South Sudan

Overview

South Sudan, officially the Republic of South Sudan, is the world's newest widely recognised sovereign state, a landlocked East African country of 644,329 square kilometres with roughly 12.7 million people (2024 estimate) and its capital at Juba. The White Nile bisects the country, spreading into the Sudd, one of the world's largest wetlands. Its people are mostly Nilotic — Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, Zande and dozens of other groups — who migrated into the region over the past millennium.

History

Egypt's Muhammad Ali dynasty occupied the Sudan in the 19th century, and the region was governed as an Anglo-Egyptian condominium from 1899. British policy deliberately kept the Christian and animist south administratively separate from the Arabised, Muslim north — until 1946, when London abruptly reversed course and fused the two without consulting southerners. At Sudanese independence in 1956 the south was neglected and resentful, and the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) against the Anyanya rebels won an autonomous Southern Sudan region. When Khartoum abolished that autonomy and imposed sharia in 1983, the Second Sudanese Civil War erupted, led by John Garang's SPLA/M; over two decades it killed more than 2.5 million people and displaced millions more.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement restored southern autonomy and promised a referendum. Garang died in a helicopter crash weeks after taking office; his deputy Salva Kiir Mayardit succeeded him. In January 2011, 98.8% of voters chose independence, and on 9 July 2011 South Sudan became Africa's 54th state and, days later, the UN's 193rd member — taking with it about 75% of the former Sudan's oil reserves.

The state nearly strangled at birth. In December 2013 a power struggle between Kiir and his dismissed vice-president Riek Machar ignited a civil war that took on a Dinka–Nuer ethnic dimension, killing an estimated 400,000 people, displacing over 4 million and producing atrocities such as the 2014 Bentiu massacre. A 2018 power-sharing accord brought Machar back as first vice-president in February 2020, but implementation has stalled: elections promised for 2023 were postponed to December 2026, Machar was arrested in March 2025, and renewed fighting has prompted UN warnings of a return to full-scale war.

Later history and present status

South Sudan ranks lowest on the Human Development Index; its economy depends almost entirely on oil piped through Sudan, with chronic inflation, famine conditions and floods. English is the official language; about 60% of the population is Christian and 33% follows traditional faiths. It belongs to the UN, African Union, IGAD and, since 2016, the East African Community.