AN EDICT issued by South Sudan's ministry of labour on September 16th caused international havoc by telling all foreigners working in the country (save diplomats and government aid agencies) to leave within a month. But the next day the foreign minister, responding to the ensuing uproar in diplomatic, humanitarian and business circles, back-pedalled by saying that foreigners could stay if no qualified local person could be found to do the job. If the original edict had been enacted, it could have spelt economic and humanitarian disaster for a fledgling country already mired in civil war, penury and administrative chaos.
Tariq Riebl, director of Oxfam GB in South Sudan, is one of many influential foreigners who immediately urged the government to change its mind, arguing that the measure, if implemented, "would massively disrupt aid programmes across the country which feed over 1m people. South Sudan is on a knife-edge and could easily tip into famine in 2015." Oxfam alone says it reaches 300,000 vulnerable people.
The anti-foreigner move seems to have been driven by the frustration of locals who grumble that too many jobs--including in hotels, banks, services and the oil industry--are held by outsiders, especially from neighbouring Uganda and Kenya., who tend to be better-qualified, more efficient and more entrepreneurial; three-quarters of South...Continue reading
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