Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng de Mabior (red dress), Norwegian Ambassador Siev Kaspersen launched the ground-breaking ceremony for the South Sudan National Archive building, behind Freedom Hall. | Photo: Office of the Vice President for Gender and Youth Cluster.

The government, in collaboration with development partners, have launched the construction of a modern National Archive building in Juba on Friday.

The project, funded by the Kingdom of Netherlands, Norway and UNESCO, will preserve historical documents and archives of the country.

It was supposed to start in 2012 , but stalled seven times before it finally resumes.

Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng said the archive building will cement the history and achievements of the nation.

“Today, we thank God that we are finally here, it has been a long time and there had been many we challenges along the way. So it is my honor to finally stand at the site of our national archive building. This is a mere story of achievements that will cemented in our history.”

The work on the restoration of the Archive began in 2005, with erection of a tent near the administrative headquarters of Central Equatoria state in Juba.

In the plastic tent, historical documents from the Archive were reportedly collected in a disordered state from the various locations where they had been stored in Juba during the war.

The project is being implemented by the Archive Department of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, and with financial assistance from the Dutch and Norwegian embassies.

It is designed to safeguard the contents of the National Archives and make them more widely accessible to the public in South Sudan and beyond.

“I hope that all who tour this site will remember that the struggles of today are connected to those of our past. I hope that we always remember the sacrifices of all those who came before us,” said VP Nyandeng.

It documents tens of thousands of materials, dating from the colonial era up to the 1980s, as well as political, social and administrative issues at local and regional level over a period of eighty years.

Meanwhile, in November 2017, documents preserved in the National Archives of South Sudan were featured on Eye Radio program Tarikh Tana, a five-part radio series broadcast in Juba.

The program was supported by the South Sudan Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, the Rift Valley Institute, and UNESCO, with funding from Norway.

The first episode focused on documents related to the sentencing of the Torit Mutineers, and the second an extract of the Gospel of St Mark from a 1952 Bible.

The third episode focused on an Instructional Pamphlet on Malaria in Bor from 1948, and the fourth episode focused on the archive document An Appeal by the Peace Delegation to the Anyanya from 1967.

The final episode focused on a document titled The functions of the leopard-skin chief, a selection from a draft manual of Nuer customary law commissioned by the colonial authorities in 1944.

“As I stand here today, I see school children walking through hallways, guided by the ancestors and feeling proud of their history. This length is very powerful because it will tell the story of all of us,” said Rebecca Garang.

According to a 2020 publication by the Rift Valley Institution, the South Sudan National Archive Project is a multi-phase project aimed to conserve, reorder, catalogue and digitize the historical government records of South Sudan.

Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng did not state what disrupted the construction project throughout the last decades, but the 2013 and 2016 civil war are apparent reasons that hampered developmental projects.