S. Sudan needs construction materials to rebuild

By George Obulutsa

NAIROBI, June 27 (Reuters) – Southern Sudan is hungry for concrete and construction materials as it begins rebuilding homes, offices and roads in a region shattered by two decades of civil war and neglect, a top official said on Monday.

A young boy wanders amidst ruins in Rumbek’s central market. (AFP) .

Riak Machar, deputy chairman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) that will run the south under terms of a January peace deal that ended the civil war, said those who return to the region, possibly millions, will need homes and offices.

The new southern Sudan administration will have to build offices and homes in 11 cities in the area, he said.

“We are now talking the industry of construction. This you can develop into areas such as the private sector providing housing,” Machar said.

“I cannot tell you in tonnage, how much demand for cement there is,” Machar told a news conference in the Kenyan capital Nariobi, adding that already there is a shortage of cement there.

The SPLM is desperate to attract foreign capital needed to rebuild a region deprived of roads, water and power by successive cycles of conflict since independence in 1956.

Donors meeting in Oslo in April pledged $4.5 billion for 2005-07 to fund projects in the south following the peace deal between rebels and the Khartoum government, although a separate civil war in Sudan’s western Darfur region is still unresolved.

Roughly 4 million left the region during the war, and even if a portion of those return, they will need homes, Machar said. Another source for increased housing demand would be former rebels from the SPLM.

“Even if we talk of just half of their number, say 150,000, … the first thing is to shelter them,” Machar said.

In May, SPLM hosted an investment conference in Nairobi to showcase business opportunities available to businesses in Africa and beyond in southern Sudan areas like construction, banking and farming that had been barred by the war.

Kenya, which hosted peace talks that led to January’s agreement, is particularly keen to beat South African rivals in the race for opportunities in southern Sudan and aims to build a railway to connect its neighbour to its Mombassa port.

The Sudanese leader said that there was also going to be demand for cement as the region starts to construct a road network in a region the size of Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi combined.