Under the
Khedivate of Egypt, Juba served as the southernmost garrison of the
Egyptian Army, quartering only a handful of soldiers. Disease was common; soldiers often fell ill due to the
malaria,
meningitis and
blackwater fever that was prevalent in the region. Explorers and campaigners
Samuel Baker and
Florence Baker used the nearby island of
Gondokoro as a base during their expeditions to what is now
South Sudan and northern
Uganda from 1863 to 1865 and 1871 to 1873. The present city of Juba was established on the site of a small
Bari village, also called Juba, where the
Church Missionary Society (CMS) had established a mission and the Nugent Memorial Intermediate School in 1920–21. In the late 1920s,
Anglo-Egyptian officials ordered Bari residents to relocate so that a new town could be constructed to serve as the capital of
Mongalla Province. The site was chosen by Anglo-Egyptian officials partly because of the presence of the CMS Nugent Memorial Intermediate School there, and partly because its proximity to river transportation on the
Nile. Major construction of the new city of Juba was underway by 1927. Greek merchants supplying the British Army played an early and central role in the establishment of Juba in the early 1920s. Their number never exceeded 2,000, but because of their excellent relationship with the native Bari people and the large amount of resulting assistance they received, they built many structures in the downtown Juba Market area as well as in the area that the contemporary
British soldiers called the Greek Quarter, which is today the small suburb of Hai Jalaba. Many of these structures are still standing today. Public buildings, such as the Ivory Bank, Notos Lounge, the old Sudan Airways Building, Paradise Hotel, and the Nile Commercial Bank and Buffalo Commercial Bank, were all built by Greeks. Greek merchants were responsible for the construction of the Central Bank building in the mid-1940s, as well as the Juba Hotel in the mid-1930s. From the establishment of
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1899 the British administered southern Sudan separately from the north. In 1946, without consulting Southern opinion, the British administration began instead to implement a policy of uniting the north and the south. To facilitate the new policy, the
Juba Conference was convened as a gesture to southerners, the hidden aim being the appeasement of northern Sudanese nationalists and the
Egyptian government. Until 1956, Juba was in
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which was jointly administered by the United Kingdom and the
Kingdom of Egypt. In 1955, a mutiny of southern soldiers in
Torit sparked the
First Sudanese Civil War, which did not end until 1972. During the
Second Sudanese Civil War, Juba was a strategic location that was the focus of much fighting. In 2005, Juba became the interim seat and the capital of the
Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan after the signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (before the agreement,
Rumbek had been the proposed interim capital). With the advent of peace, the United Nations increased its presence in Juba, shifting its management of operations in
Southern Sudan from its previous location in
Kenya. Under the leadership of the United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations established a camp known as "OCHA Camp", which served as a base for many United Nations agencies and
non-governmental organizations. From 2006 to 2011, Juba grew in a fast pace, with its population rising from 250,000 to a million. The city became an amalgamation of villages, with many refugees and returnees mimicking their old way of living. In this period, the local Bari ethnic communities kept distance from newcomers, due to ethno-regional stereotyping. This ethnic tension was crucial for the land distribution in Juba. On 5 September 2011, the government announced the capital of South Sudan would move some 250 km away from Juba to
Ramciel, which is located in the middle of South Sudan, about 60 km East of
Yirol West County,
Lakes State. As of January 2026, the move has yet to occur. In December 2013, with the beginning of the
South Sudanese Civil War, the clashes between President
Salva Kiir and former vice president
Riek Machar's forces spread mass violence on the city's suburbs, leaving 300 dead. The clashes began again in July 2016, when Kiir and Machar agreed to share power, bringing the
SPLM/A-IO back to the city. In November 2017, the former chief of general staff
Paul Malong Awan was removed from the city, and since then has become a fortified stronghold for President Kiir. In September 2015,
nearly 200 people were killed in a tanker explosion in Juba. Since the beginning of the
2023 Sudan Conflict, approximately 6,000 refugees have arrived in the city. Many settled in Gorom, an area near the city, and have struggled from lack of humanitarian aid. ==Government==