Development

This is a living reference, updated periodically as conditions and priorities change. As of mid-2026, Sudan’s war is in its fourth year; the army has recaptured Khartoum and national institutions officially returned to the capital in January 2026, bringing a fragile, partial normalcy to central Khartoum even as fighting continues elsewhere, notably Darfur. That makes this a reconstruction-planning document, not a hypothetical one. Why This Matters Now Sudan’s cities were shaped by a century of planning that consistently deprioritized ordinary residents. The 1930s colonial-era plan for Khartoum built a European-style core with boulevards, a botanical garden, and storm drainage — but explicitly excluded Omdurman and Khartoum North, pushing “native villages” beyond the railway line with no equivalent investment. Every plan since — the 1991 Doxiadis structure plan, the 2008–2033 KPP5 plan — repeated the pattern: infrastructure for the center, informal growth and neglect at the margins, and green space treated as the first casualty when budgets tightened. ...

Sudan is fighting two crises that are usually discussed separately and are, in fact, one problem. Its electricity system has partially collapsed, and its economy has been unable to convert the end of conflict into durable development for as long as anyone can remember. Reliable power is the precondition for reviving agriculture, restarting industry, and running clinics and schools. The institutions, financing, and investment climate needed to build that power system are themselves casualties of the same decades of conflict that broke the economy. Treating energy reconstruction as a technical side project, separate from the harder political-economy questions, is how Sudan ends up rebuilding the same fragile system twice. ...

Published June 9, 2025 — the most current economic assessment of Sudan from the World Bank. Almost two years into the conflict that erupted in April 2023, Sudan is trapped in a deepening crisis. Key Numbers Indicator Figure GDP contraction 2023 −29.4% (one of the steepest in modern history) GDP contraction 2024 −13.5% Extreme poverty (< $2.15/day) 33% (2022) → 71% (2024) Unemployment 32% (2022) → 47% (2024) Inflation 2024 170% year-on-year Forcibly displaced 12.9 million — the world’s largest displacement crisis Return to pre-conflict GDP Not before 2031, even with rapid peace What the Report Recommends The report’s recovery framework rests on three pillars: ...

Robert O. Collins · Cambridge University Press · Available in the Kandaka Library Collins’s A History of Modern Sudan is the standard English-language reference for Sudan’s political history from the Turco-Egyptian conquest of 1820 through the late post-independence period. It is the work that contextualises every economic analysis, every development plan failure, and every institutional crisis discussed elsewhere in the Kandaka library. You cannot read the World Bank’s 2015 Country Economic Memorandum, or the Industrial Location Analysis, or any analysis of the Gezira Scheme, without the political and institutional history this book provides. ...

Iman Sharif · Academic paper · Available in the Kandaka Library Sudan’s first post-independence government was not without ambition. The Ten Year Economic and Social Plan (1961–1970) set targets for agricultural expansion, manufacturing development, infrastructure investment, and social services that reflected a genuine attempt to use independence to build what colonialism had prevented. This paper analyses that plan — its design, its early implementation, and its abandonment by 1965 — as a diagnostic of the structural constraints that have defeated every subsequent Sudanese development programme. ...

Khalid Idris · Academic study · Available in the Kandaka Library The most rigorous empirical study of Sudan’s industrial geography available in the Kandaka library. Idris traces the location decisions of Sudan’s manufacturing sector from the colonial period through 1980, using systematic data to show that the geographical concentration of industry in Khartoum was not a natural market outcome — it was produced by deliberate colonial infrastructure investment and perpetuated by post-independence policy failure. ...

World Bank · 2015 · 226 pages The most important economic document in the Kandaka library. Written at the moment Sudan hit rock bottom — 75% of fiscal revenue gone with South Sudan, the Gezira Scheme in collapse, gold and gum arabic the only remaining export earners — it is the most comprehensive and actionable analysis of Sudan’s economic predicament and potential. Core Finding A 2% annual increase in crop agriculture productivity would: ...