Humanitarian Aid Dependency and Its Impact on CGSL Participation and Self-Help Culture in South Sudan

South Sudan presents one of the most difficult cases for analysing the relationship between humanitarian relief and community-led financial inclusion. Prolonged conflict, floods, displacement, high food prices and weak formal banking infrastructure have made humanitarian assistance essential for survival, yet the same emergency environment can weaken the incentives, habits and confidence needed for locally owned savings and lending institutions. This article examines how humanitarian aid dependency shapes participation in Community Group Saving and Lending (CGSL) mechanisms and the broader self-help culture among rural households in South Sudan. Drawing on a mixed-methods doctoral study of CGSL mechanisms in Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei and Lakes States, supplemented by current humanitarian and poverty evidence, the paper develops an aid-dependency-to-self-help analytical framework. The study used survey evidence from 81 valid responses, state-level comparisons, Likert-scale financial inclusion indicators, chi-square testing and logistic regression, together with interview themes concerning NGO facilitation, trust, savings culture and limits of group capital. The findings indicate that humanitarian assistance has a dual effect. At the protective end, it preserves lives, prevents asset depletion and gives households breathing space to save. At the dependency end, repeated unconditional relief, weak graduation planning and externally driven group formation can reduce initiative, lower regular saving discipline and make some members wait for NGO support rather than mobilising internal resources. The article argues that CGSLs can convert humanitarian relief from a survival pipeline into a resilience pathway only when aid is linked to local savings, financial literacy, transparent exit strategies, agricultural inputs and market-oriented livelihoods. The contribution is a practical policy model for balancing emergency protection with self-help culture in fragile rural economies.