Paper short abstract:

A wide range of international actors has flooded South Sudan, since the signing of the CPA (2005). The paper shows preliminary results of new research on the position of vested and emerging political elites towards these actors, their interest in the new country, and the impact on development.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses how political elite in Juba relate to the wide range of international actors intervening and investing in the development of South Sudan. The world's youngest nation has great shortage of nearly everything but also enormous resources such as land, water, oil and minerals. Both elements have attracted attention of foreign actors. The paper compares two categories of international involvement. The first, development agencies and donors seek to bring services, improved institutions, peace and stability. The second category of interventions comes from investors with economic interest in the country's underexploited resources. Currently there is much discussion about the conditions under which such investments can be made beneficial to ordinary South Sudanese. The issue of land grabbing, for example, raises much concern.

The (dis)connections between development interventions and economic investments represent an underexplored field of research, in South Sudan and elsewhere. Aiming to contribute to filling this gap, our research zooms in on South Sudan's political, administrative and military elites, strongly rooted in the SPLM/A guerrilla and who play an important role in brokering relations between external actors and the Government. The paper analyses how these elites interpret, respond to, re-appropriate and transform ideas, policies and resources introduced by interveners. The research fits in with recent theoretical debates about 'hybridity' and 'frictions' in peacebuilding and development and provides insight into the ambiguous reality of a country that needs developments on all fronts in a political context in which short-term gains seems more profitable for the emerging elite.