The Speaker of the National Legislative Assembly, Rt. Hon. Jemma Nunu Kumba, has had an exciting and lustrous political career since she joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) early on in her life.

Cde Jemma was among thousands of students who identified themselves as supporters of the SPLM immediately after the inception of the Movement in 1983.

She continued to be an active member of the SPLM’s underground student movement within the Sudan until 1991 when she finally decided to get out of the country and join her husband in the Kidepo Valley, then a SPLM liberated area in Eastern Equatoria.

Between 1993 and 1994, Jemma worked as an administrative secretary for a SPLM-owned transport company based in the Ugandan capital Kampala, a posting that allowed her to enroll for a course in Business Studies. Her interest was book-keeping.

From 1994 to the late 1990s, Cde Jemma served in numerous capacities, including as Relief Coordinator with the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), as well as Women and Youth Program Desk Officer for the NSCC in Nairobi, Kenya.

Throughout this period, her passion for further education never waned, and in 1997, the NSCC granted her a scholarship to study in Kitwe, Zambia. She graduated the following year with a Diploma in Leadership Development for Women.

Then in 1999, Cde Jemma joined the University of Namibia’s Faculty of Economics and Management Science, graduating in 2002 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration and Political Science.

In between her studies, Cde Jemma was offered an internship with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Windhoek, Namibia.

She returned to Nairobi and the SPLM-liberated areas in 2002. Immediately, the late SPLM Chairman Col. Dr John Garang De Mabior, appointed her as a member of the SPLM’s negotiating team at peace talks with the National Islamic Front (NIF) government in the Kenyan city of Naivasha.

Meanwhile, in 2003, Cde Jemma attended a training in diplomacy in Asmara, Eretria.

Even as the peace talks progressed, Cde Jemma continued to work as a gender advisor for Christian Aid, Southern Sudan Program, a United Kingdom-based organization in Nairobi, Kenya – 2003 to 2005.

The SPLM and NIF government signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in January 2005 and Cde Jemma was part of an advance SPLM delegation dispatched to Sudan. She was the only woman in the team.

Cde Jemma’s first assignment in post-war Sudan was as an MP in the national parliament in Khartoum and chairperson of the Committee on Economics Affairs, the first time a southern Sudanese woman held such a position.

During her tenure as an MP in Khartoum, she also served as a member of the Advisory Council for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and member of the National Council for the African Peer Review Mechanism.

She also attended various international fora, including the first Sudan Consortium Meeting in Paris, the Joint Sudanese and German Business Forum in Frankfurt and the African Union Conference on the AU Policy for Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development, which was held in Lusaka, Zambia.

Cde Jemma also went on a study tour on elections systems and election observation in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In December 2005, she was nominated to represent Sudan, along with five other MPs, at the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) in Midrand, South Africa. She was also head of the Sudan delegation to the PAP and member of the PAP’s Committee on Cooperation, International Relations and Conflict Resolution.

In January, 2006, Cde Jemma attended a short training program on Women and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Boston in the United States.

Upon her return the following year, Cde Jemma successfully competed for the position of Deputy Chairperson of the Committee on Cooperation, International Relations and Conflict Management, a position she held until 2008 when she was appointed Governor of Western Equatoria State.

In 2006, Comrade Jemma spear-headed the formation of the Sudanese National Women Parliamentary Caucus in the National Assembly in Khartoum. This was an an umbrella group for all women MPs in the Sudan. She served in this body as the deputy president.

That same year, Cde Jemma was appointed as a member of SPLM’s National Liberation Council and, in 2007, she was appointed member of the SPLM’s Political Bureau, the highest executive organ of the ruling party, a position she still holds to date.

In February 2007, Rwanda hosted the first International Women Parliament Conference in the capital Kigali. Several high-profile women from around the world, including former Liberation President Hellen Johnson Sirleaf and Cde Jemma, attended the event.

Cde Jemma held a number of executive portfolios between June 2010 and July 2021, including that of Minister of Housing and Physical Planning, Electricity, Dams and Water Resources, Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, Gender, Child and Social Welfare and Parliamentary Affairs.

She also served as Chairperson of Ministerial Committee for Building Ramciel Union and member of the National Constitution Review Commission (NCRC).

On 02 August 2021, members of the Revitalized Transitional National Legislative Assembly unanimously endorsed Cde Jemma as South Sudan’s first female Speaker of Parliament.

The Rt. Hon. Jemma Nunu Kumba is a mother of four children – three girls and a boy. She hails from the Azande tribe in Western Equatoria State.