South Sudan : The Birth of an Economy

The first thing one notices on the streets of Juba, the capital, is the abundance of white Toyota Land Cruisers. There are fewer than 100 kilometers of tarmac roads in the entire 240,000-square-mile country; one cannot move around without a four-wheel-drive vehicle. A closer look at the Land Cruisers reveals that most have special license plates: UN for United Nations vehicles, and GOSS for those owned by the government of South Sudan. Apart from the Land Cruisers, one notices a large number of water and fuel tankers on the roads. Publicly supplied electricity in Juba, a city of one million, is very limited, public water nonexistent. As a result, almost all workplaces and the wealthier private residences rely on generator power and water delivered by truck. The road traffic also reveals how waste is managed in Juba. Whereas some aid agencies and hotels have contracts with garbage collectors, most waste is piled in the streets and burned. As in the big cities of many developing countries, driving in Juba is a daunting experience. There are essentially no road signs or traffic lights, and only one street has streetlights. What’s more, although traffic travels on the right side of the road, most drivers sit on the right-hand side of the car, as most vehicles are imported from Kenya, where right-hand driving is standard. When we turn our attention to the people traveling on these highly informative roads, other issues become apparent. For one thing, there is no formal taxi network in Juba. Instead, a few enterprising Kenyans and Ugandans have established themselves as private taxi drivers. And foreigners do not dominate only low-skilled service jobs; most heavy machinery on South Sudan’s roads is also operated by for-