26/07/2026
The Naam Dredging Project and Its Impact on Water Security in South Sudan
By Malek Cook-Dwach
PhD Candidate, Specializing in Water Security and Climate Adaptation
Introduction
Few environmental controversies in South Sudan have generated as much public anxiety as the proposal to dredge the Naam River, a Nile tributary that feeds into the Sudd, one of the largest freshwater wetlands on Earth. What began as a state-level response to catastrophic flooding in Unity State has evolved into a national debate over sovereignty, ecological risk, and the country's long-term water security. As someone researching water security and climate adaptation, I believe the Naam dredging saga is not simply a technical question of riverbed engineering. It is a test of whether South Sudan can manage its water resources deliberately, scientifically, and in its own long-term interest, rather than reactively and under external pressure.
How the Debate Began
The controversy traces back to 2022, when the late Minister of Water and Irrigation, Manawa Peter Gatkuoth, disclosed that South Sudan and Egypt had signed a cooperation agreement to dredge the Naam River (Ministry of Water and Irrigation, as cited in Aljazeera News, 2023; Simo, 2023). Egyptian-supplied excavators arrived in Unity State that June, ostensibly to clear silt, weeds, and debris obstructing the river's flow (Associated Press, 2022; Mail & Guardian, 2022). For communities in Bentiu and surrounding areas, who had endured years of displacement from unprecedented flooding, the equipment represented long-overdue relief. Some residents, unwilling to wait for machinery, had already begun clearing weeds from the river by hand (Associated Press, 2022).
But the initiative quickly drew fierce opposition. An activist coalition led by Professor John Akec, then Vice Chancellor of the University of Juba, warned that large-scale dredging could permanently alter the Sudd's hydrology, threatening the biodiversity and the pastoral and fishing livelihoods that depend on it (Associated Press, 2022; Simo, 2023). Critics also raised a geopolitical concern: that accelerating water flow through the Sudd would primarily benefit downstream states, particularly Egypt, by reducing the substantial evaporative losses the wetland causes before Nile water reaches the Aswan High Dam (Twin Cities Business Radio, 2022). This is not a new anxiety. It echoes the unfinished Jonglei Canal, first proposed in the early twentieth century and revived intermittently since, which was designed for precisely that purpose (International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research, 2022).
Faced with mounting pressure, President Salva Kiir suspended all dredging-related activity in July 2022, pending evidence-based feasibility studies, and established a forty-member Public Consultation and Awareness Committee to weigh the competing arguments (Associated Press, 2022; Yale Environment 360, 2022). Yet by 2023, dredging equipment had reappeared in Unity State, and a public clash between Professor Akec and Unity State Governor Joseph Monytuil at South Sudan's first National Economic Conference showed just how unresolved the underlying questions remained (Kazi Njema News, 2023; Simo, 2023).
Two Legitimate but Incompatible Framings
What strikes me most about this debate is that both sides are arguing from real, defensible premises, yet arriving at opposite conclusions because they are measuring different things.
For flood-affected communities and state officials such as Governor Monytuil, the calculus is immediate and human: repeated seasonal flooding has displaced large portions of Unity State's population and destroyed crops, livestock, and infrastructure for several consecutive years (Simo, 2023). From that vantage point, a river that no longer drains efficiently is not an abstract ecological concern; it is the direct cause of lost homes and livelihoods. Vice President James Wani Igga's public rebuke of environment ministry officials who resisted the cabinet-approved clearance captured this frustration, framing scientific caution as a barrier to relief that communities had already waited too long for (Kazi Njema News, 2023).
For hydrologists, wetland ecologists, and Nile Basin water-security specialists, the calculus is systemic and long-horizon. The Sudd is not a passive obstruction; it is a regulating organ for the entire river system, buffering flood peaks, recharging groundwater, filtering sediment, and sustaining fisheries, grazing land, and biodiversity relied upon by millions (Swisspeace, 2023). Wetlands globally are already disappearing at roughly three times the rate of forests, and the Sudd's ecological dynamics remain poorly studied relative to its scale and importance (Swisspeace, 2023). Accelerating outflow through untested, large-scale dredging risks trading a recurring but locally contained flood problem for a permanent and irreversible loss of the wetland's water-buffering capacity, a swap that could ultimately worsen water insecurity for the whole country, not just Unity State (International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research, 2022).
My Position
I do not think this is a debate between people who care about communities and people who do not. It is a debate about time horizons, and about who bears the cost of getting the decision wrong. My own view, shaped by the evidence assembled above, is threefold.
First, routine, localized maintenance dredging, clearing weeds and sediment from specific, well-understood stretches of the Naam, is qualitatively different from the kind of large-scale hydrological transformation implied by reviving the Jonglei Canal concept, and the public debate has too often conflated the two (Paanluel Wรซl Media, 2022). Distinguishing them is essential to designing an honest policy response.
Second, no dredging of consequence should proceed without an independent, transparent environmental and hydrological impact assessment, conducted with meaningful input from Sudd-dependent communities themselves, not only from Juba-based officials or foreign contractors. President Kiir's 2022 suspension order was the correct instinct; the subsequent resumption of works without a published, peer-reviewed assessment undermines the credibility of that process (Associated Press, 2022; Yale Environment 360, 2022).
Third, South Sudan's flooding crisis in Unity State and elsewhere is real and demands a response, but dredging should be evaluated as one option among several, alongside community-based flood adaptation, managed wetland restoration, and early-warning systems, rather than treated as the default solution simply because it is the intervention Egypt has offered to fund and equip.
Conclusion
Water security in South Sudan cannot be built on projects whose long-term consequences are contested even among experts. The Naam River dredging debate is ultimately a referendum on whether the country will let short-term political and humanitarian pressure dictate irreversible interventions in one of Africa's most important wetlands, or whether it will insist on the evidence base that a resource this critical deserves. Getting this right matters not only for Unity State's flood-affected families today, but for every South Sudanese community whose water, food, and livelihood security depends on the Sudd remaining intact for generations to come.
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References
Associated Press. (2022, July 9). *South Sudan suspends dredging of Naam river, Sudd wetlands*. Pachodo.org. https://pachodo.org/news-from-various-sources/36074-south-sudan-suspends-dredging-of-naam-river-sudd-wetlands
International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research. (2022). *Dredging of the River Nile is su***de in environmental terms*. IJAMR.http://ijeais.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/7/IJAMR220701.pdf
Kazi Njema News. (2023, September 11). *South Sudan leaders clash over Naam River clearance*. https://kazi-njemanews.com/wani-igga-lambasts-environment-ministry-for-opposing-naam-river-clearance/
Mail & Guardian. (2022, September 16). *Anger over Nile marsh dredge plan*. PressReader. https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/mail-guardian/20220916/281659668891875
Paanluel Wรซl Media. (2022, September 26). *Why we ought to be careful with dredging River Naam in South Sudan*. https://paanluelwel.com/2022/09/26/why-we-ought-to-be-careful-with-dredging-river-naam-in-south-sudan/
Simo, D. (2023, September 9). *Dredging of the Nile Basin: A call for unity and support for Governor Dr. Joseph Muonytuil*. Paanluel Wรซl Media. https://paanluelwel.com/2023/09/09/dredging-of-the-river-naam-a-call-for-unity-and-support-for-the-governor-of-unity-state-dr-joseph-nguen-muonytuil/
Swisspeace. (2023, March). *Hydro-politics in the Sudd wetland: The implications of past and current water development projects for South Sudan and the Nile Basin*. Cross-Border Conflict Analysis Network.https://www.swisspeace.ch/assets/publications/downloads/Hydropolitics_FINAL_290323-1.pdf
Twin Cities Business Radio. (2022, July 11). *South Sudan suspends dredging of Naam river, Sudd wetlands*. https://twincitiesbusinessradio.com/news/national/south-sudan-suspends-dredging-of-naam-river-sudd-wetlands/e883bf3f5b0cf7f894b8d7ae2a7fb929
Yale Environment 360. (2022). *Heeding calls from environmentalists, South Sudan president suspends dredging of Sudd wetland*. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/sudd-wetland-jonglei-canal-south-sudan-suspend-dredging
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