This book offers a glimpse into the local dynamics of an emerging capital city during a historically pivotal transformation, a town immersed in a process of ‘post-conflict reconstruction’ fraught with complex challenges requiring difficult compromises. Concerns that the new Republic of South Sudan might inherit and replicate the conflicts between the northern government and local communities have brought land issues to the forefront of state-building priorities. Yet it is important to look beyond the question of who ultimately gets control over land in order to see what local land debates tell us about the nascent South Sudanese state. The previous chapters have explored how the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) altered the framework of land rights in Southern Sudan, how local actors in Juba interpreted the agreement, and how these interpretations and the interests that backed them up shaped the process of urban reconstruction in the town. This analysis offers a basis for understanding the challenges that confront South Sudan’s state-builders and their international partners in the years to come. The conflictual local dynamics of land in Juba were not only about access to property and political control over territory; they were not a cynical resource grab by competing groups, organized according to ancient, identities, who did not care about the consequences of their actions on state-building. Rather, they had to do with fundamental questions regarding what would soon become the independent state of South Sudan: whose interests it would represent, how power would be shared among the south’s various groups, and how the framework of decentralization would ensure equitable rights to political power and resources.

The case of Juba exemplifies how each local setting brings its own unique history, determining factors, and set of actors with specific interests to any negotiation. It illustrates how templates and standardized approaches are poor substitutes for close study and engagement with local dynamics. At the same time, Juba’s uniqueness makes it a good case from which to develop a theory of reconstruction. Certainly, it reveals how great an amount of work still needs to be done to improve such interventions.