President of South Sudan

Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of South Sudan

Salva Kiir Mayardit is the first and only President of South Sudan, in office since the country’s independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011. His tenure has spanned two civil wars, a 2018 peace agreement with rival Riek Machar that has repeatedly frayed, six postponed elections, and the collapse in economic terms of what was once the world’s youngest nation. Kiir is the undisputed head of the dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and, since the March 2025 house arrest of Vice President Riek Machar, the effectively uncontested civilian authority in Juba. He is also widely recognised for two stylistic trademarks: the black cowboy hat given to him by US President George W. Bush in 2006, which he has worn in virtually every public appearance since, and — since a 2023 incident went viral — for occasionally appearing to fall asleep during state functions.

Kiir was born on 13 September 1951 in Akon, Warrap State, then part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. A Dinka of the Rek Dinka subgroup, he joined the Anyanya rebel movement in 1967 during the First Sudanese Civil War and was a founding member of the SPLM/A under John Garang when the Second Sudanese Civil War began in 1983. He served as SPLA chief of general staff and as Garang’s deputy. When Garang died in a helicopter crash on 30 July 2005 — three weeks after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement — Kiir succeeded him as SPLM chairman and became First Vice President of Sudan. Elected president of the autonomous Government of Southern Sudan in 2010, he led the region through the January 2011 independence referendum (98.8% yes) and the 9 July 2011 declaration of the Republic of South Sudan.

The 2013–2018 Civil War and the Revitalised Peace Agreement

In December 2013, a political split between Kiir and his then-Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer, escalated into the South Sudanese Civil War. Over five years the conflict killed roughly 400,000 people and displaced more than four million. A series of ceasefires collapsed before the 12 September 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS), signed in Addis Ababa under Sudanese and IGAD mediation, restored Machar as First Vice President and established a Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGoNU). The original 36-month transition has been repeatedly extended; a February 2025 agreement pushed the transitional period to 22 February 2027 and the transitional elections to 22 December 2026.

The March 2025 Crisis and Machar’s Detention

On 26 March 2025, following an outbreak of fighting in the Upper Nile state town of Nasir between the SPLA-IO (Machar’s faction) and the White Army, Kiir placed Vice President Machar under house arrest at his residence in Juba and detained several of his SPLA-IO ministers. The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the AU and the IGAD Troika of Norway, the UK and the United States condemned the move as a violation of R-ARCSS. A series of “national dialogue” meetings in late 2025 produced a narrowed roadmap, but Machar remains in confinement and much of the 2018 power-sharing arrangement is effectively suspended. Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel — a Kiir business ally sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2017 — has consolidated economic authority in parallel.

Oil, the Sudan War, and Economic Collapse

South Sudan’s economy depends almost entirely on oil exported via a pipeline through Sudan to Port Sudan. The April 2023 outbreak of the Sudanese war between the SAF and RSF has repeatedly disrupted pumping: the main Greater Nile pipeline was offline from February 2024 to March 2025, and intermittently thereafter. Dollar-denominated revenue has fallen by roughly 70% since 2022; civil servants were unpaid for much of 2024; the South Sudanese pound has depreciated from 630 to 4,700 per dollar (parallel market) in two years; and food insecurity affects an estimated 7.7 million people (roughly 58% of the population) in 2026. The IGAD’s November 2024 designation of South Sudan as requiring urgent food aid preceded the WFP’s emergency classification of six counties at IPC Phase 5 (famine).