When one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes' dream) and another line from Dakar to French Somaliland (now Djibouti) by the Red Sea in the Horn (the French ambition), these two lines intersect in eastern South Sudan near the town of Fashoda (present-day Kodok), explaining its strategic importance.
The Bahr al Jabal passes through Juba, the capital of South Sudan, which is the southernmost navigable point on the Nile river system, and then to Kodok, the site of the 1898 Fashoda Incident that marked an end to the 'Scramble for Africa'.
Kodok |