Around the Nyakuron Market in downtown Juba, the stench of rotting trash hangs heavily in the air. Traffic congestion limits access to shops, and power outages are rife, disrupting business in South Sudan’s capital.

The scene of urban decay is just the tip of a catastrophic economic breakdown in the country since a pipeline carrying oil that accounts for more than 90% of government revenue ruptured and dried up coffers of the world’s newest nation, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The broken infrastructure, which until recently carried more than 150,000 barrels of crude oil to the Red Sea coastline in Sudan, ceased operating in February following a blockage caused by gelling in the pipeline due to a lack of diesel needed to thin out the crude.

With part of the pipeline in an active conflict zone in Sudan where a brutal civil war is ongoing, repair work has been slow, though Chol Deng, an undersecretary at South Sudan’s Petroleum Ministry, said this week the country was close to resuming production. The broken pipeline has resulted in the local currency weakening to an all-time low, salaries going unpaid and the price of both imported and locally sourced goods skyrocketing.

“The price of bread, a staple in most households, has shot up 10-fold,” said Denis Lopiong, a shopkeeper living in Juba’s Rock City suburb, lamenting the fallout from the drop in oil exports.

In its short time as an independent country, South Sudan has also wrestled with famine and natural disasters. Widespread corruption and a system of kleptocracy have stoked violent conflict and mass atrocities, with more than two million people displaced and a further seven million in need of humanitarian help.

No Way Out

Oil is stuck in landlocked South Sudan with no access to global markets after a northern pipeline via Sudan to the Red Sea became clogged.

South Sudan is looking for alternative routes to get the oil out, and earlier this year asked Qatar and the United Arab Emirates for urgent cash bailouts to help the government stay afloat, according to two diplomats briefed on the matter.

War between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has led the Malaysian oil and gas giant Petroliam Nasional Bhd. to abandon its three-decade long investment in the region.

Oil exports have plummeted and the South Sudanese pound fluctuates at about 5,000 to the dollar because reserves of the US currency from oil proceeds have vanished. A dollar equaled about 2,500 pounds prior to the pipeline fault.

Today, few in South Sudan’s capital — a low-lying conglomeration of roughly 1.5 million people where international hotel chains tower over shantytowns — have any purchasing power.

“People no longer buy anything as all they can think about is food,” said Helen Ayat, who owns a small shop in Juba, her last sale registered inside a little notebook on Aug. 22 as a baseball cap worth $4.

Plagued by civil war, famine and natural disasters, South Sudan gained independence from Sudan to the north more than a decade ago. But widespread corruption and a system of violent kleptocracy has stoked conflict, while mass atrocities have hindered its emergence into the world.

Its leaders, meanwhile, have plundered the nation’s wealth and pocketed much of its considerable oil proceeds, according to human-rights groups such as Amnesty International and The Enough Project.

Since the oil pipeline stopped working, life has gone from hard to worse as general services began grinding to a halt.

Government ministries sit idle in the sweltering heat due to power outages, leading to civil servants simply not showing up to work. In many cases, public salaries have not been paid for months. State-owned generators have fallen into disrepair, and air conditioning in most public institutions is a distant memory.

At the Al-Sabbah Children’s Hospital in the capital, where caretakers sleep on bare floors and threadbare mosquito nets surround beds in cramped wards, Sarah Ateng can only hope that her one-year-old daughter’s health improves, because she can’t access medicines.

“I can’t get proper medication for the child,” Ateng said. Her daughter, who has been in the hospital four times since February, suffers from anemia and malnutrition. “The doctors check on my child, but I have to go and buy some medicine from outside.”

Power outages and water-supply cuts plague the facility. Juba City doesn’t have a water-supply system, forcing everyone to rely on supply from tankers.

Simple painkillers and medicine for malaria are in chronically short supply, and city ambulances stay put due to a lack of funds to buy fuel. The school system has collapsed, leaving unpaid teachers to seek work elsewhere as hawkers, motorcycle drivers and small restaurant owners.

“Even if you go to the office there is no work to do,” said an official at the Ministry of Public Service, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as she was not authorized to speak publicly. “Our bosses don’t even ask why we don’t come to the office, they just say, ‘Don’t worry I understand the situation.’”

The worry with South Sudan’s economic meltdown goes beyond the mayhem unfolding in Juba. With elections now unlikely to take place later this year — the US has pulled back from financing the vote amid concerns it would not be free or fair — the breakdown in finances has meant chronic food shortages are worsening and instability spreading.

Nationwide, more than 7 million people — over half the population — are already acutely hungry, a situation only getting worse as tensions increase among ethnic groupings that make up the political class.

“Oil is the glue that holds South Sudan’s rivalrous political elites together even as it also finances much of the country’s chronic violence,” the International Crisis Group said in a report in May.

With oil production falling to zero in South Sudan, many cash-rich businesses involved in the industry from logistics and construction companies to importers and exporters are fueling a sudden rush to buy land in Juba, said Robert Ladu Loki, chairperson of the South Sudan Land Commission.

A 650 square-meter plot of land in Juba’s Tomping district, which is home to the United Nations peacekeeping force, can go for around $1 million, with speculative buyers now investing in land as a way to make money outside the oil sector.

“Nobody competes with South Sudan in terms of the exorbitant price of land right now,” Loki said. “It could be the highest in the world.”

Still, everyone with a stake in South Sudan knows the only way life in Juba can go back to normal, at least in the short term, is if the pipeline is repaired and oil starts flowing again.

Some moves are underway to try and make that happen. During a visit to China earlier this month, President Salva Kiir held discussions with CNPC Chairman Dai Houliang where a new pipeline through Djibouti and Ethiopia was proposed, according to South Sudan’s presidency.

Last year, South Sudan held talks with Kenya and Ethiopia to truck oil to the coast for export, though to date that has been deemed too expensive to be viable.

For many in Juba, repairs to South Sudan’s oil pipeline hold sway over their future. Last month, Peter Kenyi, 23, received a call from his father, a government employee at the Ministry of Labor, saying he could no longer afford to pay his student fees in Uganda.

“It was difficult for my father to continue paying my fees because he was no longer receiving his salary,” Kenyi said as he searched for taxi fares on his motorcycle in downtown Juba. “It’s a big blow to my education and my future.”