Epilogue of a Short-Lived Land Rush: Private, Rural, and Urban Land Tenure in South Sudan

Abstract

This article investigates three forms of land tenure in South Sudan: investor leasehold, rural customary, and urban freehold. South Sudan’s experience with large-scale foreign investments in land mirrors that of the global land rush. A surge of investments from 2007 to 2013 has since tapered off to the point that there are only 17 land deals marked as “concluded” in the Land Matrix. This rapid, albeit brief, land rush demonstrated the pitfalls associated with large-scale land investments in the context of weak and contested governance institutions. Since the breakout of civil war in December 2013, the land question in South Sudan has been defined by government attempts to title land in urban areas and to formalize customary land systems in rural areas. These two processes have been highly contested on account of population movements and shifting power relations amid the civil war. Ensuing conflicts are often framed as ethnic in nature. From a political economy standpoint, however, these conflicts are the outcome of the expansion of market forces in urban areas and the codification of land tenure practices in rural areas, which subsequently exacerbates intergroup tensions.