Taban Deng Gai

Taban Deng Gai is a South Sudanese politician who has been one of the Vice Presidents of South Sudan in the unity government since February 2020. He served as the First Vice President of South Sudan from 23 July 2016 to February 2020. He was mining minister before being appointed as acting first vice president.

== Biography ==

Born around 1950 in the village of Kerial in what is today Unity State, Deng is an ethnic Nuer. He self-identifies as member of the Jikany subgroup of the Nuer, even though his home village was a Leek Nuer settlement. According to journalist Fred Oluoch, he is also of partial Arab descent.

Taban Deng Gai is closely connected to the family of Riek Machar, being the latter's brother-in-law as well as the cousin of Machar's wife Angelina Teny. In course of the Second Sudanese Civil War, he served as administrator of the refugee camp of Itang, as head of the SPLA's relief wing in Nasir, and as Machar's quartermaster. When Machar's loyalists split from the SPLA (Mainstream) and formed the SPLA-Nasir, Deng acted as the main intermediary between the latter and the Sudanese government. SPLA-Nasir eventually came to a tenative agreement with the Sudanese government, and...