Emmanuel Jal

Who is Emmanuel Jal?

Emmanuel Jal was born into a Nuer family in the village of Tonj, Warrap State, in what is now South Sudan; he does not know his exact birth date and has recorded it as 1 January 1980. He was still a young child when the Second Sudanese Civil War broke out and his father joined the SPLA. After his mother was killed by government soldiers when he was around seven, Jal joined thousands of children walking toward Ethiopia in search of safety and education, only to be recruited as a child soldier and taken to a military training camp disguised as a school. He fought for years with the SPLA before escaping renewed fighting in Ethiopia, enduring a harrowing three-month journey back into Sudan during which many of the children traveling with him died. In the town of Waat, he was taken in by British aid worker Emma McCune, who arranged for him to be smuggled to Kenya and enrolled in school rather than returned to combat. He went on to become an internationally acclaimed hip-hop and Afropop artist, blending his personal history with messages of peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation across a recording career of two decades. His 2009 memoir, "War Child: A Child Soldier's Story," brought his experience to a global audience. He also founded Gua Africa, a charity funding education for war survivors and children in refugee camps and deprived urban communities.

Sources: Emmanuel Jal, "War Child: A Child Soldier's Story" (2009) · CNBC, "How ex-Sudanese child soldier Emmanuel Jal became a hip-hop artist" (2018) · Gua Africa charity organizational records