(JUBA) – Fifteen years after independence, South Sudan’s oil fields have produced crude worth an estimated US$70 billion in gross value, equivalent to approximately 420 trillion South Sudanese pounds at the prevailing real market rate of 6,000 SSP to the dollar in June 2026. Yet the average income in the country has fallen by close to two thirds over the same period. Gross domestic product per person stood above US$1,400 at independence in 2011.
By 2026 the International Monetary Fund places the figure at about US$488, or roughly 2.93 million SSP per year. In the global league table of human development compiled by the United Nations Development Programme, South Sudan remains fixed at the very bottom, ranked 193rd with a score of 0.388.
The gap between the total value of oil extracted and the condition of the population is now the subject of detailed findings released by the Afrique Justice consortium of investigative journalists. Their work traces how billions of dollars in petroleum proceeds have moved through channels that produced little visible public benefit while ordinary citizens became steadily poorer.
Public spending on health fell to just 0.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2024, down from 0.6 percent two years earlier, according to the World Bank’s Public Finance Review 2026. Government expenditure on education remained below one percent of GDP over the same period.
In absolute terms, health spending in 2024 amounted to a tiny fraction of the national budget, and in local currency terms the figures translate into minimal per capita outlay for the average citizen.
Oil has been the central pillar of the national budget since independence on 9 July 2011, when South Sudan inherited roughly three quarters of the oil fields of the former unified Sudan. In January 2012 a dispute with Khartoum over transit fees and allegations of crude seizures led Juba to shut down almost all production. The country deprived itself of its main source of income for more than a year.
Production resumed gradually in 2013, but the civil war that broke out later that year severely weakened oversight of the sector. Output has never returned to pre crisis levels. The United States Energy Information Administration estimated average daily production at about 149,000 barrels in 2023, and fresh disruption caused by the conflict in neighbouring Sudan further reduced exports in 2024.
South Sudan possesses substantial reserves but remains completely dependent on pipelines crossing Sudan to Port Sudan in order to reach export markets. Transit fees payable to Khartoum eat into the proceeds of every barrel shipped, and the costs are settled in hard currency, further reducing the local currency resources available for public services inside South Sudan.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has calculated that identifiable public oil revenues exceeding US$25.2 billion, equivalent to more than 151 trillion SSP, flowed through government accounts between 2011 and the present day. In its September 2025 report the Commission concludes that little of this money translated into essential services.
The report also documents the Oil for Roads programme, into which roughly US$2.2 billion was committed between 2021 and 2024. That sum is equivalent to about 13.2 trillion SSP at the June 2026 exchange rate. The programme was presented as a mechanism to exchange crude oil for infrastructure and was meant to deliver a modern road network. According to the Commission’s findings, out of more than 2,300 kilometres of planned roads only 105.6 kilometres were completed and properly surfaced, a completion rate below five percent.
Billions of dollars, or tens of trillions of South Sudanese pounds, were directed towards companies connected to a narrow circle of politically linked individuals while civil servants frequently went unpaid for months. The average public sector salary in South Sudan, already low when converted to hard currency, has been eroded further by the steady depreciation of the pound.
Almost no officials have faced legal consequences, and no credible mechanism has recovered losses on a scale approaching the alleged misappropriation. The proceeds of oil backed borrowing arrangements have compounded the problem. Under these deals the government receives immediate financing and commits future oil cargoes as repayment.
By the time the crude is lifted its value is already pledged against existing obligations, leaving nothing available for health, education or public sector salaries. The obligations are denominated in dollars while the domestic economy operates largely in pounds, creating a permanent squeeze on the local currency available for government operations.
For a country that sits on substantial oil wealth, the dependence on international donors to finance even basic state functions remains striking. The World Bank has warned repeatedly about the extensive pre sales of crude, oil backed borrowing and the considerable losses these practices impose on public finances. The pattern has become familiar: public funds disappear, infrastructure stays incomplete, and those who benefit from opaque financial networks secure their wealth in foreign centres such as Dubai and Nairobi while ordinary citizens are left with unfinished roads and a local currency that has lost much of its purchasing power. The pound has weakened considerably over the past fifteen years, mirroring the decline in the economic fortunes of the population.
South Sudan achieved political sovereignty in 2011 after decades of war and marginalisation. Millions of people believed independence would return control over land, oil and the future to the population. Fifteen years later a small elite has organised the systematic use of national wealth for private gain, reproducing patterns of extraction that independence was supposed to end. The US$70 billion figure, or 420 trillion SSP, does not represent the sum that reached state coffers, as transit fees, operators’ shares, debt repayments, production costs and numerous opaque deductions are removed first. It is a theoretical gross production value, but it still illustrates the sheer scale of the lost opportunity.
The country generates enough resource wealth to transform living standards. Instead GDP per capita has fallen from more than US$1,400 at independence to roughly US$488 in 2026, a decline of nearly two thirds. In local currency terms, average annual income has shrunk from the equivalent of more than 8.4 million SSP at the 2011 exchange rate to about 2.93 million SSP today. South Sudan remains the lowest ranked country on the human development index anywhere on earth.
In South Sudan, US$70 billion in gross oil value has been generated since 2011 while average income has dropped by close to two thirds and the country remains last on the global human development index.