53 Fun Facts About South Sudan

Which country became Africa's largest by area when South Sudan seceded?

Algeria is more than four-fifths Sahara by area, which is why most Algerians live in its fertile north along the Mediterranean coast.

Which actor launched a satellite watch on Sudan before the 2011 referendum?

George Clooney's project hired private satellites and published images within a day, which he called being 'antigenocide paparazzi' so leaders would know they were watched.

Which supermodel fled the war in what is now South Sudan as a child refugee?

Alek Wek was stopped by a model scout at a market in Crystal Palace, and the chance meeting launched her career.

South Sudan's capital stands on the banks of which river?

The White Nile makes the capital a river port, from which barges travel downstream toward Bor and Renk.

What is the Sudd?

A vast swamp, the Sudd takes its name from the Arabic for 'obstruction', because its floating mats of vegetation block boats on the Nile.

Which country borders South Sudan to the east?

Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, hosted the talks that produced the 1972 peace agreement ending Sudan's first civil war.

Which country resettled thousands of Sudan's 'Lost Boys', who had fled the civil war as children, in 2001?

The United States stepped in because conditions in the overcrowded refugee camps where the boys had spent years had become unsustainable.

Whose South Sudan peacekeepers got their first mandate to use force since WWII?

Japan withdrew its troops in 2017, and Defence Minister Tomomi Inada resigned after her ministry was found to have misled lawmakers about the mission.

Which southern rebel leader died in a helicopter crash in 2005, weeks after becoming Sudan's First Vice-President?

John Garang's death set off three days of riots in Khartoum, where many southerners suspected the crash was no accident.

South Sudan's Mundari cattle herders tint their hair orange by rinsing it in what?

Cow urine also serves the Mundari as a wash for hands and faces, because herders treat it as a natural antiseptic.

South Sudan's civil war of December 2013 began as a power struggle between the president and which ex-deputy?

Riek Machar, whom the president accused of plotting a coup, returned to government as a vice-president under a 2018 power-sharing deal.

Part of what is now South Sudan was once leased, for his lifetime only, to which European king?

Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State troops seized the land from Mahdist forces in 1897, and it passed to British-run Sudan after he died.

In 1898 Britain and France nearly went to war over which spot in what is now South Sudan?

At Fashoda the French, outnumbered ten to one, were ordered to withdraw, and war was averted.

Which general governed Sudan's far south in the 1870s, before dying at Khartoum?

Charles George Gordon refused the governor's £10,000 salary, saying £2,000 a year was enough, and spent his term fighting the slave trade.

Sudan was governed from 1899 to 1956 as a 'condominium' shared by Britain and which other country?

Egypt's 1952 revolution brought in leaders who made Sudanese independence a priority, so the joint rule ended within four years.

Which is the largest ethnic group in South Sudan?

The Dinka seal a marriage with bride-wealth paid in cattle, so a young man without a herd often has to put off marrying for years.

The Jonglei Canal was dug to save water lost to what?

Evaporation and plants in the wetlands take about half the water, so the canal was meant to carry it straight past and send more north for farming.

Which faith do most South Sudanese follow, by 2020 estimates?

Christianity spread as colonial rulers favoured missionaries, who built most of the south's schools, while nearly a third follow traditional faiths.

Which oil-rich border region's referendum on joining Sudan or South Sudan never officially happened?

Abyei staged its own unofficial referendum in 2013 and voted almost unanimously to join South Sudan, but neither government recognised the result.

Sudan, captured as a calf in what is now South Sudan, was the last known male of which rhino?

The northern white rhino Sudan was given a Tinder profile in 2017 to raise money for rhino IVF, and died in 2018 leaving only two females.

As of 2025, South Sudan was among the last few countries where which parasitic disease still infected people?

Guinea worm has no vaccine or cure, yet filtering drinking water helped cut cases from about 3.5 million in the mid-1980s to about a dozen a year.

South Sudan's three historic regions are Bahr el Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile and which other?

Equatoria's governor Emin Pasha, cut off by war, had no wish to leave when Henry Morton Stanley's expedition arrived to rescue him in 1888.

In 2016 South Sudan became a full member of which regional bloc?

The East African Community let South Sudan in only after a five-year wait: it had applied as soon as it became independent, but its instability held the bid up.

A 2023 survey found South Sudan's Boma and Badingilo parks host the world's largest what?

At about six million antelope, this land mammal migration is more than double the Serengeti's famous wildebeest migration.

Which antelope is the most numerous in South Sudan?

The white-eared kob came through decades of war about five million strong.

What does the blue triangle on South Sudan's flag contain?

A yellow star sits on a triangle that must be light blue, not deep blue, South Sudan's media regulator warned printers in 2023.

Which large wading bird, one of whose main strongholds is South Sudan, often hunts lungfish?

The shoebill is usually silent, but at the nest it clatters its bill and can let out a cattle-like moo.

What is the currency of South Sudan?

The South Sudanese pound arrived days after independence, and Sudan answered within a week with new notes of its own, which the south called 'economic war'.

Which word follows 'South Sudan' in the title of the country's national anthem?

'South Sudan Oyee!', roughly 'Hurrah!', won a televised contest under the working title 'Land of Cush', a biblical name later cut from the lyrics.

Which center, born in what is now South Sudan, was one of the two tallest players in NBA history?

Manute Bol's official papers from Sudan listed him as five feet two, and he explained that officials had measured him sitting down.

Former NBA forward Luol Deng, born in South Sudan, played international basketball for which country?

Luol Deng, who later played for Great Britain, was obsessed with football in south London until a Brixton coach convinced him to stick with basketball.

In a July 2024 warm-up game, which NBA player's late layup edged South Sudan's men 101-100?

LeBron James's layup with eight seconds left settled it, after South Sudan had led by 14 at the interval.

At the 2012 London Olympics, marathon runner Guor Marial from South Sudan competed under what banner?

Guor Marial ran as one of the Independent Olympic Athletes because South Sudan had not yet joined the Olympic movement, and he turned down a place under Sudan's flag.

Rapper Emmanuel Jal, author of a 2009 memoir about his early life, was what before his music career?

Emmanuel Jal was a child soldier until an aid worker adopted him and smuggled him out of the war.

Kevin Carter's Pulitzer-winning photo, taken in what is now South Sudan, shows a starving child watched by what?

The child watched by the vulture was long believed to be a girl, until his father later revealed that he was a boy named Kong Nyong.

Which sprinter, born in Australia to South Sudanese parents, became the fastest 16-year-old ever over 200 metres in 2024?

Gout Gout's father says the family name should be Guot, garbled by a spelling error on their papers, and he wants it changed back.

In 1976, one of the first two known outbreaks of which disease began in Nzara, in what is now South Sudan?

Ebola takes its name not from Nzara but from a river near the other 1976 outbreak, in a village in Zaire.

Which Sudanese president attended South Sudan's independence celebrations as a guest?

Omar al-Bashir attended even though South Sudan had just split from his Sudan, which the day before had become the first state to recognise it.

Which country's troops fought alongside government forces in the 2013 civil war and were invited back in 2025?

Uganda at first said its troops were there mainly to help evacuate civilians, until President Museveni confirmed they had fought rebels north of the capital.

In July 2018, what did the UN Security Council impose on South Sudan, almost five years into its civil war?

The arms embargo passed with only the minimum nine votes, as six members abstained, wary of undermining regional peace talks.

The name 'Sudan' comes from a phrase meaning what?

'Land of the Blacks' once named the whole belt of Africa south of the Sahara, and only gradually narrowed to one country.

Which creole language, spoken by about 1.45 million, is the lingua franca of towns and commerce?

Joseph Abuk's company performed Cymbeline in Juba Arabic at Shakespeare's Globe in 2012, choosing it as 'the language that is everyone's and no one's'.

Which early recogniser of South Sudan ordered South Sudanese migrants to go home in 2012?

Israel recognised South Sudan a day after independence, then offered each migrant about $1,300 and a plane ticket to leave before deportation.

Which 2020 Netflix horror film follows a couple who flee South Sudan to seek asylum?

His House's couple can't just move out when the haunting starts, because their asylum rules bar them from choosing where they live.

Which accord ended the Second Sudanese Civil War and set up South Sudan's independence referendum?

Under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement the former rebels joined a unity government, but in 2007 they walked out over oil and troop withdrawals, returning two months later.

Which country borders South Sudan to the west?

The Central African Republic's border with South Sudan has no agreed northern end, since both Sudans claim the mineral-rich Kafia Kingi area, which Sudan holds.

In May 2012, South Sudan became the 209th member of which organisation?

FIFA voted South Sudan in just ten months after independence, making its national football team eligible for World Cup qualifiers for the first time.

President Salva Kiir belongs to which church?

Salva Kiir is Roman Catholic, and in 2019 Pope Francis knelt and kissed the feet of Kiir and his rival, begging them to keep the peace.

Oil executive Ian Lundin went on trial in 2023 over alleged war crimes in what is now South Sudan, in which country?

Ian Lundin was tried in Sweden, accused of asking Sudan's government to have its army secure an oil field, which prosecutors say led to villages being bombed and burned.

South Sudan's oil exports flow through a pipeline to which Red Sea city?

Port Sudan was built in the early 1900s to replace nearby Suakin, the historic port whose harbour was choked with coral.

In 1983, what did Sudan's president impose nationwide, rekindling civil war?

Gaafar Nimeiry imposed Sharia law just 11 years after he himself had ended the first civil war by granting the south self-rule.

Which oil company discovered the Unity oil field near Bentiu, in what is now South Sudan?

Chevron suspended its work there after rebels attacked its base in 1984, leaving the field untapped for years.

In 2017, what was declared in parts of South Sudan for the first time anywhere in six years?

Famine here was 'man-made', the UN's food agency said, because three years of war had stopped farmers growing crops; a surge of aid ended it within four months.