On the terrace of a café in Juba, Al-Hadi Hussein Ibrahim, a Sudanese interior designer, turns the pages of his “book” with his slender hands. Exhibition stands with dynamic curves, television studio furniture, model apartments… Images of his past achievements are about all that remains of his company, Khartoum Advertising, whose workshop was “entirely burnt down in the fighting that has raged since mid-April between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). “We were among the two or three most famous companies in this field in Sudan,” says the frail 43-year-old man with sharp eyes, who says he lost about 140,000 dollars (125,000 euros) between his destroyed equipment and the payment defaults caused by the war.

Today in exile, like more than 550,000 Sudanese, the majority of whom have gone to Egypt and Chad, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Al-Hadi Hussein Ibrahim is one of 11,685 people who have opted for Sudan. from South. It is in Juba that he tries to revive. The bet is not completely crazy, despite the instability of the country. The Sudanese elites, whatever their camp, have political and economic networks here. Financial opportunities are obvious in this bustling capital. The real estate and extractive industries sectors are expanding and the strong presence of the UN is a source of contracts.

However, for Sudanese who have fled Khartoum and hope to resume their business in Juba, “those who arrive without affiliation need a long time to do so because access to the market is not free”, warns Edmond Yakani, director of the NGO Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), concerned with defending “the economic rights” of Sudanese in exile.

Start again from the beggining

Al-Hadi Hussein Ibrahim landed in Juba on June 27, “without a penny in his pocket”. Collected by Mohamed Abdullah Mohamed, a friend living here since 2010, the one who is still discovering the city wants to be optimistic: “I don’t know if I will achieve anything, but there are so many constructions going on in Juba… It would be enough a single opportunity, a single job, to show what I can do and restart. »

Rebuilding a capital gone up in smoke is also what Alnazir Abdurahman Adam, 37, whose print shop and craft shop in Khartoum were completely destroyed in the war, wants. His losses are estimated at $80,000. “It’s going to be very difficult to get back to this level,” he said, accompanied by his friend and business partner Aquila John, a 40-year-old South Sudanese who has been hosting him since his arrival on May 27. Together, they import food from Kenya and transport it to the border with Darfur, while responding to tenders from humanitarian organizations and the oil sector.

Between them, the friendship was not shaken by the separation of South Sudan from its northern neighbor in 2011, after decades of fratricidal war. Alnazir Abdurahman Adam also studied and worked in Juba after independence. Then in 2016, the fighting that ravaged the capital forced him to return to Khartoum. “I had started from scratch then and now I’m doing the same thing here!” he admits, watching his phone while his wife and their first child, born during the conflict, are on the plane to join him.

Soaring rents

Being hosted by a relative is a chance for him, while the price of rents is soaring in Juba. Massive influxes of Sudanese and South Sudanese from Khartoum have created a housing shortage, according to Ngor Olingo, founder of Asunta Property, an online real estate service. Rents have, he said, gone “from $1,000 to $1,500 a month for a four-bedroom house,” and even up to “$4,000 a month for two-room apartments” in the Tongping district.

An employee of a large international organization, Mohamed, a 40-year-old Sudanese who wishes to remain anonymous, rented an apartment on his arrival in Juba for the copious sum of 2,000 dollars per month. Today, he admits that he cannot stay at this price and is considering moving to Kampala, Uganda, or Nairobi, Kenya. Chaining cigarettes on his terrace overlooked by cranes and buildings under construction, he tries to imagine a future. “I was thinking of leaving for only a week,” he said, aware that the exile would be much longer.

“This war will take ten years to get out of it,” said Salah Hassan Juma, a 46-year-old journalist who came to Juba to try to find a job and financially support his family stuck in Wadi Halfa, on the Egyptian border. Hosted by his nephew, who owns an office supply store, he is not out of place: “The food, the culture… I feel at home here!” His arrival in South Sudan is also an opportunity for him to question the “brainwashing” he believes he suffered in his youth, when the Islamist regime in Khartoum was at war, from 1983 to 2005, against the South Sudanese rebels led by John Garang.

Like the latter, who died in 2005, Salah Hassan Juma and his brothers in exile are still waiting to see the birth of this “new Sudan” that they call for.