After several months of political and diplomatic shuttling by mediators, South Sudan finally has a peace deal. Broadly, the new agreement recognises the evolution of the conflict and no longer considers the civil war as binary duel between the two protagonists but rather as involving many actors. It also accepts that Uganda and Sudan, the closest allies to the various conflict parties, play an instrumental role in realising a lasting and sustainable peace agreement. The agreement has attracted wide criticism, especially in the manner in which key players such as the Troika and other stakeholders had been excluded from the final phase of the process held in Khartoum, Sudan. Most importantly, the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) has been attacked for not doing enough to tackle corruption, state-capture by elites and social injustices which have been regarded as the main drivers of the conflict since 2013 as cited in various reports by AU and UN experts1. So much has been spoken of the bad peace deal signed by different stakeholders, including conflict parties and the international community. What remains unclear is a comparative analysis of the R-ARCSS and its predecessor – the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS), and the realities that have changed the dynamics of the conflict.

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