Outsiders rarely know this, but South Sudan holds a quiet kind of power. Beneath its wide skies lies soil so rich that, if properly used, it could feed not only its own children but also hungry mouths across large stretches of Africa. More than thirty million hectares of farmland, dependable seasonal rains, and the White Nile cutting through the heart of the country, these are not small blessings. Nature has done its part. By natural standards, this young nation ought to be East Africa’s main source of grain.
Instead, the opposite has happened. South Sudan has become a painful exception. A place of deep hunger in the middle of a land that asks only to be planted. The earth does not refuse seeds. The rains still come. The tragedy is not environmental. It is entirely human-made. War and local disputes have turned fields that could yield fortunes into empty, dangerous spaces.
For more than ten years now, the noise of farming, the simple sounds of digging, sowing, and weeding, has been buried under gunfire. No farmer will risk a bullet to tend a patch of vegetables. Across the country, cattle raids that turn bloody, revenge cycles that never end, and fighting between armed groups have chased millions from their homes. Families who once grew sorghum with their own hands now wait in United Nations camps for bags of food aid from abroad.
You can draw a straight line from conflict to hunger. When fighting breaks out in a farming zone, say, parts of Equatoria, Jonglei, or Unity State, people flee. The planting window closes. And when you miss one planting season, you lose an entire year of food. Do that again and again, and a once-promising farming region becomes a permanent recipient of relief. The people of South Sudan have learned how to survive under impossible conditions. But they have lost, or been pushed away from, the simple act of growing their own food.
To every leader and every person who has signed a peace agreement, only to go back to fighting, please hear this plainly. The world is tired. It does not make sense to keep shipping food into a country where the ground itself is begging to be used. The World Food Programme was never meant to raise a nation forever.
Your own people do not dream of foreign grain. They dream of walking to their own plots of land with a hoe over their shoulder. They dream of selling groundnuts and okra to neighbours. They want to feed themselves and feel their own worth again. But dignity cannot grow where there is no safety.
The real task is not to sign more papers in foreign hotels. It is quiet, stubborn work inside the villages. Disarm the young men carrying rifles and give them seed baskets instead. Sit down with farming communities and herders before the next planting season and settle their arguments over land. Fix the roads that lead to the fertile zones so that a farmer with a full sack of maize can actually reach a market.
The world has sent enough wheat and cooking oil. What South Sudan still lacks is the simple courage of its own leaders to stop the killing. Every morning, peace is delayed, and another field sits empty. Every bullet that flies today means a basket that stays empty two months from now.
Let the people put down their guns and pick up their hoes. They were never meant to beg. They were made for farming. But only the leadership can unlock that future, and only by choosing peace over staying in influence. The land is not the problem. The land is ready. The only question is whether you are.
The Writer is a South Sudanese Journalist. He can be reached via khamislokudu@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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