For three years now peace has reigned in Juba, administrative center of South Sudan, which as a result has expanded rapidly, as people from all of southern Sudan’s numerous and varied ethnic groups are drawn to the new capital. But whatever the tribe — pastoralist, agriculturalist or a mixture of the two — everyone wants at least one cow to be slaughtered for their wedding. “The problem is that a good bull can cost over $1,200 and even a cow something like $500,” a local government official said. Similar figures are cited all over town and other parts of the south are only moderately cheaper. Even for the newly moneyed southerners, those who have attained government contracts or who form part of the massively oversized, oil-funded civil service, a cow for the wedding feast is a major expense. The problem is, explained the official, that southerners would rather keep or trade their cows for marriage than sell them for cash. It is an attitude the southern government is trying to change into a more capitalist perspective as semi-autonomous South Sudan struggles to join regional and international markets after decades of civil conflict.
A plentiful supply
High meat-costs and unreliable sourcing also affect Juba’s larger camps and hotels, erected to provide accommodation for the capital’s thousands of new residents since the 2005 North-South peace deal. Many still fly in meat despite being hit with at least 56% import tax at the airport. Juba’s residents, used to paying $2.50 for a semi-warm beer and $1 for four tomatoes, may not find the sky-high cost of meat — a hand-sized lump costing $8 in the market — any more surprising. But post-conflict southern Sudan has no factories or commercial farms. Beer and tomatoes have to be trucked in on the bad roads that link it to neighboring Uganda. Cows, on the other hand, could hardly be more plentiful. John Ogoso Kanisio, director general of planning, investment and marketing at the Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries (MARF), estimates that there are probably 8-10 million cattle in the south, making their numbers equal to the human population that is still yet to be confirmed in an April 2008 census. This 1:1 ratio is probably the highest in the world.
Meat or marriage?
“You have to pay cows for marriage, you cannot get it for free or money,” said Awut Nyandeng, who lives in Juba but comes from the pastoralist areas to the north. She has been offered over 400 cows already, which she declined even though it is impressive. The man was too old and she wants to pursue her career before getting married. But for a woman of education, beauty or good family, negotiations between the future in-laws often result in bride prices of more than 200 head of cattle. The major challenge for MARF is to turn hearts and minds away from this stalwart and long-engraved position on cattle to one that can beef up an economy currently painfully dependent on crude oil. Peacetime has turned many minds to marriage, long waited-for during the more than 20 years of conflict. Others, with new jobs, think about a second or third wife. And many in-laws are demanding cows promised as bride-price during the long war years. This backlog, together with a sudden increase in ready cash, has sent the price of cattle sky high, explained Kanisio. “Marriage without cows is as stable and good,” ventured Festo Kumbo, MARF’s minister, at a press conference last year where he asked journalists to help him turn southerners’ to the meat market. He said that selling cattle to market was the only solution to what he sees as an upcoming problem of overgrazing. Swollen herds have already begun to damage some of the South’s extensive pastures in some areas. “We need to re-educate people about using cows for economic gain. Let us use our animals to bring us more money, rather than keeping them in high numbers.”
Uganda trade
The hike in southern prices has reversed a previous flow of cattle out of Sudan to Uganda. Since the January 2005 peace deal Sudanese have imported cows in unprecedented numbers. During the war, southern Sudan supplied northern Uganda with more than 2,000 head of cattle a month. Now cattle are coming in from Uganda. “We have more animals than Uganda but they are bringing them here. Our market is more lucrative because we have made them expensive,” Kumbo said, adding that Ugandans are free to bring in their cattle under a regional free trade agreement, COMESA. He also has other grumbles about the South’s dependency on Uganda. Southern Sudan’s great inland delta — the swampy Sudd — together with the vast Nile contains as many fish as Uganda’s intensely harvested Lake Victoria, he believes. But still, fish are being trucked up, despite the challenges of sometimes flooded roads served by rusting colonial bridges, to be sold in the South’s main towns. As the fish example shows, the lack of commercial animal trade in southern Sudan, massively alienated during the conflict years, is also partly a lack of experience and systems and not just attitudes. Others have said that the shift in cattle trade — with cows now being brought in from Uganda — may also have political roots. Continuing peace talks between the government of Uganda and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) together with a ceasefire agreement have resulted in vastly improved security in northern Uganda, the area that borders southern Sudan. Displaced people are moving back home and trade between Uganda’s north and the rest of the country has increased. Northern Uganda now has more options and is less reliant on meat from south Sudan and those with a surplus look across the border to sell.
Cow banks
South Sudan has a problem with cash liquidity, especially in regional areas just beginning to open up to development, explained Patrick Bettersworth from the southern-owned Nile Commercial Bank. Part of the problem, he thinks, is that for many southerners, the value of money in the bank is just not trusted. “People like to see their wealth. They don’t want a bit of paper saying that they are rich,” he said. Cows are still considered the best way to invest in some parts of the South. As Kanisio pointed out, “We lack banks, so the best way for people in the risky areas is to buy cows.” He sees the vast and river-fed plains of the South as ripe for raising cattle commercially, a practice that the South’s pastoralist tribes have been perfecting for thousands of years. Northern Sudan used to be dependent on the South for cattle and Kaniso sees the whole of drier northern Africa, like Egypt and Libya, as well as the Gulf as potential big buyers. “And our cows are 100% organic!” he brightly exclaimed. But serious investors will probably wait until the World Organization for Animal Health declares Sudan free of the cattle disease rinderpest. “Our hope is that the whole country is declared rinderpest free by end-2008.”
