Institutional Survival of Informal Savings Groups During Conflict and Displacement: Evidence from South Sudan's Jonglei and Lakes States

Informal savings groups have become more than small financial associations in rural South Sudan; they operate as locally trusted institutions through which households protect savings, obtain emergency liquidity and finance agricultural activity when formal credit systems are distant, costly or inaccessible. This article examines the institutional survival of Community Group Saving and Lending mechanisms in Jonglei and Lakes States, with special attention to how these groups continue to function amid conflict-affected livelihoods, displacement pressures and weak rural financial infrastructure. The study draws on a focused journal extraction from a larger mixed-methods doctoral thesis conducted in South Sudan between 2022 and 2025. The quantitative subset used in this article comprises valid survey responses from Jonglei (n = 29) and Lakes State (n = 24), supported by qualitative interview themes on services, capacity building, alternative finance and NGO facilitation. Descriptive statistics, agreement indices, mean scores, chi-square results and logistic regression evidence are used to identify the functions that allow informal savings groups to survive and remain useful. Findings show high agreement that the groups develop community capacity, provide an alternative source of credit, enable small regular savings and mobilise agricultural finance. The strongest agricultural-development signals relate to member management, scarcity of working capital, the poverty-reduction role of savings and the capital-intensive nature of modern technology. Inferential findings from the broader thesis indicate a significant association between CGSL participation and agricultural productivity (χ² = 15.92, p = 0.0001), while access to credit significantly influenced investment in modern agricultural technologies (β = 1.9459, p = 0.026). The article argues that the institutional survival of informal savings groups rests on their ability to convert social capital into financial trust, practical rules and flexible credit arrangements. However, their survival remains constrained by small loan funds, limited long-term capital and continued dependency on NGO support. The paper recommends group-capacity strengthening, transparent record-keeping, conflict-sensitive linkage finance and financial products that respect seasonal agricultural cash flows.