Last year wildlife experts working in South Sudan told of a re-discovery that caused a flurry of excitement and hope. Surveys in war-affected areas where animals were thought to have perished or disappeared were teeming with life. One of the world’s biggest migrations — that of the white eared kobs — was still flowing with some 800,000 animals thundering across the plains and swamps.
“Many species have been greatly reduced. But this was good news and any good news is wonderful news after such a prolonged conflict” says Paul Elkan, the head of the South Sudan Country Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society , who took part in these first surveys for 25 years.
For those who have even heard of South Sudan, the first images likely to come to mind are of AK-47-toting soldiers, six-foot tall women and even taller men, land mines and almost no development at all. But the region’s officials are beginning to think of ways to spread new ideas about the south.
North Sudan battled a southern insurgency for more than 20 years before a 2005 peace deal gave the south semi-autonomy and a secession vote in 2011. The new government is busy building its physical, bureaucratic and legislative structures. This last group includes business and investment laws and a new tourism policy that officials hope will lead to an interest in unacknowledged wildlife and cultural riches in the war torn south.
Wildlife flourishes
The few individuals who have begun to gently research possibilities agree with Elkan that it’s the unusualness of the south and its untouched wildernesses that will bring in interest. “It’s an area very few people have seen close up,” Elkan says. “You can see lots of elephants in Kenya but in the south you can see them living in the Sudd, Africa’s largest freshwater swamp.” The vast Sudd — where it is possible to fly for hours over its islands and lily-filled waters — also contains incredible, possibly unparalleled, birdlife, including the famously rare shoebill stock.
While the south’s infrastructure seems painfully underdeveloped compared to neighbors Kenya and Uganda, their proximity could also bring a few curious tourists looking for something new to add onto a trip. These neighbors, with their well-developed safari industries, will likely provide the south’s first investors too. Elkan echoed businessmen already in Juba’s large hotel business when he envisaged the beginning of small scale and pricey tented camps, set in untouched wildernesses.
The south also has a rich variety of cultures with over 70 different tribes with distinct and colorful traditions that are proudly continued to the present day. Wildlife ministry official Laura Tete Lino sees these rural communities as direct beneficiaries of tourism as well as a draw. The tourism policy, to be passed this year, includes the promotion of community-based tourism. “We want to see eco-tourism run by the communities themselves. We plan to provide support and guidance,” Lino says. Once the policy is passed the South will launch an advertising push to try and get hardy investors hooked she adds.
Perhaps of most interest will be the south’s 13 game reserves and six national parks — including two vast ones — that were planned before the war. Never fully developed, they are now in some disarray although local populations still remember their boundaries, Elkan notes.
“People forget there was strong interest in visiting the south growing before the war,” Elkan remarks. A huge number of ex-rebel soldiers have been transferred to the wildlife division and are slowly being trained as rangers and wardens. It is partly because these rebel soldiers and commanders understood the future value of the wildlife and controlled hunting even in tough times that so many still survive to this day, Elkan explains.
Central to the ministry’s plan is a 42-bed lodge in Nimule Park that they have built out of an old structure seated at a high point in the reserve. The hotel should be finished in the next several months. Only a few hours drive from the capital Juba where both government and UN officials are in need of a hideaway for conferences, the 410 square kilometer park is also conveniently close to the Uganda border and full of elephants and impressive rapids. “In March we hope it will be ready to open it up to investors to come and take it over and manage it,” Lino states.
For Lino and others in the south’s government, tourism is more than just a hoped-for industry. Together with agriculture, the new southern government sees tourism as a crucial way for war-affected communities to begin making money, linking them to the region. It’s also crucial for a future that southerners hope will see them free of oil-dependency that currently controls their finances — especially now, with painfully low prices drilling holes in their budget.
