According to a 2013 IOM assessment, most people live off of subsistence farming (39%) and raising livestock (39%) and a small number also fish (6%).

Since 2016, conflict and insecurity have had a big effect on the livelihoods and economic stability of the country, making the people there more vulnerable.

At least twice in early 2015, people from Kajo-Keji fought with Bor Dinka cattle keepers and the SPLA soldiers who were with them over the destruction of crops and competition for grazing land (HRW, 2017).

In an IOM survey from 2013, livestock herders in Kajo-Keji said that disease was the biggest problem for their way of life (22%), followed by lack of market facilities (20%) and water (19%).

The insecurity on the roads that lead from Kajo-Keji to other major markets, like Juba, has also made it harder for people to make a living.

This is a big change from early 2016, when arable land, closeness to the international market (for example, high-quality seed imports), and a lack of large-scale violence kept food insecurity in the county to a low level.

In 2019, Kajo-Keji was named as one of the most important border towns in South Sudan that would get electricity from a dam in Uganda, which would be paid for by the African Development Bank.

In September 2014, a fight broke out over land rights, killing dozens of people on both sides of the border (UNMISS, 2015).

A secondary road runs east to Eastern Equatoria State, with the closest town being Pageri, Magwi County.