Rural Economic in South Sudan
By Tugul Nyak Diew*
June 26, 2006 — South Sudan is the most underdeveloped and the least living standard on the face of the planet and bringing these people to the living standard is a daunting task for every one involve in economy recovery. This is my second article, concerning the rebuilding process of the South. My previous article based on what the government would do to protect her people. This article is exclusively focusing on micro financing, to local rural people.
Over the years, South Sudan has been depending on agricultural sector only. Almost 99% of the population makes it living through crops growing and cattle, but this economy’s sector has been badly damaged by human induced, such as war and social system. Now, the war is over, and the GOSS needs to promote more economic initiatives, like micro finance, to help local poor people improve their living conditions. Development must start in the rural areas, where the base majority of the population resides. The GOSS should immediately address the environmental issues. There must be better agricultural and environmental policies to demand land reform. The fragmentation of habitat has long been the primary threat to species and their protection from destruction should be the first priority of the GOSS. We have all kinds of beautiful animals that cannot find easily in other part of the world. However, the war, hunting, deforestation, and other influences such as fire forced animals, which supposed to be the heart and sole of South Sudan economic, migrated to our neighboring countries. We have seen it, in Kenya, the benefit of protecting animals. Over 20% of Kenya NGP comes from tourism. In fact, tourism is one of the largest and most important industries that help create jobs for local poor people in Kenya. Interestingly, Kenya is one of the countries South Sudan’s animals migrated. In order for these animals to re emigrate back to South Sudan, the GOSS must take decisive action to make sure our natural resources, we are privileged to have are protected. The GOSS should do the followings:
Recruit more agricultural experts and have them conduct training to inform citizens of their responsibilities for the environment
Develop a sustainable forestry code of ethic, which has standard for reforestation and harvested trees
Ban unauthorized hunters and other types of resource extractions
Promote a sound environment regulations
Encourage Oxen’s farmers
Provide loans to poor rural people to help them buy seeds, tools, and others commodities that can improve living conditions.
Six points I listed above are equally important to the rural economic, but I will only collaborate more on the last point: loans or micro-finance, which is my area of expertise. In addition, micro- financing is the centerpiece of my argument. All of us who were born and raised in South Sudan need no lecture about the living standard in South Sudan. We, all, have lived it. We have seen a child dying for hunger and lack of medicine. Most of those children live in rural areas where their parents have no economic growth opportunity. To change that there must be a great commitment from the government to combat poverty.
As I mentioned before South Sudan is one of the poorest nations in our lifetime. This is so because there was no government willing to help its people get out of poverty in the past. Today, we have government to reverse the course. This is an excellent opportunity for the government to show what it fight for during the past long more than 40 years, which is, undoubtedly, the well-being of its people. There are many ways for the GOSS to help improve the lives of its people and one of the most effective systems, proven by others poorest countries, like South Sudan, is micro-finance. This form of financial assistant is the reliable instrument to help poor people who are willingness to and a desire to do some business activities from which they acquire employment as well as income. This can be done in two phases: government financial assistant, through loan and private sectors micro-finance that would target specific individual who have modest financial responsibility. The government micro-finance office should be part of rural development, aim to alleviate folks falling bellow the poverty line, which have no collateral and means to help them.
The GOSS should not be worried about the cash flows management. If it has concern with cash flows, falling in the wrong hand, it can set up a department or management committee, which it sole purpose would be to oversea the allocation of resources. This Micro-finance office can work along side financial institutions, which has capacity to track down the moment of funds. The financial institution should be charge to evaluate the risk of loans applicants and determine eligibility of an individual. The micro-finance office, created by the government to monitor funds should report the progress or concerns directly to the office of the presidency. The office of presidency should be the ultimate responsibility to fire or relieve any official who misuse the funds. There should be clear guidelines to follow and yet flexible enough to make it easier for the poor people to receive loans. This program is high cost measure, but is the only available option that can lift up the community, which has nothing to begin with.
* Tugul Nyak Diew is a PhD student in organizational behavior and Management at Capella University. He can be reach at [email protected]