new country.
The five-nation community, which declared a common economic bloc in July, “is really going full throttle,” Ezekwesili said. “When you think in terms of investing in South Sudan, you are going to be thinking in terms of your access to this huge regional market.” The community includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
Sudan is sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest producer of oil and most of its daily production of 490,000 barrels comes from Southern Sudan. The crude is exported through a pipeline that runs north through Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Community Membership
If it votes for independence, Southern Sudan will try to join the EAC, said Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the Southern Sudan government spokesman, in a July interview.
Juba is about 320 miles (515 kilometers) from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, compared with 744 miles from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. A paved road connecting Juba to the Ugandan border post of Nimule is expected to be complete by the end of next year, according to the US Agency for International Development, which is funding the $201 million project.
The World Bank would work to quickly grant Southern Sudan membership following the referendum should it choose independence. That would allow it access it currently does not qualify for as part of Sudan due to its unpaid arrears, Ezekwesili said.
While Southern Sudan faces a major deficit in infrastructure and skilled labor that will require significant investments to overcome, its oil wealth may be an advantage, she said.
“Today, this an economy that already generates some $2 billion from oil revenues,” Ezekwesili said. “That is a huge place to start compared to many of the other post-conflict countries that we have worked in.”
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