Equatoria Province is the southernmost province in the Sudan. The province contains six districts, with each district having its own District Administration Archives situated in the District headquarters. Bigger towns or villages in the province have in addition their own Rural Council Archives arising from the Town Councils established in the late 1940s. There is normally only one Town Council in each district, situated in the town of the District headquarters. In some places the District Archives and the Rural Council Archives consist of files and boxes in different corners of the same storeroom and administered by the same clerk.

The administration and filing systems have been inherited from the Condominium Period (1898-1956). Condominium administrative papers and public documents are thus incorporated in the papers used by the present administration. There is no sharp division between pre- and post-indepandent administrative papers; both are written in English (with a little interlude of Arabic in the 1960s) and many of the pre-independent files are still in use. In both the District and Rural Council Archives some of the files not in use are “closed.” At the time of my visit the Sudan Government had just started to bring in the closed District files to Juba, where they are under the care of the Southern Regional Ministry of Information and Culture. The open District files are under the District Commisioner, from whom permission to consult them must be obtained.

After the establishment of the new Southern Regional Government in 1973, administration at the provincial level was changed. The Condominium papers from Equatoria Province were closed and made the responsibility of the Regional Ministry of Information and Culture. Thus the Condominium Archives at the Province level are not incorporated into the present administration files to the same extent as they are at the District and Town level.