This report discusses the political economy of the Juba peace agreement, which was signed by the government of Sudan and a host of rebel groups in 2020. The report argues that the JPA has tried but failed to address inequality between the centres and the peripheries. This is particularly due to its power and wealth sharing formula which favours peripheral militia leaders whose main priorities are the acquisition of wealth and gathering of loyalty, at…
Entries by Edward Thomas
Over the past four decades, most South Sudanese people have begun buying staple foods rather than eating self-grown grains and tubers. This is part of a wider move towards markets, closely connected to South Sudan’s first encounters with modernity in the nineteenth century, as well as the conflicts and mass displacements of the past fifty years. This move has deeply affected food systems, diminishing the availability of indigenous grains and impoverishing many people’s diets. South…
Fifty years ago, most households in South Sudan produced the grain they ate, organizing agricultural labour and distributing small surpluses mostly through kinship and other social networks. Now, the majority of households buy most of their food. This transition from self-sufficiency to market dependence took place during long wars, which transformed or distorted almost every aspect of everyday life. It is a transition that now seems to be irreversible. This report therefore looks at how…
This research was conducted by Dr. Edward Thomas, Ranga Gworo of the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) and Kiden Grace Wani of the World Food Programme (WFP) in February and March 2018, and funded by the UK, Swiss, Canadian and Netherlands Donor Missions in South Sudan. Cash-based programmes can help poor households address food insecurity, and to better manage by themselves some of the risks they face. Evidence from around the world suggests that this…
Most people date Sudan’s Islamist turn to 1983, when the decaying government of Jaafar Nimeiri began a controversial experiment with Islamic sharīca law, or to the Islamists’ National Salvation Revolution, led by Omar al-Bashir in 1989. But for Hasan al-Turabi, the leader of Sudan’s Islamist movement for most of its twentieth century existence, Sudan’s Islamist turn, and its first modern experiment in Islamic legislation, began a few years earlier, in August 1977. The Faisal Islamic…
A remarkably comprehensive examination of the politics, history and economic development of contemporary South Sudan. In 2011, South Sudan became independent following a long war of liberation, that gradually became marked by looting, raids and massacres pitting ethnic communities against each other. In this remarkably comprehensive work, Edward Thomas provides a multi-layered examination of what is happening in the country today. Writing from the perspective of South Sudan’s most mutinous hinterland, Jonglei state, the book…
This article discusses the 2010 elections in Sudan including Southern Sudan. Link to publication
Sudan will hold potentially transformative elections in April 2010 and its complex peace processes require the organisation of three referendums in the coming year, including one in which Southern Sudanese voters will decide on unity or independence. Sudan is therefore entering a crucial period in its history and the country’s powerful elites are under pressure to reach agreement on a wide range of complex processes. This report analyses these critical events and their potential outcomes…
When South Sudan became a separate state in 2011, its northern boundary with the Republic of Sudan became an international border, the longest and most contentious in the region. At the westernmost extremity of Sudan, Kafia Kingi is a key meeting point between the two countries. This mineral-rich area is currently under the administration of South Darfur state, in Sudan, but is due to be returned to Raga County, in South Sudan, under the terms…
This report takes stock of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) four years after it was signed, calling urgently for the implementation of outstanding issues in the 30 months that remain in this interim period. It asserts that the flaws of the CPA, despite its huge potential for change in in the region, are that it doesn’t include Darfur and that it represents a bilateral agreement between two powerful groups in the country. It calls for…