Francis Onditi* and Cristina D’Alessandro**
ABSTRACT
Peace and conflict dynamics in South Sudan are intertwined with political governance, institutional capacities, and leadership. Nevertheless, in the specific South Sudanese intractable civil wars since signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, territorial and economic governance are also certainly strictly connected to any possible prospect of sustainable peace for the country. As such, after carefully defining these concepts, this article emphasizes that territorial governance in South Sudan relates to boundaries definition and to the division of the national territory in states with a certain degree of autonomy. The issues and divergences engendered by territorial governance are intertwined with economic governance concerns. The uneven distribution of natural resources (especially oil) produces wealth and power redistribution concerns that are at the core of contentious relations between social and ethnic groups. These circles of tensions rapidly degenerate into conflict in a context of widespread poverty, inequality, and consequent social vulnerability. The article defines and illustrates a “good enough” territorial and economic governance framework for the South Sudanese case study.
Keywords: South Sudan; Governance; Resources; Territory; Political System.
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jsdlp.v8i2.1
* Senior Lecturer & Head of Department, School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Riara University, Nairobi, Kenya. Email: fonditi@riarauniversity.ac.ke. He previously served as Governance and Political Leadership policy analyst, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office, Nairobi.
** Senior Fellow at the Centre of Governance at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and a Research Fellow at the Research Centre PRODIG (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonnne, CNRS), Paris, France and a Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences-Po, Paris, France). Previously she served as a Knowledge Expert at the African Capacity Building Foundation in Harare (Zimbabwe) and as a professor at the University Lumière Lyon 2. Email: cdalessa@uottawa.ca