History was in the making when the Republic of South Sudan became an independent state on 9 July 2011, was welcomed as the 193rd member of the United Nations (UN) on 14 July, and joined the Africa Union on 28 July. This new country has strong claims to its current status; long struggles to maintain independence from encroaching European powers in the nineteenth century; run for some time as a separate region within the colony of Egypt; fighting two civil wars since the independence of Sudan in 1956; bearing considerable neglect from the central Sudanese government; and approving, by a whopping 98 per cent majority, the decision to secede as a separate state in a January 2011 referendum (voter turnout: 97 per cent). Substantial oil deposits provide considerable economic potential to this nascent sovereign state.