South Sudan archivists worry lack of historical texts

Juba, South Sudan – The history of Africa’s youngest nation is on the cabinets surrounding Youssef Onyalla.

Onyalla, director of South Sudan’s national archives, delicately turns the yellowed pages, which provide a link to the country’s past. 

« We now have archives on [tribes], we now have documents on roads, we now have documents on criminal cases, and then we now have a quantity of documents … on intelligence, agriculture, training, » he acknowledged.

South Sudan doesn’t have a museum, so thousands of archival documents are sitting in a miniature constructing within the capital, Juba, ready for a national archives to be constructed.

The documents had been amassed since 2005, and till these days, they were kept in tents.

Most are British colonial records that date reduction to the nineteenth century when South Sudan was restful piece of Sudan.

South Sudan won its independence in 2011, but two years later, battle broke out.

Thousands of of us had been killed, and larger than four million of us had been displaced within the combating, in step with the United Nations.

The battle has stalled the govt.’s view to electrify the archives.

Funding difficulties

The mission will additionally need the help of world donors to accumulate off the floor, and the ongoing battle has made it refined to stable funding.

« It be precise that the a quantity of outbreaks of battle have introduced on some delays to the mission, » acknowledged Anna Rowett, programme manager of the Rift Valley Institute, a non-income learn and training organisation.

« They desire a exact home. These documents are very fragile. Some of them are over 100 years aged, » Rowett acknowledged.

For the time being, despite the truth that, archival documents had been printed onto wide posters and affixed to walls in Juba as piece of an effort to abet South Sudanese electorate to search out out about their private history.

« These archives are instructing me about what has been written down, » acknowledged Amira Ajak, a resident, in entrance of the advise.

« I’m finding out my country’s history. Any individual can be taught and uncover about their heritage. »