The recent meeting between Bank of South Sudan Governor Hon. Dr. Addis Ababa Othow and British Ambassador to South Sudan David Ashley has brought renewed attention to the country’s plans to accelerate digital payments. The discussions covered monetary policy, strengthening the banking sector, the National Payment System, implementation of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS), and the expansion of digital payment services.
The optimism is understandable. Digital payments could speed up transactions, reduce reliance on cash, and give more people access to formal financial services. Still, a key question remains: Will this reform make public money easier to trace and harder to misuse?
South Sudan needs a financial system that functions better for businesses and ordinary citizens. Digital payments can make it easier to send and receive money and bring more people into the formal financial system. But technology alone will not end corruption. Its value will depend on whether the systems being introduced also strengthen the ability of institutions to know where public money goes and to question transactions that do not make sense.
If the institutions responsible for managing and overseeing public money remain weak, digitalization could simply allow money to move more quickly without improving oversight. For this reason, the success of digital payment reform should not be measured only by how quickly the country adopts new technology. It should also be measured by whether that technology improves the ability to account for public money.
The real value of digital payments
The greatest value of digital payments is not simply convenience. It is the record they can create.
When money moves digitally, a transaction can potentially show where the money came from, where it went, who received it, how much was transferred, and when the transaction took place. That information can become important evidence when questions arise about public spending.
One of the challenges with public finances is being able to establish what happens to government money after it is collected or allocated. When payments are made in cash, or when records are incomplete and scattered among different institutions, it becomes difficult to establish who received the money, how much was paid, and what it was used for. Meaningful oversight then becomes much harder.
A properly designed digital payment system could improve this situation by creating records that are easier to reconcile, verify, and examine.
But a record sitting inside a computer system is not accountability by itself. The information must be available to institutions with the authority and capacity to examine it. Auditors, oversight bodies, and other authorized institutions need to be able to connect a payment to the decision, contract, or budget that justified it.
Without that connection, the country may have more digital records without necessarily having more accountability.
The questions South Sudan should be asking
The real test will come when someone questions a government payment.
An auditor should be able to go back to the transaction, identify who approved it, examine the supporting documents, establish who received the money, and determine whether it was used for the purpose intended. Parliament should have access to the information it needs to scrutinize public spending, while relevant oversight institutions should be able to investigate when something does not add up.
These are not primarily technology questions. They are institutional questions that technology can either help answer or leave unanswered.
Good policies mean little if government agencies cannot carry them out. What matters in practice is whether decisions on paper can be connected to actual payments and, ultimately, to results people can see.
A digital payment system should therefore not be designed as a separate technology project. It should be considered part of the wider public financial management system.
Following the money
For significant government payments, there should be a distinct trail from the original authorization to the person or company that receives the money.
An auditor should be able to determine why a payment was made, how much was paid, who approved it, what contract or budget line supported it, and whether the obligation was actually fulfilled.
Consider a payment for road construction. The important question is not simply whether the contractor was paid electronically. The stronger question is whether the payment can be connected to the ministry’s budget allocation, the relevant procurement process, the contract, the amount approved, and the work that was supposed to be delivered.
If questions arise later, the records should make it possible to reconstruct what occurred without relying entirely on individual recollection or incomplete paperwork.
That would change the nature of public accountability. Instead of asking citizens simply to trust how public money is spent, public institutions would have a stronger basis for showing what was authorized, what was paid, and what was delivered.
This is where digitization can become more than a payment tool. It can become part of the evidence needed to manage public resources responsibly.
Technology is not enough
There is also a risk that digital systems could create the appearance of transparency without addressing the fundamental weaknesses that allow public money to be misused.
A digital record does not tell us whether a transaction was legitimate. A payment may be properly recorded and still be unsupported by a valid contract; an inflated contract may still pass through a digital system, and an electronic receipt does not by itself show that the intended work was completed.
The presence of a digital record does not answer the more important question of whether the transaction was legitimate.
There is also a question of who controls the records and who can examine them. If the institutions or individuals responsible for public finances can restrict access to information, alter records, or operate without meaningful independent scrutiny, technology alone will not solve the accountability problem.
Digitalization can improve the tools available to institutions. It cannot replace the institutions themselves. For digital payment reform to have a meaningful impact, three things need to work together:
- Digitalization – make transactions easier to record, reconcile, and trace.
- Transparency – make appropriate information about public spending accessible to authorized oversight bodies and, where appropriate, the public.
- Accountability – ensure that independent institutions can question, investigate, and act when something goes wrong.
The order matters less than the relationship between them. A digital system without transparency can leave important information out of sight. Transparency without institutions capable of acting on what they see can become little more than disclosure. And accountability without reliable records makes investigations more difficult.
What should success look like?
The move toward digital payments could change how South Sudan manages public money, but only if the systems are designed to answer basic questions about every significant public transaction.
Where did the money come from? Who authorized the payment? Why was it made? Who received it? What contract, budget allocation, or decision supported it? And was the intended result delivered?
These questions should not be an afterthought. They should help shape the design of the system from the beginning.
South Sudan needs more than a faster way to move money. It needs financial systems that make public money easier to account for and give institutions the information they need to act when something does not add up.
If digital payments can help achieve that, they could become an important tool for improving public financial management. But if South Sudan focuses only on moving from cash to electronic transactions, it could end up with a modern payment system while leaving the deeper accountability problem largely unchanged.
The opportunity is therefore bigger than digital payments themselves. South Sudan has a chance to build systems in which public money leaves a clearer trail – and where that trail can actually be followed.
The writer is a software engineer and IT consultant with a doctorate in Information Technology. He writes on technology and development, and has a particular interest in how digital systems can improve public services and accountability in South Sudan. He can be reached via john.rubena@gmail.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.
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