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View from the Field: Longa Seme Isaiah

LONGA

SEME ISAIAH

An evangelist for regional cooperation

South Sudan is rich in water resources. The Nile, Sobat River, and Poverty and food insecurity are ubiquitous, exacerbated by

Sudd Wetland, among others, support millions of livelihoods and conflict, displacement, and external shocks. South Sudan faces
fuel economic growth. a humanitarian crisis, with over 1 million refugees from Sudan’s
ongoing conflict.

But these sources of sustenance and development also pose grave
risks to people from water scarcity in the dry season and especially Though the country has made important progress despite

from seasonal flooding, supercharged by climate change. As a enormous challenges, a lack of water supply infrastructure—
country facing fragility, conflict, and violence, South Sudan is highly much of it destroyed during years of conflict—and low capacity

vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather and less able to cope of water resources management (WRM) institutions heighten

when disaster strikes. In 2019, severe flooding devastated the lives its vulnerability, according to the INFORM Index, a global open-
and livelihoods of about 1 million people. source risk assessment for humanitarian crises and disasters.
“Everyone was taken by surprise,” says Longa Seme Isaiah, a The World Bank and CIWA have been working to change that.
geographic information systems (GIS) and data analyst at South Through its South Sudan Transboundary Waters Support
Sudan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. “Houses were Program, CIWA is supporting the South Sudan component of the
submerged, livestock were killed, and farmlands were destroyed. RCRP by strengthening technical capacity and knowledge.
People had to run for their lives.”
CIWA also supports ENTRO internships to build the capacity of
Isaiah was determined to do something to help his people. He WRM staff. The internship program has trained over 51 South
says that an internship at ENTRO under the Nile Cooperation Sudanese professionals in water management; remote sensing
for Climate Resilience (NCCR) was transformative, improving his (RS) technology using satellite images for water data collection;

country’s ability to forecast and cope with shocks such as floods GIS to collect and analyze spatial data on water resources; and
and droughts through sophisticated early-warning systems hydrological modeling. Isaiah was among the 2023 cohort of
that enable people to take precautions. It also made him a true interns from Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan.
believer in transboundary cooperation.
A life-changing internship
When the floods came in 2024, he says, 53 percent fewer people

were affected. Born in southern Sudan but raised in Uganda during the civil war,
Isaiah, 41, became an electrical engineer but switched to water
The triple challenge of fragility, resources management because, he says, “water touches every
community, and I wanted to touch more lives.”
climate change, and poverty
He joined the Water Ministry in 2008 and by 2013 had developed
Since 2022, the European Union’s Inform Index has ranked South
the country’s first-ever groundwater database to quantify water

Sudan as the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change
points, the number of people they serve, and whether they are
and the one most lacking in coping capacity.
operational. But during the December 2013 civil war, it became

difficult to update information, and the database deteriorated.
One of the most politically fragile countries, South Sudan became
With the support of partners, Isaiah and his colleagues are
an independent state in 2011 following a civil war in Sudan but faced
restoring its functionality.

its own conflicts in 2013 and 2016. Its economy is stagnating.
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