Nagero County, Western Equatoria State
Demographics
2008 Census population: 10,077
2020 Population projection*: 22,072
2024 UN OCHA population estimate*: 26,738
2024 IPC population estimate: 61,561
2025 UN OCHA population estimate*: 61,561
Ethnic groups and languages: Zande, Balanda, Bongo
Displacement Figures as of September 2024: 24,866 IDPs (+8,436 Sept. 2023) and 19,077 returnees (no change, Sept. 2023)
IPC Food Security: November 2024 – Crisis (Phase 3); IPC Projections: December 2024 to March 2025 – Crisis (Phase 3); April 2025 to July 2025 – Crisis (Phase 3)
Economy & Livelihoods
Nagero County is located in Western Equatoria State. It borders Tambura County to the south-west and Ezo County to the south-east. It also borders Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State (Wau and Jur River Counties) to the north and Warrap State (Tonj South County) to the east.
The county falls within the western plains groundnuts, sesame and sorghum livelihoods zone (FEWSNET, 2018). It is estimated that 65% of households in Nagero County practice agriculture (FAO/WFP, 2018), whilst other livelihood activities such as collecting wild food, harvesting honey, and fishing for domestic consumption are also common. The area has forests that can be used to export timber, however the extent to which this constitutes the local economy is unknown. Nagero borders the Bahr el-Ghazal region where cattle keeping is common. Thus, seasonal livestock migrations see pastoralists from neighboring Wau County migrate south through Nagero during the dry season, in search of grazing grounds and water sources.
Food security projections placed Nagero County at Crisis (IPC Phase 3) levels for the entirety of 2020. While rains are predicted to arrive earlier this year, cyclic prolonged dry-spells impact the area roughly every two years, delaying the growing season by 2-4 weeks and impacting community resilience (FEWSNET 2018). The onset of the civil war in December 2013 disrupted traditional migratory routes and witnessed widespread displacement of pastoralists and their livestock from the Bahr el-Ghazal region. As a result, inter-communal conflict, cattle raids, and disease outbreaks intensified on an unprecedented scale. This was most pronounced in the eastern counties of Western Equatoria, but mirrored in other parts of the state, including Nagero County.
Infrastructure & Services
The county headquarters and main market are in Nagero Town in Nagero Payam. While Nagero County itself is comparatively small in terms of its population and infrastructure, its proximity to Tambura and the Bahr el Ghazal region places it on key transportation and trade routes. Nagero’s location allows residents to access markets, schools and healthcare facilities in these nearby areas, despite not having strong infrastructure or services within the county itself. In 2018, the peak of conflict led to localized displacement to neighboring Tambura County (REACH 2019a). Due to limited access of humanitarian organizations during this time, local resources were not able to be maintained or repaired. Recent statistics indicate that IDPs and refugees have returned to the area in large numbers, estimated to be at least half of the current population projection. This places additional stress on existing infrastructure and services, which were limited to begin with (REACH 2019a).
Nagero County is home to sixteen (16) Early Childhood Development Centres, twenty (20) primary schools, and one secondary school.
In December 2024, the WHO reported that Nagero County had seventeen (17) health facilities, of which eleven (11) were functional. These functional facilities included nine (9) primary health care units (PHCUs), two (2) primary health care centres (PHCCs), and no hospitals. This means there were approximately 2.19 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 1.62 PHCCs per 50,000 people in the county at that time.
According to OCHA’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs Overview, there are an estimated 39,186 people in need in Nagero County, which represents approximately 64% of the county’s total population reported by OCHA for 2025. For comparison, in 2024, OCHA reported that there were an estimated 21,469 people in need in Nagero County, of whom 5,039 were non-displaced people, with the remainder comprising IDPs and returnees. According to OCHA’s (2019) Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2020, there were approximately 9,800 people in the county with significant humanitarian needs, which represented 44% of the estimated population for Nagero County reported in the HNO that year. According to the Resilience Capacity Index,1 Nagero is one of six counties with the lowest resilience capacities in South Sudan (HNO 2019).
Conflict Dynamics
The presence of opposition forces in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr el-Ghazal have had significant impacts on Nagero County since the outbreak of the civil war in December 2013. Nagero County represented the northern range of influence of the community defence groups known as the ‘arrow boys’ and reports suggest these were mobilized in significant numbers from Balanda communities in Nagero County in the early stages of the civil war (SAS 2016).
The spread of the civil war into Western Equatoria led to clashes between government and opposition forces that disrupted the previous relative stability of Nagero County. Many of the ‘arrow boys’ in the area were allegedly involved in these clashes under the leadership of Alfred Fatuyo, who had aligned with the SPLA-IO (SAS 2016). The conflict in and around Nagero – peaking in 2018 – led to displacement of the local population, and also impacted the local economy by making trade and transportation routes insecure.
Nagero County’s proximity to cattle-keeping communities in the Bahr el-Ghazals and CAR have also led to land-disputes and water-access tensions in an area that is primarily agricultural. This tension often revolves around access to land and water, and has increased since conflict broke out in 2013 due to increasing movement of cattle herders from more conflict-prone areas into Western Equatoria. There was also a significant influx of IDPs into Nagero from the Obo region in CAR (where most South Sudanese refugees are settled) in early 2019 after a flare-up of the aforementioned agriculturalist pastoralist conflict (REACH 2019b).
In addition to armed activities resulting in heightened insecurity, internal boundary disputes dating back to the late 1990s between Tambura and Nagero counties have often resulted in heightened tensions between the area’s two major ethnic groups – the (A)Zande and Belanda. Numerous community dialogue initiatives and social cohesion programs between the two groups have been initiated, but have made limited progress and struggled to get political support (Sudan Tribune 2009).
Administration & Logistics
Payams listed in Government and UN documents: Nagero (County Headquarters)
Additional payams listed by local actors: Namatina and Duma
Roads:
- A primary road that connects Wau and Tambura runs through Nagero. In the rainy season of 2024 and the dry season of 2025, the Logistics Cluster deemed this road to be “passable with difficulties.”
UNHAS-Recognized Heli-Landing Sites and Airstrips: None
References
FAO & WFP. (2018). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/3/ca3643EN/ca3643en.pdf
FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated).
OCHA. (2019). Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan 2020.
REACH. (2019a). Situation Overview: Western Equatoria. Retrieved from: https://www.impact-repository.org/document/reach/c76ca0fb/REACH_Situation-Overview_Western-Equatoria_July-September-2019.pdf
REACH. (2019b). South Sudan Crossborder Population Movement Dynamics Brief. Retireved from: https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/south-sudan-crossborder-population-movement-dynamics-brief-april-2019
Small Arms Survey (2016). Conflict in Western Equatoria: Describing events through 17 July 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/archive/south-sudan/conflict-crisis-2013-15/HSBA-Conflict-in-WES-July-2016.pdf
Sudan Tribune. (2009). Western Equatoria seeks peaceful settlement to Tambura-Nagero’s row. 2 March 2009. Retrieved from: https://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article30346
Reports on Nagero
Kindersley, N.; Øystein, H. (2017). Civil War on Shoestring: Rebellion in South Sudan’s Equatoria Region. Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698249.2017.1417073?journalCode=fciv20
* 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.
