“Speaking at a two-day development and investment conference for South Sudan in Washington, D.C., [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton said the newly independent country had the potential to be ‘one of Africa’s breadbaskets'” and said the U.S. would work with private sector partners to invest in the nation’s agriculture system, the Guardian reports. “However, aid agencies cautioned that the excitement about investment opportunities should not overshadow the country’s immediate humanitarian needs,” the newspaper writes.

The U.N. has warned that one-third of the nation’s population “is facing a ‘gathering storm of hunger,'” the Guardian notes. According to the newspaper, “[t]he World Food Programme (WFP) said 2.7 million people are short of food in South Sudan, indicating that $92 million will be needed to address hunger in the first four months of 2012” (Provost, 12/16).