By Kei Emmanuel Duku
A critical artery for South Sudan’s trade remains caught between fiscal bottlenecks and local anxieties as high-ranking tax officials descended on the border town of Nimule this Tuesday to salvage a project stalled by the nation’s banking woes.
According to a statement posted on the tax collector social media post, The South Sudan Revenue Authority (SSRA) sent its heavy hitters Col. Wani Joseph Loku, Deputy Commissioner for Compliance, and Zizi Maksudi, Deputy Commissioner for Trade Facilitation to the construction site of the Custom exit road. Their mission was to troubleshoot a vital link to the Rock City parking yard that is already four months behind schedule.
While the machinery is finally humming, the project’s heartbeat is faint. Originally slated for a July 2025 launch, contractor Rhino Stars and Supply didn’t break ground until November. The culprit is not a lack of will, but a lack of liquid cash.
“The government might release the funds on paper, but the banks are often empty,” said Apollo Robert, the site and material engineer, standing amidst the half-finished earthworks. “It creates a domino effect. We can’t pay our local laborers, we can’t secure materials, and the community starts to lose faith.”
Beyond the balance sheets, a more human conflict is brewing over a single drainage culvert. The engineering team finds itself caught between a rock and a schoolhouse.
“It’s a delicate balancing act,” Robert noted. “One group of residents is terrified of seasonal flooding if the culvert isn’t built. Meanwhile, the administrators at Hai Kenissa Primary School fear that installing it will funnel a torrent of water directly onto their playground. We are trying to explain that we are simply following the natural flow of the land.”
Col. Wani Loku took a firm but diplomatic stance during the inspection, leaning on the contractors to prioritize hearts and minds alongside asphalt and concrete.
“Infrastructure cannot be built in a vacuum,” Col. Loku told the team. “You must sit down with these people. Open a dialogue. We are here to facilitate trade, not to create a rift with the citizens who live in its shadow.”
The SSRA’s visit underscores a desperate push to modernize Nimule’s infrastructure—a move seen as essential to boosting the country’s struggling economy—even as the shadows of a fragile financial system and local environmental fears loom large over the construction site.
Nimule serves as the primary land gateway for South Sudan, handling the vast majority of goods entering the country from the Port of Mombasa via Uganda. The “Custom exit road” to the Rock City parking yard is designed to alleviate the chronic congestion of heavy-duty trucks that often paralyze the town’s narrow streets.
However, the project has become a microcosm of the broader challenges facing South Sudanese development a disconnect between central government budgeting and the liquidity of the commercial banking sector, combined with the complexities of urban planning in rapidly growing border communities.