Trust, Reciprocity, and Group Cohesion in CGSL Groups: A Social Network Analysis of Community Financial Institutions in Eastern Equatorial

Community Group Saving and Lending (CGSL) groups in post-conflict South Sudan are more than small savings clubs. They are relational financial institutions in which repeated meetings, shared savings, reciprocal lending obligations, and locally recognised leadership create a practical architecture of trust. This article examines trust, reciprocity, and group cohesion in CGSL groups in Eastern Equatoria, with Magwi County treated as the primary empirical case and Jonglei and Lakes State used as comparative reference points. The article converts a doctoral mixed-methods study conducted between 2022 and 2025 into a social-network-analysis-informed journal article. The original study used survey data from 85 targeted respondents, 81 valid responses, and 17 qualitative interviews. In Eastern Equatoria, 28 valid responses were collected from a target sample of 30, yielding a response rate of 93%. Because the original survey did not collect complete dyadic relationship matrices, this article applies social network analysis as a proxy and interpretive framework rather than as a full ego-network or whole-network model. The findings show that Eastern Equatoria CGSL groups scored strongly on trust-generating mechanisms: alternative access to credit for the poor (mean = 4.43), members saving small amounts regularly (mean = 4.39), community capacity development (mean = 4.36), savings mobilisation and agricultural finance (mean = 4.32), and collective savings used for loans (mean = 4.29). The strongest broader indicator was government and donor collaboration (mean = 4.54), suggesting that group-level cohesion is strengthened when local groups are connected to external institutional support. Hypothesis testing also showed a significant association between CGSL participation and agricultural productivity (χ² = 15.92, p = 0.0001), while logistic regression showed that credit access significantly influenced the decision to invest in modern agricultural technologies (β = 1.9459, p = 0.026). The article argues that CGSL performance in Eastern Equatoria is shaped by a triangle of bonding capital within groups, bridging capital across community and NGO networks, and linking capital to formal or semi-formal institutions. It recommends strengthening record-keeping, group governance, women's participation, transparent sanctions, and carefully designed institutional linkages so that CGSL groups can remain locally trusted while gaining access to larger agricultural finance systems.