As South Sudan emerges from the immediate aftermath of conflict, the task of strengthening government capability, particularly in the core civil service, will be essential to facilitating economic development and ensuring the basic social services the population needs to construct the new country’s future. This note brings an outside perspective to those challenges. It identifies key short-and medium- term bottlenecks to building civil service capacity and, drawing on experience with similar problems elsewhere, raises policy options for the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) and other national stakeholders to consider.