After President Kiir’s Intervention, What is Next for the Deferred Nile Rivers Dredging and Canalization in South Sudan

By Deng Diar Diing, Mombasa, Kenya

Tuesday, 12 July 2022 (PW) — A statement by President Salva Kiir Mayardit two days ago directing that a structured process be instituted and utilised to determine the course of action the government should take to address disastrous flooding while keeping an eye on strategic ecological and environmental needs opens a new chapter! The President’s intercession came at a timely moment as the issue was becoming toxic and divisive among our people, with the possibility of spiralling into violence. And a probable wish by a foreign agent would want to see South Sudanese butcher themselves while their resources are being pillaged.

The statement came to bridge the ever-widening Zone of Possible Agreement(ZOPA)  between various distinctly expressed purviews, aggravated by conspiracy theories that a foreign hand was nudging one side to act inappropriately to serve its interests. The other side was also accusing the other side of being indifferent to the sufferings of the people because its members all live in comfort outside the country and in urban centres where the havoc of flooding appears abstract to them.

While those who genuinely believe that their people are suffering and any method available, including dredging, which appeared to be the quickest fix, could be used to reverse the situation, the other side of the aisle held a strong position that environmental and climatic forewarnings hold primacy over any argument thereto. They argued that SUDD should never be tampered with under any condition because it is our wealth and ecological lifeline, considering ominous climatic change indicators. The ferocity of opposing discourses, rightly so, demanded intervention from someone with authority and legitimacy. President Slava Kiir is that person, and he did the right thing.

For those of us who believe an action anchored on evidence-based scientific studies was necessary, this statement came as succour!

I thanked Mr President because, as a professional who worked in different parts of South Sudan with lots of experience in Bhar Al-Ghazal and Upper Nile, where I witnessed how this invaluable asset, water, has also been weaponized by nature to hold people in a quagmire of abject poverty, I am strongly convinced that something should be done to change the course. From abject poverty-born insecurity, which has robbed us of our homes, lives, and other means of livelihood. I, therefore, advocated and still do for a calculated intervention that will ensure that excess water is drained, stored, or canalized but will also maintain enough water for ecological balance and future development growth!

Now that the President has spoken in favour of detailed studies as a prerequisite to any sort of intervention, what next? In different parts of the world, once the President speaks, it is considered to be incumbent upon technocrats to translate his statement into a policy and an action!

According to Prof. Marshall Ganz and Rita E. Hauser, Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, this is where leadership begins. The stories of the constituency about how flooding has been affecting them and or how dredging, draining, or impounding will cause environmental catastrophe has to be turned into a commitment of resources and efforts, warranting a need for a structure through which a strategy for action is devised.

He presents this mind frame in the graphs as shown:

©Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2015

At the bottom are the required resources to instigate calls for action to achieve the desired goal. In our SUD discourse, what does this mean? Let me use Professor Ganz’s Model of Organizing and Action to analyze what should be done next!!

1. Resources:

When a constituency is in a state of desideratum, as we do, it should activate its available resources to illuminate the need for action. The constituency, therefore, uses what it has (resources) to build what it needs(power) to bring about what it desires(change). Our people need environmental stability and therefore have used their sons and daughters, both from existing structures and the Social Media Criminals community, to raise the concern. These raised concerns unfurled into different arguments that have at times appeared opposed and acrimonious! The fact that we have done this peacefully and effectively is a sign of a vigilant and informed society that can foment a dialogue and negotiate to arrive at a solution. We are the resources our society needs to survive.

2. Shared Story:

For a story to warrant policy action, it must be a story of many hustled into one or many forms. True, if our story on Sud with strong views had not come to the fore, President Salva Kiir would not have been perturbed to intervene and provide a direction. Once again, congratulations to our people, especially the Social Media Community, for soberly advocating to give SUD and its environs policy importance in our current state of affairs in the country. Now, we have built a shared story and a commitment from the head of state has been secured to solve the problem. What commitments are required?

3. Shared Commitment:

A commitment to solving a problem that has come to the fore starts with authorities admitting it as a policy issue that should be dealt with. To SMC, kudos. Our advocacy has prompted President Salva Kiir to commit his authority and government to investigate issues raised to inform action. The President should also remember to commit resources to the process.

It is now incumbent upon citizens, as a matter of civic duty, to commit their resources, both time and intellectual capital, to address flooding with well-thought-through mitigations that assure ecological stability in the aftermath. Both intellectuals within the government and without should be ready to avail their resources in a structured manner. The phase of activism has been closed by the President. Let’s get to work, and this requires order!!

Rent-seeking actions must stop. Anybody who wants to contribute to the discourse will need to do so through the structure set, whether through community mobilization or acting as a resource person for the structure set! Town hall meetings and other discussions will be used during the studies. Anything else at this stage is noise. But this is only possible if structures that are open to the participation of citizens are available.

4. Shared Structures:

This is the organization, not cherry-picking! Here, leadership is required to channel resources and energies into action. In our situation, this is a complex project, technical in engineering and environmental senses. It is also economic and political. I suggest that a Project Management Team led by a senior civil engineer, preferably with experience at the Ministry of Water Resources, and deputized by an environmentalist, again with some exposure to the Ministry of Environment or environmental agency, be appointed. The team can also include academics and national experts with tested skills in public health, economics, public policy research, and sociology, who would either offer their expertise on a part-time basis or voluntarily. Others can be appointed on a permanent basis as well, if resources allow.  

More critically, a National Intelligence Service official should form part of the team to look out for the possibility of foreign hands interfering in and with the process. And when I talk of National Intelligence Officer, I mean an intellectual who can read documents and is able to do comparative intelligence, not gun-trotting boys usually assigned to earn allowances. This will need an intelligence officer who fully understands the dynamics of global governance and diplomacy and the enabling yet invisible role of the intelligence community in transnational matters like Sudd Waters. This will help assure and protect the public from possible foreign manipulation of the process as expressed already.

5. Shared Strategy:

Again, Professor Ganz posits that organized communities strategize how they can turn the resources they have into the power they need to get what they want. Here, South Sudanese will need to utilize the structures formed above and available human capital to understand how they can act by deliberating on their conditions (flooding and possible droughts), assigning the responsibility for those conditions (possible mitigations), devising ways they could use their resources to change those conditions, setting a theory of change, and translating that theory into specific goals.

This is where an action plan with a detailed feasibility study is designed. And in my opinion, it will need the above team, of course, supported with resources to develop terms of reference for the study, invite international specialized water consulting firms (excluding Egyptians and their associates) in the international competitive bidding process and recruit a credible firm!

6. Shared Action:

Here, with a technical team led by engineers, (hydrologists) and environmentalists with the membership of economists, public health specialists, sociologists, and public policy experts guiding the consultants, detailed studies are carried out. The study will, of course, involve collecting hydrological, hydraulic, and geotechnical engineering data; possible environmental impact; social impact; economic impact and feasibility; and political implications.

This will involve holding town hall meetings and interviewing communities, professionals, intellectuals, politicians, and former employees of the Jonglei project. It will also involve consulting existing literature. It is at this point where people who have something to share, like Prof. Tim of the University of Oxford, earlier invited by the Office of the President, can be invited to hear what they know and can add to the process and output!

 The Consultant’s Report will take the following format:

1. Describe the project and the results of the interviews and findings.
2. Outline the potential solutions resulting from the project.
3. List the criteria for evaluating these solutions.
4. State which solution is most feasible for the project.
5. Make a concluding statement.

The author, Deng Diar Diing (P.E), is a PhD candidate and the Deputy Director, Infrastructure Development and Management Secretariat, Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority in MOMBASA, Kenya, and can be reached via his email: Deng Diar diardeng@gmail.com

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