H1 2026 Evaluation
South Sudan Reservoir Transparency
F2Opaque — Ranked #140 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
weight 20%
weight 15%
weight 13%
weight 10%
weight 8%
weight 5%
Primary source evaluated
Dimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
South Sudan has no significant dams or managed surface reservoirs. The White Nile (Bahr el Jebel) flows through the country but there are no impoundments on the South Sudanese stretch. All major upstream infrastructure (e.g., Merowe, Roseires) belongs to Sudan. There is no reservoir storage to report and no national agency that publishes such data.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No data platform, API, or download mechanism for reservoir data exists. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation maintains a rudimentary web presence (mwri.gov.ss) but publishes no hydrological datasets. The country lacks the digital infrastructure for any form of systematic data dissemination.
Coverage
30% of total score
No managed reservoirs exist within South Sudan's borders. Water supply in urban areas depends on boreholes, hand pumps, and river abstraction points. International NGOs (e.g., Water for South Sudan) install community-level water points but these are not reservoir infrastructure.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
No reservoir history exists. South Sudan became independent in 2011 and has experienced near-continuous armed conflict since 2013. Hydrological monitoring was largely inherited from Sudan and has not been independently developed. No historical storage series is publicly available for any facility.
Update Frequency
10% of total score
No data is published on any regular cadence. The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation upgraded hydrological gauging stations at Malakal and Anakdiar in late 2025 for flood monitoring purposes, but these are river-level gauges, not reservoir storage bulletins, and no data is publicly disseminated from them.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
Coverage is 0 (no national reservoirs >10 hm³ with public data). Quality dimensions for the COVERED subset are therefore 0 by definition. Original notes preserved below: No public methodology documentation exists for reservoir measurement. South Sudan joined the UN Water Convention process in 2024 as part of efforts to build a national water management strategy. The SDG 6 data portal records some WASH indicators for South Sudan, but reservoir-specific methodology is entirely absent.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
English is the official language of South Sudan, which technically gives the country good international accessibility. However, the near-total absence of published water data means language usability has little practical content to evaluate. The score reflects the formal English-language status while acknowledging that an accessible language policy does not compensate for the absence of data.
Evaluator notes
South Sudan receives the lowest possible scores across all reservoir-specific RTI dimensions, reflecting both a structural absence of reservoir infrastructure and a catastrophic data environment shaped by over a decade of armed conflict. The country has no impoundments of significance — the White Nile flows through but carries water stored in Ethiopian and Sudanese facilities upstream. Water access for most of the 11 million population depends on groundwater, riverine abstraction, and emergency humanitarian provision. As of 2024–2025, international NGOs installed 29 new community water points, while USAID and Mott MacDonald are active in rural water supply improvement, but none of this activity involves reservoir infrastructure or open data. A marginal positive signal is the government's late-2025 investment in upgrading hydrological gauging stations at Malakal and Anakdiar for flood forecasting — the first steps toward any national monitoring network. South Sudan also signaled intent to join the UN Water Convention in 2024. These developments are too nascent to affect 2026 RTI scores, but they indicate a potential baseline from which reservoir transparency could be built if peace and institutional capacity improve. Language usability scores at 42 — above zero — solely because English is the official administrative language, giving any future data publications immediate international accessibility.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0