Qualla: Jonglei State

Jonglei State: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Somewhere in the flat expanse of eastern South Sudan, a giant German-built excavation machine sits rusting in the sun. Variously nicknamed "Sarah" or "Lucy," it was disabled by a missile in the early 1980s and has not moved since. The machine was building the Jonglei Canal, a 360-kilometer channel designed to bypass the Sudd wetlands and deliver more of the White Nile's water to Egypt and Sudan. Construction began in 1978 and reached 240 kilometers before the Sudan People's Liberation Army shut it down. The canal was never completed. The machine remains where it fell, visible on satellite imagery -- a rusting monument to the tensions between development, ecology, and war that have defined Jonglei State for half a century.

Read more: Jonglei State on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Jonglei State: Land of the White Nile

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NordNordWest, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. Jonglei State covers approximately 122,581 square kilometers, making it the largest of South Sudan's states before the 2015 reorganization. It sprawls across the east-central part of the country, bordered by Upper Nile State to the north, Ethiopia to the east, and several states ...

Read more: Jonglei State on Qualla

Image: NordNordWest | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Jonglei State: Missions, Schools, and the Seeds of Resistance

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bertramz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Bor's modern history begins with the arrival of Archibald Shaw, who established the first Christian mission in what is now South Sudan at the settlement of Malek, about 19 kilometers south of Bor, in December 1905. Shaw opened the first primary school, and the Church Missionary S...

Read more: Jonglei State on Qualla

Image: Bertramz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jonglei State: The Weight of Violence

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Masiya, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 21st century has brought Jonglei relentless ethnic conflict, driven by competition over cattle, land, and water among the state's Dinka, Nuer, and Murle communities. The numbers are numbing in their scale. In 2009 alone, 86,000 people were displaced and at least 1,248 killed....

Read more: Jonglei State on Qualla

Image: Masiya | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jonglei State: The Canal That Never Was

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oxfam East Africa, CC BY 2.0. The Jonglei Canal remains the state's most ambitious and most controversial project. Conceived in the 1970s to divert White Nile water around the Sudd wetlands, it promised to increase Egypt's water supply by five to seven percent. But the canal displaced thousands of local peopl...

Read more: Jonglei State on Qualla

Image: Oxfam East Africa | CC BY 2.0