Southern Sudan development 'hindered by World Bank'

World's poorest region has received only a quarter of the $2bn in aid promised after 2005 peace settlement

The reconstruction of southern Sudan is being held back by World Bank bureaucracy and rich countries' failure to deliver the money they promised, say government officials and development groups.

The region the size of France, which expects to become the world's newest nation next year if a referendum leads to the expected secession of the south, was promised up to $2bn (£1.3bn) in aid by the international community when hostilities between it and the Arab north of the country ended in 2005.

But five years after the peace deal was struck, donors have provided only $524m and the region left shattered by 22 years of war and neglect is believed to be the poorest in the world – for the most part without schools, roads, a health service or safe drinking water.

"We are very frustrated. We feel we are trying to build a country from scratch, but we are being kept at square one. Less than 25% of the money that was pledged has come through. It has just trickled in. The infrastructural problems are vast," said Lewis Gore George, director general of the southern Sudan planning ministry in Juba.

He appealed to the southern Sudanese diaspora to return to help. "We are building a country from scratch but it is very hard. We need technicians, civil servants, civil engineers, water engineers, architects. We would like the UK and other agencies to redirect aid towards bringing people back to support their country. Our sons and daughters are in Australia, London, the US and everywhere. We want them to come back for three or four months [at a time] to help. They would not have to stay long. They would see the huge potential of southern Sudan," he said.

Only in Juba, the centre of the aid industry, does any reconstruction appear to be taking place. The city on the banks of the Nile has nearly doubled in size in five years to more than 400,000 people. There are some new roads and housing and Jica, the Japanese international development agency, has built a river port which allows building materials and food to be brought in far cheaper than by truck.

But the reality is that development is wafer-thin. According to Peter Mahal Chooli, a senior civil servant in the ministry of water, World Bank money for projects such as schools, roads, water supplies and airstrips has not materialised, the whole region has under 60km of paved road and outside Juba, the infrastructure is in a worse condition than 35 years ago.

"The priority now is water. Only 30% of Juba has access to safe water and there is no sanitation. It is a very serious situation," said Chooli.

There is also growing frustration that what little aid is being pumped into the economy is not leading to employment. Few southern Sudanese have any training, and international NGOs, the private sector and UN bodies have employed up to 30,000 Ugandans and Kenyans. Juba has also become one of the most expensive cities in Africa, with all its food and much of its drinking water imported.

Complex rules imposed by the World Bank on the government have also seriously hindered development, say experts. In a paper published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last month, Fiona Davies, until recently UN development programme adviser in the southern Sudanese government's ministry of finance, said the bank requires up to 62 separate steps to procure anything, leading to inordinate delays and frustration.

"World Bank procedures are not designed for rapid delivery. Competitive procurement using World Bank procedures is unable to deliver swift results. The government of southern Sudan had nowhere near the capacity to navigate complex procurement and contracting procedures," she said.

Non-government groups also accuse the bank and donor governments of imposing complicated rules on competitive tendering. "Senior donor representatives based in Khartoum spent too little time in southern Sudan. A fundamental lack of understanding of the local context [has] further contributed to unacceptable delays in [aid] delivery," said Mayer Mailer of Oxfam, author of a recent report on southern Sudanese progress.

This week, the Famine Early Warning System sponsored by the US government, said the number of people without enough food in the region had increased "significantly" because of escalating conflicts and bad weather.

According to the UN there are at least 350,000 displaced people in the region and more than 350 intertribal conflict incidents were reported in December last year. Conflicts among tribes have claimed several thousand lives in south Sudan in 2009, with the worst violence in and around the vast, often impassable state of Jonglei.

Britain announced a £54m aid package for humanitarian aid for elections last week. Much of the money will be used by UN agencies and NGOs to provide emergency water and sanitation, healthcare and shelter.

John Vidal, The Guardian 18-02-2010