Wi-Fi Warriors and Homeland Dreams

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August/September 2025Sudanvol9-no3
Wi-Fi

Photo illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Source Ref: FLICKR, SMITHSONIAN LEARNING LAB.

THE MINISTRY OF political affairs

Wi-Fi Warriors and Homeland Dreams

In a country failed by peace agreements, connection didn’t disappear—it went online. South Sudan’s digital diaspora challenges the glossy myths of Silicon Valley and insists that innovation thrives not only in wealth and infrastructure, but in resilience, memory, and connection across borders.
Wi-Fi

Photo illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Source Ref: FLICKR, SMITHSONIAN LEARNING LAB.

THE MINISTRY OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS

Wi-Fi Warriors and Homeland Dreams

In a country failed by peace agreements, connection didn’t disappear—it went online. South Sudan’s digital diaspora challenges the glossy myths of Silicon Valley and insists that innovation thrives not only in wealth and infrastructure, but in resilience, memory, and connection across borders.

South Sudanese communities have long practised decentralized, relational governance. In the digital age, this model has morphed. Under-the-tree fellowships are now mediated through Facebook prophecies, while WhatsApp groups serve as crisis command centres and platforms like X and Telegram enable the flow of remittances. This alternative architecture of transnational governance is built within digital infrastructures and operationalized through kinship ties to fill the void left by the unrealized promise of political settlements and absent institutions.

Yet, like memory, money is double-edged and bears equal potential for sabotage as it does for sustenance. Dollars and pounds meant for water pumps are sometimes discreetly rerouted to bankroll local militias. The internet, too, has become a battlefield. Violence becomes more intimate and intrusive through the instant sharing of sensitive, graphic content depicting those who live in precarity and others in death, considered ‘ungrievable’. Fraught with tensions, digital belonging is a paradox; a medium of solidarity that is also a megaphone for rage. Rather than a clean break, diaspora politics is a caricature mimicking homeland relations—a re-(geo)location of governance by other means, a [world-wide] web entanglement of analogue politics and digital democracy.

While dominant discourses on Africa’s tech boom often privilege startup ecosystems in urban hubs and instrumentalize technology for development, this essay redirects attention to the lived and contested spaces where digital networks intersect with historical trauma, forced displacement, and citizen-led resistance. By drawing on sociologist Manuel Castells’ network society, it unpacks the limitations of liberal peacebuilding and highlights how digital tools are mobilized for resistance. Importantly, by centring the diasporic digital practices and speculative visions of belonging, it challenges reductive narratives of fragility and positions South Sudan as a generative site of networked identity-making.

WHEN FLAGS GO UP, LADDERS APPEAR: LIBERATORS AT THE APEX OF POWER

The Republic of South Sudan emerged as a state in 2011, following a referendum for secession from Sudan. The overwhelming majority vote of 99 per cent in favour of secession reflected the shared frustration among southerners with the northern government, which for decades had systemically discriminated against them. Independence was supposed to mark the final chapter in a heroic liberation struggle. However, as with many post-liberation governments, the script quickly soured by elite capture and factionalism soon after independence.

Though fully adorned with symbols of statehood; a national anthem, a flag and designated territory, the South Sudan state fell short of the Weberian ideal. Most notably it lacked monopoly over the use of violence and proved inefficient in service delivery. Political power consolidated around a small clique of former commanders who became ministers, generals and oil tycoons. Wrapped in lofty slogans of ‘sovereignty’, they forged what Castells would call a legitimizing identity—a carefully curated story that naturalized their dominance. The South Sudanese political elite occupy the apex of this post-independence power structure. In the capital city, Juba, power is delivered through presidential decrees, travels in dark-tinted Toyota V8 Land Cruisers, sits behind fortressed mansions and speaks in the alien dialects of foreign currency.

This dynamic is further exacerbated by the ethnicization of governance, resource allocation and political allegiance, which has entrenched a logic of ‘othering’. The new state failed to foster cross-ethnic trust; hence, post-secession politics have heavily relied on ethnic prototypes and local allegiances defined by kinship, locality, and/or shared trauma. Communal violence became both tolerated and instrumentalized by political elites. Therefore, when the ruling party fractured in 2013 and the nation descended back into conflict, the warring factions mobilized along ethnic lines. The ensuing power struggle mirrored the old divisions within the liberation movement, reflecting a continuity of historic ethnic tensions.

THE ABYSS OF DISPLACEMENT AND THE BIRTH OF A DIGITAL DIASPORA

The 2013 and 2015 conflicts in South Sudan triggered a domino effect of displacement. Familiar exile routes into Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda reopened as thousands fled across borders. For the displaced, home became a site of contradiction, which symbolized on one hand identity and belonging and on the other, a site of trauma and violence.

However, unlike previous waves of displacement, this one occurred in a new digital era, where the use of mobile phones and social media reconfigured what it meant to flee the country, and what staying connected could look like. Technology-enabled communication collapsed distance and reconfigured proximity. It is within this background that the South Sudanese digital diaspora was born. In her article, ‘Digital Diasporas: Postcoloniality, Media and Affect’, professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies, Sandra Ponzanesi defines the digital diaspora as:

Groups of people [who] are bound together by associating themselves by birth, past residence, or merely through their identification– with a physical or imaginary ‘homeland’. This place is what members of the community have in common– where their roots are, their original home, their sense of belonging, their community.

This digital diaspora is embedded within what Castells refers to as the network society: a social order structured around flows of information, capital, people and ideas.

During this time, East Africa saw rapid financial infrastructure growth, boosting diaspora remittances through innovations like M-Pesa in Kenya and the Somali-founded Dahabshiil. Yet the value of these platforms exceeds the economic benefits. For many South Sudanese families, mobile money is a conduit for solidarity and survival. In 1983, Benedict Anderson famously argued that nations are ‘imagined communities’. Today, for the South Sudanese diaspora, that imagination finds expression in remittance threads, emojis, and memory-laden images of a homeland that is at once half-remembered and half-invented.

The digital space, then, serves as the connective tissue of dispersed lives. It enables an informal infrastructure of care, community, and political consciousness that spans continents, yet remains anchored in shared histories and imagined futures.

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THE MINISTRY OF MISINFORMATION: WARNING! LIES AHEAD

In 2015, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Skype live video were tactically used to fuel conflict in South Sudan. Various individuals affiliated with the government, opposition and other rebel groups generated and broadcast ethnic propaganda and political disinformation. This quickly metastasized into viral posts, incendiary videos, and hate-filled livestreams.

Online narratives spilled offline, leading to ethnic targeting, and further exacerbating communal tensions. The digital battlefield did not recognize borders. Soon enough, diaspora communities in Australia, the U.S., Ethiopia, Morocco, Kenya and Uganda were drawn into the fray, participating as both consumers and producers of harmful content. For internally displaced persons and refugees, the stakes of this information ecosystem were existential, as it was often the determining factor on whether to return home or remain in the relative safety of displacement camps.

A 2023 Institute of Social Policy and Research study revealed that misinformation in South Sudan took on many forms, including political smear campaigns, false promises to manipulate voters, inflammatory conflict-related rumours, tribal slurs wrapped as commentary, misleading ads, scams and even fraudulent religious messages. The lack of a functioning data protection law compounded the problem. South Sudan’s long-delayed National Data Protection Law remains stalled. In its absence, there are no guardrails—no legal recourse to tackle data misuse or stem the flood of disinformation and misinformation.

Findings from the online survey conducted as part of this research revealed that social media platforms—specifically Facebook, Messenger and Instagram were rated the highest channels for spreading disinformation and misinformation, cited by 77.6 per cent of respondents. This was followed by political rallies at 59.4 per cent. Respondents identified politicians, armed group officials (both government and opposition), and segments of unemployed youth as the most likely culprits driving the spread. In contrast, church leaders, journalists, and South Sudanese residing within the country were perceived as least likely to disseminate false or misleading information. A significant 83 per cent of respondents believed the motivating driver behind this digital misinformation landscape was the pursuit of political power, particularly the desire among politicians to secure or maintain positions of influence.

Yet amid this storm, resistance still manifested. Organizations like #defyhatenow have built digital resilience, offering data security training, and running public campaigns on cyber safety. However, they are swimming upstream. Years of censorship, threats and intimidation of independent media have corroded public trust in traditional journalism. Hence, in moments of crisis when credible information matters most, many citizens turn to rumour mills and unverified WhatsApp forwards.

Still, state and non-state actors press on. Screen of Rights, a national NGO, continues to run public campaigns warning of the dangers of hate speech. In a country where borders are porous and identities even more so, the battle for truth plays out on timelines, in comment sections, and across encrypted chats.

THE ALGORITHM OF ACCOMMODATION: DIGITIZING SOUTH SUDAN’S POLITICAL MARKETPLACE

This digital contestation did not emerge in a vacuum—it closely mirrored the offline politics of recognition and exclusion that had long defined South Sudan’s conflict trajectory. In August 2015, the warring parties signed the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, which included a ceasefire and power-sharing deal. However, the fragile peace quickly collapsed when violence erupted once again in July 2016, plunging the country deeper into instability.

By late 2016, the UN proposed an arms embargo, concerned by the ethnic dimensions of the conflict, but the request was denied. Fighting intensified throughout 2017, engulfing regions like the Equatorias, western Bahr el Ghazal, and greater Upper Nile. According to a 2018 article published by ACCORD, over 2.3 million South Sudanese fled the country, while hundreds of thousands sought refuge at UN peacekeeping bases amid a devastating famine.

Concurrently, the government drew sharp criticism for crackdowns on dissent, arbitrary arrests, and media restrictions. The African Union Commission of Inquiry later concluded that the state’s violent repression amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Also in 2017, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development convened the High-Level Revitalization Forum (HLRF), a diplomatic, regional initiative aimed at resolving South Sudan’s protracted conflict. The HLRF was ultimately an elite-driven exercise. It sought to manufacture order through the familiar choreography of ceasefires, externally mediated dialogues, and political settlements, echoing the logic of Castell’s legitimizing identities.

The HLRF reinforced the narrative that nation-building is the exclusive domain of those who command armies and manipulate patronage networks. In his 2015 book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power, Alex de Waal proposes the ‘political marketplace’ framework, which aptly captures this dynamic. He argues that the South Sudan state is underpinned by a transactional system operationalized through reward and coercive power. That is, authority is exercised through the buying and selling of political loyalty using state resources (reward) or by the threat or actual use of violence (coercion). The HLRF process, in this sense, was simply another negotiation within this marketplace.

The rise of digital technologies has not bypassed this marketplace logic, as it is integrated into it. Tools like biometric payroll systems, mobile money platforms, and social media have been deeply woven into the fabric of South Sudan’s political marketplace. Politicians and warlords alike exploit digital finance systems to maintain patronage networks, ensuring the flow of loyalty and compliance through practices like ‘payroll peace’, where inflated lists of soldiers and civil servants are placed on the state payroll, both as a means of income distribution and as a political strategy to buy elite cooperation and hence secure temporary stability.

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CLICK. POST. RESIST: #SOUTHSUDANISWATCHING

Ironically, the HLRF reaffirmed key actors complicit in South Sudan’s conflict as exclusive stewards of peace. This contradiction was not lost on a growing digital public, where social media timelines became sites of critique, satire, and dissent. Activist groups, including Anataban, the South Sudan Women’s Coalition for Peace, and the South Sudan Civil Society Forum (SSCSF), launched the hashtag #SouthSudanIsWatching to mobilize citizens and spotlight negotiations unfolding in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The leaders of the #SouthSudanIsWatching campaign were largely ‘outside’ the ruling elite, outside South Sudan and outside Addis Ababa. Displaced voices excluded from official peace processes used online platforms to symbolically assert their vigilance and refusal to remain silent. This digital resistance grew from shared trauma and alienation. In line with Castells’ theory of resistance identities, the campaign marked a counter-power movement opposing the legitimized elite.

Supporters made the hashtag visually compelling by posting selfies in sunglasses, symbolizing watchful eyes on political actors. The mirrored lenses, often reflecting the South Sudanese flag, became a striking emblem of civic awareness. This ‘stickiness’, as Malcolm Gladwell describes in The Tipping Point, helped turn simple symbols into irresistible rallying points.

The campaign gained traction across borders, amplified by endorsements from public figures like African Union chair Moussa Faki, Kenyan member of parliament Hon. Ababu Namwamba, and Hollywood actor Forest Whitaker. Their support expanded media coverage and heightened pressure on negotiators to deliver a lasting peace.

Beyond stickiness, the campaign’s success was driven by its ‘spreadability’—a term defined by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green in the book Spreadable Media as the interplay of technical tools, community motivations, and social networks that promote content circulation. #SouthSudanIsWatching flourished not just because of digital innovation, but also through the embedded infrastructure of diaspora and displacement. Ethnic, kinship, professional and advocacy networks strengthened over years of conflict, enabled extensive content sharing and engagement.

To deepen participation, SSCSF delegates in Addis Ababa launched the ‘e-Delegates Forum’, a digital space for live dialogue and media exchange. Discussions were hosted across platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and Twitter. Interview transcripts and livestreams were then shared among their 64 affiliated groups, further amplifying public oversight and shaping civic dialogue around peace efforts.

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A PEACE AGREEMENT AND A DIGITAL TUG OF WAR

Following the signing of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan in September 2018, the government increasingly weaponized digital technologies to stifle dissent. A 2021 Amnesty International report titled These Walls Have Ears, revealed the use of Israeli-made interception systems to enable direct surveillance of mobile communications. In response, activists turned to encrypted platforms to protect their conversations.

This surveillance has often coincided with internet shutdowns. For instance, when the People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA) mobilized protests via Facebook, WhatsApp, and X, authorities imposed a 15-hour blackout, blocking mobile data and social media access, followed by arrest warrants for organizers. A similar crackdown occurred on 22 January 2025, when internet providers were ordered to block social platforms for 90 days. The action was justified as a response to viral videos showing Sudanese Armed Forces executing South Sudanese civilians in Wad Madani. The footage reportedly provoked retaliatory protests that led to the death of 16 Sudanese nationals in South Sudan.

Such events illustrate how digital content can reignite historical trauma and rehash Northern–Southern Sudanese divisions. As gender scholar Judith Butler observes in Frames of War:

Those we kill are not quite human, and not quite alive, which means that we do not feel the same horror and outrage over the loss of their lives as we do over the loss of those lives that bear national or religious similarity to our own.

Butler’s insight underscores the emergence of a hierarchy of grief in this context, where the deaths of South Sudanese civilians were seen as demanding justice, while the subsequent killing of Sudanese civilians during the protests was framed as retribution. This uneven distribution of rage reveals how digital violence actively reproduces the political and moral boundaries that determine whose lives are considered ‘grievable.’

Civil society organizations and media watchdogs, including the #KeepItOn coalition, condemned both shutdowns for violating constitutional protections of free expression. These disruptions also deepened public scepticism about the government’s pledge to uphold ‘people-centred peace.’

Yet the state’s anxiety around viral content is not unfounded. Graphic imagery can inflame collective anger and perpetuate cycles of violence. A case in point occurred in June 2025, when footage of a gang rape in Juba prompted widespread outrage and led to the arrest of seven suspects. While public exposure amplified calls for justice, it also transformed the survivor’s trauma into a digital spectacle, perpetuating violence through sensationalism

Ultimately, blanket shutdowns are a crude and rights-infringing tool. Instead, the moment calls for more measured digital governance: rapid takedown protocols, preservation of forensic evidence, and survivor-centred approaches to online trauma. These would protect both civic freedoms and vulnerable populations without resorting to wholesale censorship.

NOT A SILICON VALLEY FAIRYTALE

South Sudan’s digital diaspora challenges the glossy myths of Silicon Valley and insists that innovation thrives not only in wealth and infrastructure, but in resilience, memory, and connection across borders. Diasporic actors move between resistance and reimagination: protesting the failures of a state that exiles them, while building new forms of networked belonging anchored in history, kinship, and digital exchange.

Yet digital tools are not neutral. The same platforms that amplify dissent also expose users to surveillance. Mobile money can fund both school fees and war economies. A viral video may ignite solidarity or desensitise, provoke retaliation, or feed the spectacle of suffering. Empowerment and exploitation, hope and harm, travel on the same bandwidth.

This is no frictionless tale of tech utopia. South Sudan’s digital story is a layered, paradoxical terrain where connection can be both lifeline and liability. True innovation here lies not in the apps alone, but in the creative, communal ways people forge meaning and seek accountability across fractured space and time. In this space, borders blur—not just between nations, but between analogue and digital, public and private, past and possibility⎈

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