Kapoeta East County, Eastern Equatoria State
DEMOGRAPHY
2008 NBS Census population: 163,997
2021 NBS PES population estimate*: 319,112
2022 UN OCHA population estimate*: 169,978
Ethnic groups: Toposa, Nyangatom
Displacement Figures Q3 2022: 4,702 IDPs (-6,225 Q1 2020) and 798 returnees (-1,862 Q1 2020)
IPC Food Security: November 2022 – Emergency (Phase 4); IPC Projections: December to March 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4); April to July 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4)
ECONOMY & LIVELIHOODS
Kapoeta East County is located in Eastern Equatoria State. It borders Kapoeta North County, Kapoeta South County and Budi County to the west and Jonglei State (Pibor County) to the north. It also borders Ethiopia to the east and Kenya to the south.
The county falls within the south-eastern semi-arid pastoral livelihoods zone. The Toposa people are primarily cattle-keepers, but also herd sheep and goats. Subsistence farming is also practiced, but on a smaller scale compared to other counties in the state – with one study estimating that about 54% of households engage in agriculture (FAO/WFP 2018). The same estimate was reported in data from 2021 (FAO/WFP 2022). In 2021, gross cereal yields were estimated to be 0.85 tonnes per hectare, increasing to 0.9 tonnes per hectare in 2022 (FAO/WFP 2023). Some cereal production takes place, mainly sorghum, but on a limited scale. There have been frequent clashes between the Toposa and Buya over cattle in Greater Kapoeta. Competition over water and pasture has been the primary driver of these conflicts.
While the border towns in Kapoeta East County are less significant for trade than those in Kapoeta Town (Kapoeta South County) or Torit (Torit County), the Nadapal/Narus border crossing links South Sudan to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and has played a historically strategic role both for the government in its border dispute with Kenya and for the humanitarian community as an entry point for Operation Lifeline Sudan in the 1990s.
Food insecurity has remained fairly constant in Kapoeta East; the IPC classified the county at Crisis (Phase 3) level in 2016 and it remains in this classification in the IPC’s 2022 projections. In November 2022, the IPC projected the county as being at a crisis (IPC level 3) level of food insecurity, with conditions projected to persist at the same level until March 2023, whereupon they are predicted to decline to emergency levels (IPC level 4) between April and July 2023. A 2020 REACH assessment found residents in 32% of assessed settlements were coping with a lack of food by going days without food and residents in 72% of settlements described the hunger they were experiencing as severe or the worst it can be. 51% of assessed settlements were home to residents who were selling livestock to cope with food insecurity and 65% of settlements reported livestock disease as present. A 2022 REACH assessment noted improvements in these indicators, with 27% of assessed settlements describing hunger as severe. However, settlements reported an increase in the selling of livestock to offset food insecurity, which rose to 86%.
INFRASTRUCTURE & SERVICES
Kapoeta East is the county with the second largest population in Eastern Equatoria State (second only to Magwi County) and has its headquarters at Narus near the border with Kenya. In February 2021, telecommunications company MTN resumed operations in Kapoeta East after nearly eight years of being off-air due to insecurity. Kapoeta East also hosts the Kuron Peace Village, which was founded in 2005 by Bishop Taban Paride. The aim of the project was to create a diverse community that promoted peace building, and sought to address the needs of local communities through education, agriculture and other services. It has hosted gatherings of traditional leaders, including a three-day meeting in April 2016 of seventeen chiefs from different parts of South Sudan to reflect on their changing role in peacemaking and the political transition.
Kapoeta East is home to ten (10) Early Childhood Development centers, thirteen (13) primary schools and four (4) secondary schools including the all-girls St. Bakhita Secondary and the all-boys St. Patrick’s Secondary. All four secondary schools are located in Narus payam. A 2014 assessment in Kapoeta East also revealed that the county had one of the lowest enrollment rates of girls in primary school in the state, attributed to pressure to engage in child marriage.
Kapoeta East County was reported to have twenty-one (21) health facilities including eighteen (18) functional health facilities, among them fifteen (15) PHCUs and three (3) PHCCs in 2022. This means that there were an estimated 1.24 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 0.88 PHCCs per 50,000 people according to the WHO. No hospitals were reported in Kapoeta East County.
According to OCHA’s Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2023, 120,167 people in the county have humanitarian needs (compared to 99,300 people in 2021), which is approximately 70% of the estimated population for Kapoeta East County reported in the HNO.
CONFLICT DYNAMICS
The major threats to people’s livelihoods in Greater Kapoeta (Kapoeta North, South and East) are cattle raiding, armed banditry and persistent droughts. Cattle raids between the Toposa and the Turkana across the border shared with Kenya have also been observed. In addition, community consultations carried out in 2012 found that competition over water, a lack of healthcare and poor education were compounding threats to security in the county (UNDP 2012). They also noted longstanding tension between the Toposa and Murle in Jonglei to the north associated with perceived child abductions.
The Ilemi Triangle, an area claimed by both Kenya and South Sudan and borders Ethiopia, is located in Kapoeta East County. The area spans approximately 10,000 square kilometers and is inhabited by the Turkana peoples of Kenya. The dispute resulted from unclear wording in a colonial-era treaty which sought to grant nomads in the region free movement. To date it has been generally peaceful, though the discovery of oil in nearby Kenya have raised the stakes of territorial claims and Eastern Equatorian officials raised concerns in 2015 that Kenya was extending the border line deeper into South Sudan. South Sudan and Kenya established a Joint Border Commission and appointed a Joint Technical Team in 2016 to resolve the border dispute, however to do date no resolution has been established. This process was given new life in mid-2019 with the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding between Kenyan and South Sudanese governments.
ADMINISTRATION & LOGISTICS
Payams: Narus (County Headquarters), Jie, Katodori, Kauto, Lotimor, Mogos, Natinga
Alternative list of payams provided by local actors: Katodori, Kauto, Koron, Lotimor, Mogos, Narus, Moragebe, Lyoro, Lekawtem, and Lopet
UN OCHA 2020 map of Kapoeta East County: https://reliefweb.int/map/south-sudan/south-sudan-kapoeta-east-county-reference-map-march-2020
Roads:
- A primary load links Kapoeta town to the disputed town of Nadapal along the Kenyan border. The road was deemed passable in both the rainy season of 2022 and the dry season of 2023.
- A secondary road connects Narus to Boma in Pibor County (Jonglei State) to its north, running via Kuron Peace Village. In both the rainy season of 2022 and dry season of 2023, the road was designated as being “passable with difficulties” between Narus and Kuron, but impassable between Kuron and Boma.
- Two secondary roads run in parallel in western areas of the county (one of which begins in Kapoeta town), close to the border with Kapoeta North County. The two roads meet at Mogos before separating again, and eventually become a tertiary road to Pibor County. At Kassangor (along the border between Kapoeta East and Pibor counties), the road splits once again, running north-west to Pibor town and north-east to Boma. The road between Kapoeta town and Boma town was deemed “passable with difficulties” in the dry season of 2023, but impassable during the rainy season of 2022. The condition of other parts of the road network are unknown.
UNHAS-recognised Heli and Fixed-Wing Airplane Airstrips: None
Additional MAF-Recognised Airstrips: Kuron and Lotimor
REFERENCES
FAO/WFP. (2023). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 31 July 2023. See equivalent versions of the CFSAM report online for data from previous years.
FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
OCHA. (2021). Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2021. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
Radio Tamazuj. (2021). Clashes erupt between communities in Kapoeta East and Kenya’s Turkana County. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
REACH. (2020). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profile – Kapoeta East County. Retrieved 13 July 2023
REACH. (2022). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profiles. Retrieved 13 July 2023
UNDP. (2012). Community Consultation Report: Eastern Equatoria State. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
VOA. (2021). South Sudan Road Attacks Leave Nearly 30 Dead. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
REPORTS on KAPOETA EAST
AVSI. (2019). Field assessment in Greater Kapoeta East County. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Eulenberger, I. (2013). ‘Pastoralists, Conflicts, and Politics: Aspects of South Sudan’s Kenyan Frontier’ in Vaughan, C. et al. (eds) The Borderlands of South Sudan: Authority and Identity in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, pp 67–88. Ney York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan
Lotyam, M. (2019). The Ilemi Triangle: Shadows of the Four Lines on the Grassland. ELFSS blog. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Mc Evoy, C. and Murray, M. (2008). Gauging Fear and Insecurity: Perspectives on Armed Violence in Eastern Equatoria and Turkana North. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Saferworld (2020). ‘Like the military of the village’: Security, justice and community defence groups in south-east South Sudan. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Snel, E. and de Vries, L. (2022). The Ilemi Triangle: Understanding a pastoralist border area. Pax Christi International. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
UNDP. (2020). Greater Kapoeta Conflict and Gender Assessment. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Winter, P. (2019). A Border Too Far: The Ilemi Triangle Yesterday and Today. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
Wunder, L. and Mkutu, K. (2018). ‘Policing Where the State is Distant: Community Policing in Kuron, South Sudan’ in Security Governance in East Africa: Pictures of Policing from the Ground, Lexington Books: London.
* Note: The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Population Estimation Survey (PES) was published in April 2023 based on data collected in May-June 2021. This uses a different method to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Population Working Group (PWG) figures produced based on a combination of 2008 census data and population movement data up to 2022. The large discrepancies are primarily attributable to these different methods rather than changes in the actual population numbers over time and have been disputed by some civil society and analysts. Although the later PWG figures were produced more recently for the HNO 2023, at the request of the Government of South Sudan the data and method used by the PES is being used as the basis for the Common Operational Dataset (COD) for the UN system for the HNO 2024 and likely beyond. For further detail on this and other sources used in the county profiles, see the accompanying Methodological Note.