The world’s youngest country is banking on its young people to propel its national identity beyond the spectre of war, through hope, perseverance and a love of basketball.
At 14 years old, budding basketball athlete Peter Oja is the same age as his country.
He was born the year South Sudan voted for independence from Sudan, after a decades-long liberation struggle that became one of Africa’s longest civil wars.
The South Sudanese fight for self-determination and freedom has shifted to a battle to stabilise and shape their new nation.
Peter and other players are part of a new generation that is moving away from the streets and the frontlines and spending all their free time training on the basketball court.
“It is about consistency every single day. It is how our coaches teach us over there. They come in and practice with us and give us some discipline,” Peter tells us in the yard of his small home in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
“They tell us to focus on the things that you will be able to control, so you have to practice really hard and do your thing and everything will work out. It is about teamwork and love for each other.”
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We ask to see Peter’s trophies, and he emerges from his room with his neck heavy with medals and hands full of golden statuettes. The oldest trophy was awarded to him by the Luol Deng Foundation at only six years old.
The foundation started by South Sudanese-British NBA All-Star Luol Deng runs the training camps that have kept Peter engaged and determined since he was just a little boy.
Peter’s mother, Sarah, watches on proudly. She is a single parent who supports him and his younger siblings through unsteady work, and hopes that basketball will help him win a university scholarship and eventually bring them all out of poverty.
That prospect is not far-fetched. South Sudanese basketball player Kamaan Maluaach was the 10th overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft after getting his start at a Luol Deng training camp in Uganda as a teenage refugee.
“I am hoping Peter will succeed in basketball and rise to the top so that he can even support me one day,” says Sarah as he watches on with a smile.
A short walk from Peter’s home, we speak to his coach, Tony, about what the basketball training means for young boys and girls.
“It is like therapy. It is healing for the kids. That is why we are with them. Most of these kids, including us, grew up in the war,” says Tony.
We are sitting on a bench watching young people train on the court at the University of Juba, built by the Luol Deng Foundation and named after Manute Bol, the first South Sudanese basketball athlete to play for the NBA.
Tony has been coaching kids on Manute Bol court since it opened in 2015.
“We are trying to take the kids from staying idle and doing nothing – that is how they get involved with gangs, drugs and so on,” he says.
“Come and practice, come and be with us, come and have that extra time from school playing basketball or any other sport activities.”
In recent years, South Sudan’s national teams have gained serious traction internationally.
In the 2024 Paris Olympics, South Sudan’s men’s team played a historically close game against a US national team brimming with NBA stars like LeBron James and Kevin Durant.
In July, South Sudan’s women’s team made a victorious debut at the continental championship, AfroBasket, winning a bronze medal.
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Luol Deng has been steering the national teams as head of the South Sudan Basketball Federation and coach of the men’s team. His Deng Academy has been operating for a decade, launching these youth training camps in Juba in 2015.
Two years earlier, civil war broke out in South Sudan across tribal lines for control of the new country. Eventually, armed violence reached Manute Bol’s court.
“I remember the time when we were practising there inside the Luol Deng Foundation and then guns began to happen,” says Peter.
“They locked us inside and told us not to go out. It is kind of a risk for you as a kid. You can’t be happy when you see guns. You are in fear.”
The political chaos outside the court continues to impact young players on the court.
A 2018 peace deal that stabilised South Sudan is now at risk of falling apart as conflict continues in the north. Opposition leader and vice president Riek Machar and his wife, the minister of interior, Angelina Teny, have been held under house arrest since March in a violation of the peace agreement that threatens to return the country to all-out civil war.
Beyond internal fragmentation and widespread corruption, South Sudan’s government is scrambling to win points geopolitically by receiving criminal deportees from the US after the Trump administration revoked all US visas of South Sudanese citizens in April.
The banning of US visas has hurt opportunities for young people dreaming of an NBA draft.
“It really came to light when a couple of young people who had got approved for their visas and had their tickets were about to fly out and were impacted that week of the decision coming out,” says Arek Deng, Luol’s sister and the chief executive of the Luol Deng Foundation.
“They were stopped at the Juba International airport, and they couldn’t fly out. One was a female, one was a male, and they were going to high school. They were excited, and I’m sure families have put in their life savings to make sure that they fly out.”
As a former international basketball athlete, Arek feels the pain of their disappointment. She played for the Great Britain Women’s National Team and the University of Delaware as a student.
She now runs the foundation on the ground with Luol and their brother Deng. The little external support they received through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has ended.
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“The USAID cuts have affected us in the sense that what we did outside of Juba, especially in Wau and in other areas and doing residential camps that open up more than just basketball. The funding for that stopped and then it means that you have to make some people redundant in the organisation,” she says.
“We don’t have any donors currently. For a long time now, it’s been Luol that is funding the foundation in every way that we can. We will have joint initiatives here and there.”
Despite the lack of funding support, the training camps remain open to all. Children as young as six years old are enthusiastically dribbling the ball, behind Arek on the brightly coloured tiles of Manute Bol court.
“It is hard to turn them away because the alternatives are not very good. If you turn them away, what are they going to do? Be in the streets?” asks Arek.
“It is also a good way for the older ones to take care of their younger siblings. They bring them here and so we cannot turn them away.”
