“We don’t rest at all” The market women keeping Wau’s families afloat.
By Cecilia John Akile
Women petty traders known as aburaka say lost capital, rising prices and school fees leave them earning less than a dollar a day.
In Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal State, women who run small trading businesses known locally as aburaka struggle every day to meet their families’ basic needs.
In Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal State, women who run small trading businesses known locally as aburaka struggle every day to meet their families’ basic needs.
Rozeta Angelo Udo, a single mother of seven from Hai Khamsin, has traded in Jou Market, one of the busiest markets in Wau, for almost 15 years. “I raise my children and register them in school with aburaka.” she said.
For about two years, she said, business has been bad. “The capital we use to buy goods with is no longer enough. After the prices went high, the capital got lost,” she said. What little was left went on registering her children in school. “Now it is only by the grace of God we are pushing the business.”
Less than a dollar a day
Udo sells groundnuts, cassava flour and raw cassava, adding tomatoes and sweet potatoes in the rainy season and dried okra in the dry season. “The market here is a bit good, but some days it becomes too bad,” she said. On a given day, her profit may be 2,000, 3,000 or 5,000 South Sudanese pounds. At the parallel-market rate reported in Juba in July 2026 roughly 7,200 to 7,800 pounds to the US dollar which is less than a dollar. She said she is unable to save anything.
When she sells nothing, she goes home and then to the forest to fetch firewood so she can cook for her children. “I have seven children. Their father is not around. I am the only one taking care of them.”
“We are here in the market and our children are really suffering,” she said. “We are also suffering, as you are seeing us under this hot sun. We don’t rest at all.”
A refugee in the same market
In the same market, Cousar Alam Al Nur, a refugee from Sudan, has also turned to aburaka to support her family. South Sudan hosted more than 600,000 refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2025, about 94 per cent of them Sudanese, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. Many fled the war that broke out in Sudan in April 2023.
Al Nur said she and other traders had rented a place in the market and been given tables, which she welcomed. But challenges remain, including the small payments expected by the garbage collectors who clean the market. “Meanwhile the market is not that good, and the situation is bad,” she said. “Everyone is interested in working, but there is no money to cater for life.”
What she earns covers the basics and a little more. “From what we are doing, we get something for dinner, pay rent and transportation too,” she said.
“Education needs money”
School costs weigh on both women. “People in South Sudan are suffering, especially women and girls,” Al Nur said. “Education needs money; specifically, this year it has increased and aburaka needs good capital for women to support their children.”
Traders in Wau have long complained about costs outside their control. In 2022, Jou Market traders told a state parliamentary committee that multiple taxes, checkpoints and a weak currency were driving up prices. Nationally, the World Bank estimated in 2025 that poverty had risen to 92 per cent.
Al Nur’s message to other women is to keep going. “You have to work to get food for your children,” she said. “Children must be educated.”
This story was produced by Cecilia John Akile for the Digitalise Youth Mobile Journalism Fellowship.
Watch full video here https://youtu.be/DmnaTVQr9hk
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