South Sudan is the youngest country in the world, having gained independence from Sudan in July 2011. Since the year after the country was founded, JICA has continued to provide comprehensive cooperation in the agricultural sector. Ten years later, after overcoming a number of turmoil and hardships, including armed conflict and natural disasters, a new step toward improving the “food and livelihood” of the people of South Sudan is about to begin.
The implementation of the long-term agricultural development master plan for South Sudan, on which more than 30 JICA experts have been working, is finally underway. The development of agriculture in South Sudan, which has great potential as an alternative industry to oil, will lead to the future of the country and peace as a key industry.
A nursery facility in Central Equatoria State that was reconstructed as a result of the project. Long-standing cooperation activities in the agricultural sector are entering a new phase (January 2022, South Sudan).
The Long Road to Developing Two Master Plans to Raise Agriculture’s Bottom Line
Located in the Upper Nile River Basin in East Africa, South Sudan has a land area approximately 1.7 times larger than Japan and is home to more than 60 ethnic groups, the majority of whom are engaged in agriculture, cattle raising, and fishing for their own consumption in accordance with their local climate and ecosystem. However, the people continue to face chronic food insecurity due to a combination of the civil war that preceded independence, which caused people to leave the country and migrate domestically and internationally, and the interruption of social and economic services, as well as natural disasters in recent years.
In light of this current situation, in order to raise the level of the entire agricultural sector and make it a key industry that drives the economy of South Sudan, JICA has embarked on the Comprehensive Agricultural Development Master Plan (abbreviated as CAMP) Formulation Support Project, which addresses issues across five sectors: crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries, and organizational institutional development.
When we launched the project in 2012, we were kind of starting from scratch. The administrative officials and department staff from the relevant ministries and agencies were a collection of people from various backgrounds, and although each individual was capable, as an organization we were not able to take advantage of their performance. Therefore, we had to be patient while trying to keep respect for the others. As for the project in the agricultural sector, I was involved in the entire process from the establishment of laws by the central government to technical guidance on sapling cultivation. It was truly a project that walked hand in hand with the people of South Sudan, and we learned a lot and were very impressed.
Toshifumi Serizawa, a JICA expert who was involved in the formulation of the CAMP and its implementation capacity building in a supervisory capacity, looks back on the 10-year journey to this point with a keen interest.
Expert Serizawa (center photo) and others surveying a rural village at the beginning of the project. (September 2012, in the suburbs of Yeyei, Central Equatoria)
The project was almost simultaneously developing a long-term comprehensive agricultural development plan for the period from 2015 to 2040 and an irrigation master plan (IDMP), both of which are important for agricultural promotion. The two areas had long been subject to the lack of a clear, unified basic policy for South Sudan.
In general, master plans become obsolete after only a few years, but CAMP has a long-term perspective, and the master plan is defined in a way that provides a framework for replacing it with the best plan as needed, even when policies, budgets, personnel, weather, and other conditions change drastically. The Master Plan is a benchmark for South Sudan’s agricultural ministries and agencies to take the initiative in formulating a systematic strategy so that in the future, goals and roadmaps can be set based on the Master Plan for projects that are to be pursued independently by cooperating organizations and NGOs other than Japan.
Specialist Serizawa describes the significance and results of this ownership-driven project.
Overcoming armed conflict and the Corona disaster, we are making progress.
Although South Sudan gained independence with the support of more than 98% of the referendum, major armed clashes between the government and rebels occurred in the capital Juba in 2013 and 2016. It also experienced unfortunate events that resulted in numerous casualties.
After the clashes in 2013 and 2016, JICA staff and experts evacuated to neighboring countries and continued their activities remotely. At that time, the project had already completed a series of field surveys, including a survey of agricultural production and markets in each region and interviews with farmers, and had moved to a stage where activities could be carried out through remote cooperation, including data analysis and planning based on the collected data, so progress did not stop completely.
The project to strengthen the capacity of South Sudanese administrators to implement the CAMP/IDMP, which started in 2017, is now making steady progress, and we have finally reached the point where we can take a new step forward,” said Shigeki Handa, JICA’s deputy general manager in charge of governance, with a sigh of relief. JICA expert Shigeki Handa, who was mainly in charge of governance, is relieved.
Due to the deteriorating security situation, the contents of the CAMP (Master Plan for Agricultural Development) were discussed in the neighboring country of Uganda. (Uganda, July 2014)
Finally, field implementation in collaboration with farmers. Master Plan is in full swing.
Comprehensive agricultural cooperation for South Sudan will finally enter the implementation phase in March 2022, when the Agricultural Promotion and Revitalization for Food Security and Livelihoods Project will begin.
Based on the two master plans of CAMP and IDMP, the pilot project of urban and suburban agriculture, which is aimed at “agriculture for the future” such as food security and value-added crop cultivation, in cooperation with not only central government officials but also provincial and county local government officials, will work with farmers in the suburbs of Juba. This is a pilot project for urban and suburban agriculture.
Specifically, in addition to growing vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, we will also try our hand at poultry farming, freshwater fish farming, and mushroom cultivation, which is not yet common in the region, to select crops and varieties suited to the site, develop technologies, and determine the potential for food value chain development.
Vegetables sold at a market in the capital city of Juba (left); chicken coops (middle) and aquaculture ponds (right) of a group of farmers in Juba. The new project will begin work on a pilot project for urban and suburban agriculture (September 2021).
The solder specialist speaks with some hesitation.
There was a lot of arguing and discussion. In the beginning, I think there was a passion for building a new country. However, the security and economic situation in the country was getting worse and worse, and there was a situation in which ordinary government employees were unable to make a decent living and seemed to have lost motivation to continue their duties as civil servants should. This situation caused activities to stagnate, and there were many occasions when activities and discussions to improve the situation themselves were boycotted. However, even under such circumstances, only the JICA project continued to provide direct support to the government for many years. It took time, but I believe that the persistent and meticulous response on the Japanese side helped to foster a bond where we could talk about anything. When the person in charge, with whom I once had a heated confrontation, asked me, “Will you work with me on the next project, too? I was honestly moved when he asked me, “Will you work with us on the next project, too?
Expert Serizawa continues, “We still have a lot of work to do, for example, how to secure and train agricultural extension workers.
“The food situation in South Sudan has continued to deteriorate in recent years due to drought, flooding, and sabaktobi grasshopper damage, as well as a new coronavirus. Against this backdrop, since the signing of the Agreement on the Resolution of Conflicts (R-ARCSS) in 2018, security has calmed down and many people, including returnees from home and abroad, are reportedly returning to farming. We believe that JICA’s medium- to long-term support in cooperation with UN agencies and private NGOs will create a synergistic effect among them, and agriculture will eventually become a key industry, leading to stable peace and development of the country. We are determined to continue our activities from the same perspective while staying close to each and every farmer as much as possible.
Field surveys are underway (September 2021), including NGO activities in the aquaculture sector for full implementation of the Master Plan.
© Source JICA
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