Southern Sudan's plan for world's beast capital

There are those who cannot think of Africa without thinking of safari animals. Apparently, Southern Sudan's city planners are among them.

Authorities in what may become Africa's newest country, depending on the outcome of a referendum next year, have unveiled plans to rebuild their two biggest cities in the shape of a rhinoceros and a giraffe.

The US$10 billion ($14 billion), 20-year blueprint for Juba, the south's capital, calls for its urban centre to be built in the shape of a rhino. The second city, Wau, is to be transformed into a giraffe.

Daniel Wani, of the Housing and Physical Planning Ministry, described the plans as "innovative" and said talks were under way with a local construction company and a Canadian-based firm.

"The advantage is that there will be uniformity of planning," he said. "It will be very easy for future generations to follow our thinking, what we wanted to put in place, because we are not planning for now, we plan for tomorrow."

Tomorrow in this case could be a long time coming. Sudan's disastrous civil war, sometimes counted as the continent's longest, left Juba as little more than a tent city. In the five years since a peace deal was agreed there has been a manic burst of construction but infrastructure remains basic.

There are less than 100km of paved roads and much of the accommodation in Juba is in refashioned shipping containers. The city is ringed with growing slums.

The plans, which cost five times Southern Sudan's annual budget, appeared to take the sizeable aid community, who occupy many of the permanent structures in Juba, by surprise. An official at one of the European Union offices admitted they knew nothing about the proposals.

The United Nations has spent much of this year appealing for international donors to deliver US$530 million to alleviate a hunger crisis that at one point was said to be affecting 8 million people. Africa's largest country was devastated by a 21-year civil war between the Arab-dominated north and the Christian and animist south that aid agencies calculate cost two million lives.

Under the terms of a 2005 peace agreement Sudan had its first national multi-party elections this year and southerners are expecting to vote in January on whether to break away from the north in a referendum.

The semi-autonomous Government in Southern Sudan, led by the former guerrilla movement the SPLM, has been criticised for massive corruption and waste since taking charge. Public sector ghost jobs and hotel cartels have been used to drain oil revenues and foreign aid, leading to the nickname of the world's first "pre-failed state".

The blueprints call for Juba residents to be moved to a site 16km outside the existing town to "Rhino City".

SHAPING UP
* Dubai gave visitors and residents something to look at from its skyscrapers when it created several palm-shaped residential islands off its coast.

* In Argentina, planners shaped the town of Ciudad Evita into the form of Eva Peron, an actress known as Evita who was wife of former President Juan Peron.

- Independent