Country Information
| Official Name: | South Sudan |
| Capital: | Juba |
| Area: | 619,745 km² |
| Languages: | English |
| Independence: | 2011-07-09 |
| Leader: | Salva Kiir Mayardit |
About South Sudan
South Sudan is located in the eastern flank of the continent, including the Horn of Africa, the Great Rift Valley, and the islands of the western Indian Ocean. Its capital is Juba, and it covers roughly 619,745 square kilometres. The population of about 11.5 million makes it one of 14 countries that make up East Africa. South Sudan is one of the smaller members of the East Africa group by population. The country marks its modern statehood from 2011.
East Africa contains some of the continent's fastest-growing economies and its highest concentration of major rift-valley landscapes, lakes, and protected wildlife areas. Swahili functions as a regional lingua franca alongside English in much of the interior, while Amharic, Somali and Malagasy dominate elsewhere. Many countries belong to the East African Community or the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and intra-regional services, agriculture and tourism are central to the regional economy. Within that setting, The working official language is english, and the legal-tender currency is the South Sudanese Pound (SSP) (see Africa's currency arrangements).
The figures above are sourced from World Bank, IMF, UN agency and national statistics-office releases. Reported nominal GDP for South Sudan is about US$4 billion. Population growth is currently estimated at about 2.8% per year, which influences how quickly the labour force, school cohorts and urban demand shift over a decade. The longer-form note on what growth rate hides is on reading African demographic data. At an urbanisation rate of about 21%, South Sudan is one of the more rural societies in the region. Life expectancy at birth is reported at 58.6 years, and the adult literacy rate at about 34% — figures that summarise decades of investment in health systems and basic education.
How to read these figures
Country indicators on Africa Center are point-in-time estimates that are revised when new census or survey data is published. GDP is reported here as nominal US dollars at current exchange rates, which is the format most widely used by international institutions for cross-country comparison; for the difference between this and the purchasing-power-parity variant, and why GDP rankings reorder between releases, see reading African economic data. Per-capita figures divide GDP by population and are most useful when read alongside the absolute total. Definitions for every indicator are in the glossary; the rules we follow when sources disagree are written up in the methodology.
For the full regional context — neighbouring economies, shared languages, regional organisations — see the East Africa overview. To compare South Sudan with other countries on the continent, browse the full country directory or open the interactive map.
Last reviewed: 28 April 2026. Figures are revised when underlying source organisations publish new releases.