South Sudan to urge Africa reconstruction cash
Jan 27, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — South Sudan will ask African countries, including big players like Egypt and South Africa, to help fund its reconstruction because Western donors have been slow to help, an official said on Saturday.
A January 2005 peace deal ended the north-south war which killed 2 million people and drove 4 million from their homes.
But a separate crisis in Sudan’s west has redirected valuable reconstruction aid for the south to deal with the humanitarian emergency in Darfur.
“A lot of money has gone to humanitarian assistance in Darfur so there has been some interruption on that case,” said Regional Cooperation Ministry under-secretary Cirino Hiteng Ofuho. Observers say reconstruction is necessary to prevent a return to war.
After the north-south peace deal, western donors pledged more than $4 billion (2 billion pounds) to Sudan but complicated aid mechanisms slowed delivery of the money.
More than $1.5 billion has gone to Darfur, where four years of rape, pillage and murder has killed an estimated 200,000.
Ofuho said a meeting had been called in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the sidelines of a summit of African leaders to discuss south Sudan’s reconstruction and he urged countries like Egypt and South Africa to give money.
He said some $169 million had been received from Western donors, most of it for rebuilding roads in the war-torn south and some for training former rebels to take part in government.
South Sudan’s fledgling semi-autonomous government, which under the peace deal gets 50 percent of Sudan’s oil wealth amounting to some $1.3 billion a year, has been accused of corruption and missing funds.
An anti-corruption commission will launch an investigation on February 1 into government contracts. South Sudan can vote to separate from the north in a referendum by 2011.
Almost 50 percent of last year’s budget went to the southern army, the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and Ofuho said a similar amount was expected for the 2007 budget, being debated in the southern parliament.
“This budget is not for war preparations but mainly to rehabilitate and improve the army,” he said. “Transforming them into a conventional disciplined army requires a lot of resources.”
He added the government had also already spent more than $100 million on improving an almost non-existent infrastructure in the south planned to spend $130 million on education and $80-$100 million on health.
(Reuters)