South Sudan’s Irrigation and Water Resources minister, Manawa Peter Gatkuoth is dead.

The country’s The First Vice President, Riek Machar said in a statement that Manawa died at a hospital located in Cairo, Egypt on Sunday morning.

“He [Manawa] was, on Friday 17th June 2022, flown from Juba to Egypt after being attended to in Freedom and Baraka hospitals for chest pain in Juba. In Cairo, he was diagnosed to have been suffering from high blood pressure that destroyed the main vein to his heart, stomach and kidneys,” he said.

Machar said the former minister passed on at about 5:00am on Sunday.

He described the deceased as a “committed nationalist”, who was a strong believer in reform right from his university days as a youth leader in the Sudan.

“He was committed to do his outmost in achieving prosperity for people of South Sudan,” further stated the First Vice President’s condolence message.

Manawa, a member of the armed opposition’s (SPLM-IO) political bureau, was in March 2022 appointed minister for Water Resources and Irrigation as part of the power sharing arrangement in the September 2018 revitalized peace agreement.

In November last year, the South Sudanese official was selected as the chairperson of Nile Council of Ministers’ (Nile-COM), a body that comprises of all the ministers in charge of water affairs in the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) member countries.

Nile-COM is the highest political and decision-making body of the NBI.