2025 Flood Emergency in South Sudan
In October 2025 almost one million South Sudanese are stranded on muddy islands after swollen rivers submerged entire towns, from Bentiu to Bor.
Yet in Juba, decision-makers debate budget lines rather than floodwalls, even though oil fields have earned roughly 20 billion dollars since 2005—income that could have financed defences, clinics and roads.
Oil Wealth Versus Widespread Poverty
World Bank projections suggest 92 percent of citizens may live below the poverty line in 2025, an incongruity for a state ranked third in sub-Saharan oil reserves.
A UN review of the Oil for Roads scheme, released in September 2025, found 2.2 billion dollars misappropriated between 2021 and 2024, with 90 percent of agreed highways still on paper.
Unfinished Roads and Vanishing Funds
Vice-President Benjamin Bol Mel, whose companies hold many of the contracts, insists “work continues as funding arrives”; field inspections, however, record only scattered gravel beds where paved corridors were promised.
Skewed Budgets Hit Social Services
Budget execution figures deepen the puzzle: the Ministry of Presidential Affairs overshot allocations by 584 percent between 2020 and mid-2024, while Health received just 19 percent and Agriculture 7 percent of planned resources.
Consequently hospitals fight cholera without medicine, 1.65 million children face malnutrition, and farmers watch their fields drown absent early-warning systems.
Humanitarian Shortfalls and Security Risks
UNHCR has secured only a third of the 300 million dollars sought for emergency shelter; the World Food Programme warns it needs 404 million to supply rations through December 2025.
“This is not a meteorological crisis but a resource-management crisis,” a UN investigator observed, cautioning that unpaid soldiers and civil servants, nine months without salaries, could fracture the fragile peace.
Calls are growing for stricter oversight of oil proceeds, linking future loans to transparent procurement, yet residents stranded on rooftops remain impatient for tangible change.