11/20/2025
: Open Letter to South Sudanese Leaders: Meritocracy will Save South Sudan
Dear Esteemed Leaders,
I write with deep concern about the future of our country and the urgent need for merit-based systems in our institutions. Our country’s development depends on empowering our people, especially our young, talented and educated citizens . Many of the few graduates available in the country are denied opportunities because of connection-based hiring rather than merits.
Let me begin with a story of a schoolboy I knew when I was in primary school in Rumbek. He was my senior. Let call him “Makuei Junub”.
Like many children of that time during the liberation movement, Makuei studied under trees, fuelled by a dream that education could change his life and that of his family. He was not only hardworking but very brilliant. He topped every class until he became the best student in Lakes State in the Primary School Leaving Certificate.
He continued this excellence in Rumbek Secondary School and again topped in the state in Sudan Secondary School Certificate results. His brilliance earned him a scholarship — among a thousand applicants — to Malaysia’s leading private university, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, where he graduated with first-class honours in Petroleum Geoscience. Credit is due to PETRONAS and to the leadership of Dr. G*i Yoi, then Minister of Education, Science and Technology in 2014. Those scholarships were truly merit-based.
When he returned to Juba, filled with hope and determination to serve his country, he applied everywhere. Every company. Every ministry. Every oil operator. He knocked on every door. None opened.
But if any opened, he was asked who he knew. He is asked too many irrelevant questions
Do you know the HR?
Do you know the undersecretary?
Do you have any recommendation from above?
Some companies who found him impressive even use his CV to get contracts from the government or oil operating companies but never employ him. Feeling frustrated, he ended up with a job of printing invoices for a living.
This young man is one of the smartest South Sudanese I know — a Petroleum Geoscientist trained at one of the world’s top universities (ranked 184 in QS World University Rankings 2025) — yet he prints papers for a living in a country that desperately needs skills in all sectors and more especially in the petroleum sector.
Dear Leaders,
It pains me — and I hope it pains you too — that a graduate of such calibre earns a living by printing invoices while our oil sector struggles to develop.
Makuei is not alone. There are hundreds of South Sudanese graduates with no connections that are loitering around with skills they can not apply to serve the nation - because the hiring is not done based on merit or talent but rather based on relations and connections.
South Sudan literacy rate is one of the lowest in the world with only 35% of population who can read and write according to UNESCO data. If experts like Makuei are not allowed or empowered to work and innovate in their respective areas of expertise, how can the country develop and prosper? How long will our country rely on foreign experts if the citizens are not empowered? How can youth have the motivation to work hard or study if they don’t have equal opportunities based on merits? The world economy runs on capitalism which is fueled by a merit-based competition. How can we compete with the world if the few educated young South Sudanese like Makuei are not employed?
Dear Leaders,
You have the power to change this.
What South Sudan needs is simple: Meritocracy.
Meritocracy, in political philosophy, refers to a system where positions of responsibility, power and economic benefits are awarded based on ability and talent, not based on social class, tribe or clan. Advancement of meritocracy is based on performance that is measured through examination or demonstrated achievements.
A merit-based system:
• inspires citizens to work hard
• builds high human capital
• drives productivity and innovation
• accelerates national development
As economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue in Why Nations Fail, countries collapse because they build extractive institutions, often caused by low human capital. Low human capital produces weak institutions which intend leads to poor development and poverty. Majority of our population currently lives below poverty line. Poverty causes insecurity, poor health and loop back to poor education. Our society is at the risk of regressing if you don’t act rightly and justly for the good of all.
More than 50 years of global research show that countries with low education(human capital) and health lose up to 70% of their production potential. This means that if you don’t empower human capital in the country through education and hiring young South Sudanese experts based on merit to lead and innovate in different sectors of the economy, our true potential can never be reached and we will continue to lag behind our neightbours such as Kenya – whose economy is more than 14 times larger than ours. Not because Kenyans are more intelligent, but because Kenya invested heavily in human capital.
Ironically, about a third of Kenya’s population traces its origins to South Sudan. They are our own blood — Nilotic people who migrated generations ago. They are not aliens. Their success is proof of what South Sudanese can achieve in a system that rewards talent.
According to UN reports, about 70% of South Sudanese population are youth. This is a gift. It is a massive human resource that, if empowered, could rebuild our economy, our institutions and our national identity and be respected among the nations.
Dear Leaders,
The future of our country depends on whether you choose and practice a system that develop human capital through merit-based rewards – where gifted and talented citizens like Makuei can contribute meaningfully to the development of the country.
Meritocracy will save South Sudan — if you choose it.
With hope for a better future
Joe Mabor
The writer is a South Sudanese Software Engineer based in Germany.
He is currently working junubclassified.com, an upcoming online market platform for connecting buyers and sellers across South Sudan for FREE.
He can be reached at [email protected] or via website: maboragany.com
