JUBA, South Sudan (news agencies) — The recent rupture of a crucial oil pipeline has sent fresh pain through the economy of South Sudan, where even the security forces haven’t been paid in nine months. Some soldiers and civil servants are turning to side hustles or abandoning their jobs.
South Sudan’s economy largely depends on the oil it exports via neighboring Sudan. But war in Sudan has created widespread chaos, and the pipeline in an area of fighting ruptured in February. The drop in oil revenues has compounded South Sudan’s long problem of official mismanagement.
Now the already fragile country is seeing protests in the capital over lack of pay, with more expected. And its people are under pressure to make up the gap in salary payments in unexpected ways.
In the capital, Juba, a school deputy head teacher, Maburuk Kuyu Surur, said he has been teaching for 36 years and has never seen a salary delay like this one. That dates back well into the years before South Sudan won its independence from Sudan in 2011.
Surur said he and other teachers have been collecting small amounts of money from students’ families to help support themselves, even though schooling is free.
“We are suffering,” the 60-year-old said.
The government of President Salva Kiir, who has led South Sudan since independence and is under international pressure to prepare the country for delayed elections, has struggled in the economic crisis. The finance ministry has had six ministers since 2020, with the latest fired in July.
In recent weeks, media visited government ministries and other offices in Juba and found them mostly empty during working hours. Remaining employees said colleagues had left after getting tired of working without pay since October.
One government worker said her salary — when it came — was the equivalent of $8 a month. She has since found work at a restaurant and makes about $20. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“Prices keep rising every day,” she said. A 50-kilometer bag of maize flour now costs up to five times the price a year ago.
Inflation in South Sudan is 35% from a year ago, according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, the local currency has plunged against the U.S. dollar on the black market and in the official rate.
Even as a third of South Sudan’s oil still flows for export via another pipeline, the country’s president has openly expressed frustration with mismanagement as the government must rely more on non-oil revenue like taxes in imported goods.
Those revenues should be enough to cover salaries but the money isn’t reaching government accounts, Kiir said in July.
“We have nine solid months people have not received their salaries, and we have money,” he asserted after swearing in the latest finance minister.
Kiir instructed the minister to establish a single account for all revenues and crack down on corrupt practices in revenue collection.
The government hadn’t placed much emphasis on this before when more oil was flowing, said Boboya James, chief executive officer with the Juba-based Institute of Social Policy and Research.
He said the shrinking public finances are due to poor policies and corruption that have robbed the young nation of development funds.
Some external support continues. The African Development Bank and South Sudan’s government recently signed a $46.2 million agreement to support agricultural production through December 2030.
But international frustration from some partners who once cheered South Sudan’s independence has grown. Intercommunal violence continues even after the end of civil war years ago. The elections that had been scheduled for last year have been postponed to December, but the United Nations says the needed work to carry them out is incomplete.
Displacement and poverty in the landlocked country are widespread. The U.N. has said 75% of the population relies on humanitarian aid.
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