South Sudan celebrated its hard-won independence in 2011, but today is considered one of the most fragile, even failed states in the world. What went wrong? Why are democratic governance and prosperity so elusive for the people of Sudan and much of the rest of the Horn of Africa?

Peter Biar Ajak has answers and ideas for a better future. Ajak—a South Sudanese political activist, economist and former political prisoner—recently fled to asylum in the United States. He spoke with Alan Stoga in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.