Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s renewed call for deeper East African political integration should provoke a serious debate in South Sudan—not about whether East African cooperation is necessary, but about what kind of country South Sudan will be inside an increasingly integrated East Africa.
Will South Sudan enter that future as a producer, exporter and competitor? Or will it become primarily a market for electricity, finance, food and manufactured goods produced elsewhere? That distinction should come before political federation.
South Sudan unquestionably needs regional integration. It is landlocked and depends heavily on Kenya and Uganda for ports, transport corridors, banking, manufactured goods and food. Regional electricity interconnection can also provide desperately needed reliable power. But integration and development are not the same thing.
South Sudan joined the East African Community (EAC) in 2016, after the Customs Union, Common Market and Monetary Union frameworks had already been established. It entered this system with a fundamentally weaker productive economy than Kenya or Uganda. Oil remains overwhelmingly important to exports and government revenue, while infrastructure, commercial agriculture, manufacturing, finance and human capital remain poorly developed. (afdb.org)
Michael Porter’s theory of national competitive advantage helps explain why this matters. Natural resources do not by themselves create competitive nations. What matters is the system surrounding production: electricity, finance, skills, infrastructure, suppliers, institutions and firms capable of improving productivity.
South Sudan possesses extraordinary basic resources. It has oil, agricultural land, livestock, water and access to the Nile. Yet it has cattle without a major regional meat and leather industry; agricultural potential while importing food; crude oil while importing refined fuel.
The problem is not merely what South Sudan possesses. It is what South Sudan produces competitively from what it possesses. This becomes critical inside the EAC Common Market.
A Ugandan manufacturer can operate from an economy with established electricity generation, suppliers, banks, transport networks and manufacturing experience. A Kenyan company can additionally draw upon East Africa’s deepest financial and professional-services ecosystem. A South Sudanese entrepreneur enters the same market facing expensive finance, limited electricity, weak infrastructure, imported machinery and undeveloped supply chains.
Removing tariffs does not remove those differences. It exposes them. The danger is therefore straightforward: Kenya and Uganda produce. South Sudan consumes. The Uganda–South Sudan electricity interconnection makes the problem particularly clear.
The African Development Bank approved support for a 400-kV interconnection designed to address South Sudan’s electricity shortages while simultaneously creating a market for Uganda’s surplus electricity. The project is expected to enable substantial cross-border electricity trade. (afdb.org)
There is nothing inherently wrong with buying electricity from Uganda. South Sudan urgently needs power, and importing electricity may be the quickest and cheapest short-term solution. The mistake would be turning a short-term solution into a long-term development model. The contrast with Uganda is instructive.
Uganda has spent years building domestic generating capacity. It commissioned the 600 MW Karuma hydropower project in 2024, lifting national installed capacity above 2,000 MW, and has continued pursuing further large hydropower developments. (reuters.com)
Uganda’s strategy is therefore broadly: develop domestic hydropower → expand generating capacity → satisfy domestic demand → create surplus → export electricity to neighbours.
South Sudan risks following the opposite path: possess undeveloped hydropower potential → postpone domestic generation → import surplus electricity from a neighbour → pay externally for a factor of production it could potentially develop internally.
That contrast is not merely symbolic. It goes directly to the issue of competitiveness.
South Sudan itself has long-recognised hydropower potential along the Nile, including projects such as Grand Fula. The African Development Bank has previously referenced plans for major domestic hydropower development and, importantly, the regional interconnection framework itself anticipates a future in which South Sudan develops more of its own generating potential. (afdb.org)
This introduces an issue rarely discussed in the integration debate: opportunity cost. Every year South Sudan delays developing economically viable domestic generation, it does not merely postpone electricity production. It potentially postpones the industries that could grow around it.
A major domestic power programme could stimulate engineering, construction, transmission infrastructure, technical training, maintenance services, industrial zones and eventually electricity exports. Instead of paying another country indefinitely for power, South Sudan could gradually create an electricity industry that retains part of that expenditure within its own economy.
Most importantly, domestic generation could become the foundation for competitive production.
Cheap South Sudanese electricity could power irrigation, cold storage, grain milling, meat processing, cement production, fabrication and manufacturing. Those industries could then sell into the same EAC market currently supplying South Sudan.
The opportunity cost therefore extends far beyond the electricity bill. It includes foregone industrial capacity, foregone employment, foregone technical skills, foregone foreign-exchange savings and potentially foregone export revenue.
And the contrast with Uganda makes this sharper. Uganda is using hydropower not simply as an electricity policy, but as part of a broader productive platform. More domestic generation improves the economics of manufacturing, agro-processing and services, while surplus electricity itself becomes an exportable commodity.
South Sudan, by contrast, risks using regional electricity merely to make domestic consumption more reliable. If that happens, the same integration project strengthens Uganda’s productive base twice: once through electricity exports and again through the sale of Ugandan goods into a better-powered South Sudanese market.
That is the critical strategic distinction. If imported power supplies South Sudanese agro-processing plants, cold stores, irrigation systems, industrial parks, grain mills and manufacturers, it can help close the competitiveness gap.
If it mainly powers shops, hotels, residences and warehouses full of imported goods, South Sudan becomes a better consumer without becoming a stronger producer.
Finance presents a similar problem. Regional banks can help South Sudan develop. But what matters is what they finance. A bank financing a South Sudanese food-processing plant strengthens domestic production. A bank financing an importer bringing finished products from Kampala or Nairobi strengthens the import economy.
Put these trends together, and an uncomfortable regional structure becomes possible: Uganda supplies electricity and agricultural products. Kenya supplies finance, logistics and manufactured goods. South Sudan supplies oil and consumer demand. That is regional integration, but it is not economic transformation.
This is why Museveni’s push for deeper political integration deserves careful consideration in South Sudan. Uganda and South Sudan already have exceptionally close political, economic and security relations. That does not prove that Uganda dictates South Sudanese policy. But dependence on neighbours for security, electricity, finance, transport and essential imports inevitably affects the bargaining environment in which regional decisions are made.
Political integration would make that question even more consequential.
South Sudan should therefore not reject the EAC. Nor should it reject the Uganda electricity interconnection. Regional power trade can provide an essential bridge while South Sudan builds its own energy system. But a bridge must lead somewhere.
The national strategy should be clear: import electricity today while simultaneously developing domestic hydro, solar and other viable generation; use regional banks while building domestic financial capacity; import what cannot yet be produced while deliberately developing industries capable of eventually replacing selected imports and exporting regionally.
South Sudan needs what might be called competitive integration.
Regional roads should eventually carry South Sudanese products outward as efficiently as they carry imported products inward. Regional banks should finance factories as readily as they finance importers. And imported Ugandan electricity should help South Sudan build the industries that may one day run on South Sudanese electricity.
The contrast should ultimately be this: Uganda built power before exporting power. South Sudan should not become comfortable importing power before seriously building its own.
Before rushing toward political integration, South Sudan should therefore ask a much more fundamental question: What productive capacity are we building that will allow us to compete inside the union we are being asked to deepen?
South Sudan should not fear integration. It should fear becoming permanently efficient at consuming what its neighbours have become increasingly efficient at producing.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.