South Sudan and the referendum for Independence: What is more left? An Opinion for next path of Development

More than a couple of months of no seeing and communication I sat for lunch with my former colleague who recently came back from the Sudan. We used to work together and know each other very well. As Ethiopians we love coffee and, you know, we drink it any time, because we just love it! Coffee brings enthusiasm, enthusiasm to talk about many things. Especially over coffee,  in the capital Addis Ababa as in other parts of the country, we have the culture of gossiping about family issues, the ups and downs of living standards, local and international politics and sometimes, though not by many, about international sports. Hey trust me globalization is playing its role!

Over coffee we started to talk about how things are going in Ethiopia and I also asked him how he is doing in the biggest, fragile, violent prone, more than two decades in war and oil-rich neighboring country to us: the Sudan. He poised and started to explain and I was listening very attentively. He was talking largely about the burning issues that the international media has been dwelling for some time and will do until the referendum come and pass: the southern Sudan! He was telling me what many were saying and said ‘’it is true that many institutions failed in the region, infrastructure is very poor and even he reiterated that the asphalt road length is not more than a few hundred miles’’. I am not sure, personally, about how much is that to be the case but evidences seem to support it very much. Besides, rich in natural resources such as petroleum and crude oil, the rate of corruption is high and has been a problem for long, he said, there is an unfair distribution of oil wealth and the huge effects of lasting neglect by the Sudanese government left the south Sudan to be where it is now, he commented.

The oil-rich Christian south of Sudan, the prospective 54^th African nation, is on a brink of conducting its referendum for independence from the mainly Muslim north.

“After decades of war between the Arab-dominated government in the north and southern rebels, a 2005 peace deal between laid out a plan for power sharing between the north and the south and also a provision for a significant degree of southern autonomy, culminating in Sunday's [January 9, 2011] referendum on whether the South wants to officially secede. On Sunday, January 9, 2011 South Sudanese are expected to vote for their homeland to become the world's newest country’’ explains Ariel Zirulnick[1], Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor. And he continues saying “Fundamentally, the desire to separate comes from deep religious and ethnic divides between the North and South of Africa's biggest country. Northern Sudan is mostly Arab and Muslim, while South Sudan is predominantly non-Arab with a mix between Christian and animist faiths. The tensions boiled over into a brutal two-decade civil war that began in the 1980s and officially ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. There is still great enmity between North and South and distrust over how oil revenues from the oil-rich south are being split.”

Oil revenue seems one of the reasons for a long stay conflict and contention, as also Zirulink argues, and in an oil-reach country like the Sudan it has a huge part to play for development and sometimes, though unfortunate, fuels conflicts. East Africa researcher Justin Willis of Britain’s Durham University says “bringing more transparency to Sudan’s oil sector will be crucial to ensuring peace and stability in the country. This is an area which is absolutely shrouded in mystery,” said Willis.

Moreover, ‘’the result of the referendum is not expected until February and the thorny issues like borders and the division of the oil wealth have been agreed before southern Sudan officially gains statehood on July 9. The new nation, Africa's 54th state, will be among the poorest on earth. Around 90% of the population of eight million survive on less than 70p a day, and education and healthcare almost non-existent. The poverty is the legacy of generations of neglect by Khartoum and the unfair division of Sudan's oil wealth. The leaders in the south, campaigning for independence, have promised the people that self-determination will transform their lives’’, reports Emma Hurd, Africa correspondent for sky news^[2].

What is more left? Beyond securing the long awaited Independence Day, a prospective country reach with oil faces a big challenge ahead in development. The Government of the South Sudan (GOSS), as I believe and agree with many commentators, to transform the lives of its people should install functional legal frameworks (procurement and revenue law, for example), need to engage itself in intensive work on capacity development for the very week public sector (at the technical level) and at the political level, build audit capacity, real commitment to reduce the budget for the army, install general administrative systems, ensure transparency in payment authorizations, and addressing the worsening of the humanitarian problems. There remains a very and daunting long way to go beyond securing the independence. In a nut shell, the GOSS needs to address issues to ensure development results for the citizens and ensuring greater accountability and good governance in the system, though the latter is the most challenging in Africa.

It is true that the long years of neglect in the south Sudan by the Khartoum based central government left services at the basic level where it should have been transformed to address the needs of ever increasing population. The level of health care, water and sanitation are at mere existent hence the people are suffering lot. Still there are some issues which are unresolved: land, the border demarcations of Abyei, citizenship, etc. Of course these issues are to be dealt with both nations, if the referendum goes for the separation as many predicted. But does the GOSS have the political will/commitment/capacity to understand and combat corruption, insure results and strive for the betterment of the living condition of the poor and long suffering citizens? Time will give the perfect answer. But I believe that the work waiting ahead, in my opinion, needs more than self-determination claimed by the leaders in the south! Deliver results, build the working culture, create unity amongst them, ensure peace in the country and follow participatory development processes are the key for sustainable development and stable Southern Sudan. Otherwise, as my old colleague over coffee said, it will be a process of creating another fragile, conflict prone state, probably a failed one, in the already unstable horn of Africa.

And some additional resource which might be an interest to you are below.[1] [2][3][4]