South Sudan Votes to Become the World’s Newest Country

By Ella Arnold

The people of South Sudan, who have faced persecution from the north for more than twenty years, have voted in a landslide election to secede from northern Sudan, resulting in the creation of the world’s newest country later this summer.

The major source of the civil wars that have plagued the country of Sudan for more than two decades stems from the religious differences between Sudan’s mostly Arab northern region and its primarily animist and Christian southern region. More than 2 million people were killed in Sudan before a peace agreement was adopted in 2005. The president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity committed against the people of the Darfur region of Sudan.

Today officials announced the election’s final vote count from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Of the more than 3.8 million southern Sudanese, 98.83 percent voted to secede from the north to form their own country.

Official independence will be declared on July 9, 2011. Plans for a new capital building in South Sudan’s capital city, Juba, have already been proposed. Last month, the government announced that South Sudan has been suggested as the official name for the new country.

Issues such as citizenship and oil-revenue rights, however, still are significant hurdles that the people of South Sudan must overcome if they truly want to gain total independence from the north. Furthermore, South Sudan is one of the poorest regions in the world due to extreme poverty and the longstanding civil war with northern Sudan.

The United States has said that recognizing southern independence may eventually lead to the lifting of the economic sanctions previously placed on the north. And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised today’s developments in South Sudan as “a historic step” toward the implementation of Sudan’s comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

For some related programs at The Commonwealth Club, see:
Land Grab in Africa: The Case of Ethiopia: 2/1/11
The Last Jews of Yemen: 3/14/11
Jesse Jackson's 2004 speech, in which he discusses the humanitarian crisis in Sudan
David Kay's 2004 speech, in which he includes Sudan in his discussion of failed states

What Will Dambisa Moyo Think: G-8 Promises More Aid to Poor Countries

When Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo spoke at The Commonwealth Club in June, she made clear her contention that rich Western countries should evolve their African development programs away from open-ended commitments of money and toward investment in poor countries in ways that create jobs and strengthen institutions there. [Listen to audio.]
She argued that governments on that continent had grown content and corrupt from the flow of aid dollars, often with few strings attached, and they had no desire or need to actually provide the services their citizens need to create businesses and jobs and civic institutions. Moyo's views have been very controversial, especially among the international aid community, but they have made her an important voice in the debate over how to charge up Africa's development process.

One wonders her reaction to today's news that the G-8 leading economic powers (well, China's the third largest economy and it's not a part of the G-8, so we're going to have to think of another way of referring to that group) has pledged $20 billion over three years to poor countries in an attempt to create "food security." Critics are complaining that much of the aid pledged is recycled from previous commitments, but it might also mark a move toward Moyo's view that investment and not handouts will do more for Africans.

Reuters India reports:

... Obama, travelling to Ghana on his first trip to Africa as president, [used] the L'Aquila summit to push for a shift towards agricultural investment from food aid. Washington will make $3.5 billion available to the 3-year programme.

"There is no reason Africa should not be self-sufficient when it comes to food," said Obama, recalling that his relatives in Kenya live "in villages where hunger is real", though they themselves are not going hungry.

Dambisa Moyo: Replace Victims with Partners

Economist Dambisa Moyo has become a controversial figure in the multi-billion dollar industry of foreign (mostly Western) aid to Africa. She proposes evolving the system from open-ended dumping of dollars on African governments to a system of investment that stimulates African businesses and helps them build trading relationships with other countries, in particular, China.

Moyo discussed her thesis in a June 5, 2009, program at The Commonwealth Club of California. In it, she noted that she has drawn a lot of harsh criticism from people accusing her of favoring dire consequences for the continent. Moyo, who is Zambian, framed her solution in terms of forcing African countries to live up to their responsibilities to provide basic services and opportunities to their peoples, and to seeing Africans as something more than victims unable to provide for their own future.

You can read a long excerpt from Moyo's presentation in the cover story of the September issue of The Commonwealth magazine, which is mailed free to members of The Commonwealth Club. Or you can listen to the entire program from our audio archives.

Just this past weekend, Moyo was a guest on Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN's world-affairs program, where she traded opinions with another guest on the most effective plans for African development. See the embedded video below: