An accountable production plan must connect farms, power, processing, skills and transport. Original illustration commissioned for Kandaka.

Sudan does not need another document that promises everything to everyone. It needs a plan that makes choices, names who must deliver them, and allows citizens to see—year by year—whether anything changed.

That distinction matters because Sudan is not merely discussing a future plan. The government has been preparing a national 2026–2030 Five-Year Strategic Plan. In April 2026, the Cabinet Secretariat described reconstruction, peace, productive projects, youth employment, agriculture, livestock and mining as central themes. A later workshop called for a shift from planning by activities to planning by results and impact, and for infrastructure to be linked directly to production. By May, federal ministries were submitting their own five-year plans for consolidation. (Cabinet workshop, 8 April; planning guidelines, 24 April; ministerial coordination, 20 May)

Those are sensible intentions. But Sudan has had sensible intentions before. Its 1977/78–1982/83 Six-Year Plan also promised to relieve transport bottlenecks, expand exports, improve foreign exchange, and increase domestic production of sugar, wheat and textiles. (World Bank assessment) The recurring problem has not been a shortage of plans. It has been the distance between a plan and a functioning system of delivery.

The question, then, is not whether Sudan should have a five-year plan. It is:

What would make the 2026–2030 plan different from the plans that came before it?

Begin with the constraint Sudan cannot print away

The first discipline is foreign exchange. Sudan can issue local currency, but it cannot print the dollars, euros, dirhams or riyals needed to buy fuel, wheat, medicines, machinery and spare parts. A production plan that ignores the import bill is not a production plan.

The Central Bank of Sudan’s preliminary figures show the scale of the problem. In January–June 2026, recorded merchandise imports reached $4.517 billion, up from $3.073 billion in the same period of 2025. Recorded exports were only $1.816 billion, leaving a six-month merchandise trade deficit of about $2.701 billion. (CBOS Foreign Trade Statistical Digest, January–June 2026)

These tables measure trade recorded through customs stations and should not be read as a complete account of informal or otherwise unrecorded cross-border flows.

The import bill was not one undifferentiated burden:

Import group, January–June 2026Preliminary value
Petroleum products$1.495 billion
Food$992.1 million
Machinery and equipment$517.3 million
Medicines$241.6 million
Textiles$203.6 million
Transport equipment$293.9 million

The wrong response would be to announce that Sudan will simply reduce imports. Machinery imports rose from $357.6 million to $517.3 million. Tractor imports rose from about $21.9 million to $67.6 million. Railway-wagon imports rose from about $0.4 million to $9.1 million. Those purchases may increase the import bill today while rebuilding the capacity to produce tomorrow.

The plan should therefore divide imports into three baskets.

  1. Replaceable consumption imports: goods Sudan can competitively produce or process within five years—parts of the sugar, edible-oil, flour, garment, leather, food-processing, construction-material and basic-medicine bills.
  2. Demand that can be structurally reduced: especially diesel used for irrigation, workshops, cold rooms, clinics and decentralized electricity, where solar can replace fuel.
  3. Productive imports to protect: machinery, tractors, electrical equipment, industrial components, laboratory equipment, technology and spare parts that raise future output.

Self-reliance should not be measured by how few things Sudan imports. It should be measured by whether Sudan imports the things that expand production while steadily replacing the things it can make well at home.

Wheat shows why slogans are dangerous

Wheat is a useful warning against declaring victory too early. Between the first halves of 2025 and 2026, recorded wheat-flour imports fell from about $142.4 million to $25.1 million. That looks like successful import substitution. But wheat-grain imports rose from about $145.0 million to $381.6 million. The combined foreign-exchange burden increased.

Sudan may have captured more of the milling stage domestically, and that still matters: milling creates work in processing, transport, storage, maintenance and distribution. But milling imported grain is not wheat self-sufficiency.

The realistic five-year objective is not “zero wheat imports.” It is to capture achievable stages of the value chain, improve yields where wheat is agronomically and economically sensible, support alternative local staples, reduce storage losses, and lower the combined grain-and-flour bill without endangering food security. Every commodity target should be tested with the same honesty.

Repair before building monuments

Sudan’s quickest productive gains may come from equipment it already owns: sugar estates, ginneries, mills, workshops, pharmaceutical lines, tanneries, irrigation pumps, railway facilities and cold stores. The plan’s first industrial act should be a national productive-capacity audit.

Within its first 100 days, that audit should publish, facility by facility:

  • design capacity and actual operating capacity;
  • war damage and missing equipment;
  • electricity, water, finance, input and logistics constraints;
  • the cost and time required to restart production;
  • ownership and outstanding liabilities;
  • jobs restored and foreign exchange saved if rehabilitation succeeds.

A repair that returns a viable factory to production in twelve months should normally outrank a ceremonial new project that will absorb scarce foreign exchange for five years. New plants are justified when the market, location, inputs, energy and management case is stronger—not because a new building photographs better than a repaired one.

A focused production portfolio

The national plan should concentrate support where Sudan has a plausible five-year path to savings, jobs or exports. That means a short portfolio, not hundreds of “priority” projects.

Food and agro-processing. Rehabilitate sugar capacity before building new estates; expand competitive oilseed crushing and refining; improve grain storage and milling; process sesame, groundnuts, gum arabic, fruit and vegetables closer to production areas. Support should be tied to verified output, food-safety standards and reductions in imports or post-harvest losses.

Livestock, leather and fisheries. Sudan earned about $287 million from recorded live-animal exports in the first half of 2026, but only about $0.55 million from meat and $1.78 million from hides and skins. The opportunity is not to ban live exports. It is to add veterinary services, quarantine, feed, slaughter, cold chains, dairy processing, tanning and finished leather goods so that producers retain more value. (Kandaka’s detailed livestock plan)

Basic medicines and medical supplies. The immediate goal should be reliable local formulation, packaging and quality-controlled production where Sudanese plants can meet standards—not a claim that every medicine can be made locally. Public procurement can provide predictable demand, but only certified products should receive preference.

Textiles and garments. Cotton alone does not create an industry. The chain runs through ginning, spinning, weaving, dyeing, garment production, design, procurement and export compliance. Support should follow firms that move into higher-value stages and retain workers, especially women, rather than protecting inefficient production indefinitely.

Construction and repair materials. Reconstruction will create large demand for cement products, glass, metalwork, cables, pipes, doors, windows and prefabricated components. Local procurement can build capability if standards and prices are transparent. It should not become permission to sell poor materials at monopoly prices.

Productive solar. Solar should be treated as foreign-exchange and production policy, not only as household electricity. In 2025 the World Bank approved the $76.3 million ASCENT-Sudan project, targeting 150,000 people and 500 renewable-energy systems, including solar irrigation and food processing, through private delivery and results-based finance. (World Bank) On 18 August 2026 the government exempted imported components of solar systems for personal use from duties, taxes and other government fees. (Prime Minister’s decision, 18 August) On 1 September the Cabinet linked solar explicitly to agriculture and industry while calling for stronger quality testing. (Cabinet decision, 1 September) The next step is a productive-solar window for pumps, cold rooms, clinics, workshops and processors, with performance standards, maintenance contracts and measurement of diesel displaced.

Let states propose; make support conditional

Sudan is too large and varied for one ministry in the capital to decide every locality’s productive future. But decentralization cannot mean sending money without obligations.

Each state should prepare a State Production Compact. The state, local governments, producer groups, firms, universities, unions, women’s organizations and affected communities would propose a limited set of priorities. The federal government would negotiate the infrastructure, finance, guarantees, foreign exchange or tax treatment it can provide. Both sides would then sign a public performance agreement.

Every compact should state:

  • the baseline and annual physical-output target;
  • foreign exchange expected to be saved or earned;
  • permanent and temporary jobs, reported separately;
  • the share of jobs and contracts going to women and young people;
  • apprentices trained and placed in work;
  • local inputs and local supplier purchases;
  • private, cooperative and community co-investment;
  • cost, deadline, equipment uptime and maintenance funding;
  • environmental, land and conflict safeguards;
  • the conditions under which support will be redesigned or withdrawn.

Rwanda’s Imihigo system shows how national goals can be translated into public performance contracts for ministries and districts and evaluated regularly. Its 2024/25 evaluation also shows why publication matters: it identified weak urbanization results and attributed failures to procurement, contract management, implementation delays and budget constraints. (National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda) Sudan should borrow the accountability mechanism, not Rwanda’s political centralization. Priorities must be negotiated from below and independently verified.

No blank cheques for industry

Import substitution can easily become a respectable name for patronage. A politically connected firm receives cheap finance, tax exemptions and protected markets; it promises production; the support continues whether it delivers or not.

The five-year plan needs a harder rule:

Co-invest → produce → employ → verify → receive support.

Bangladesh’s Export Competitiveness for Jobs project offers a useful mechanism. Firms co-invested, grants were tied to milestones, an independent third-party manager assessed eligibility and reimbursed verified spending, and 570 firms received support. The project reported nearly 180,000 jobs and $18 million in private co-investment. (World Bank results report)

Sudan can adapt that principle. Industrial finance, tariff protection, land, foreign exchange and procurement preferences should all have time limits and published conditions. Successful firms should graduate toward productivity and export tests. Failed projects should be restructured or closed. Protection without discipline merely transfers money from consumers to owners.

Count jobs that survive

Employment cannot remain a hoped-for side effect. Nor should success be declared from construction jobs that disappear when a ribbon is cut.

The scorecard should count net jobs still present after twelve months, wages, working conditions, local recruitment, supplier jobs and apprentices who actually move into employment. Women’s and youth participation must be specified in each compact, supported by practical measures such as safe transport, childcare, sanitation, flexible work design, access to finance and recognition of home-based and cooperative production.

Training should follow real demand. If a state compact finances solar irrigation and food processing, its technical institutions should train the electricians, pump technicians, refrigeration specialists, mechanics, food-safety inspectors and machine operators those investments require. “People trained” is not an outcome unless skills lead to work or higher productivity.

Turn gold into assets that outlast the mine

Gold accounted for about $1.135 billion of Sudan’s $1.816 billion in recorded merchandise exports in the first half of 2026. That dependence creates an obvious rule: mineral revenue must build assets rather than disappear into recurrent spending, opaque companies or smuggling networks.

Botswana’s Sustainable Budgeting Principle provides the underlying logic: revenue from depleting mineral assets should be reinvested in other assets—physical infrastructure, human capital or financial savings. (IMF Public Financial Management Blog) Sudan needs its own Gold-to-Assets Rule.

A legislated share of verified mineral revenue should be assigned to productive infrastructure, health, education and technical capability, environmental repair, and financial reserves. The public should be able to trace the chain from mine registration to licensed buyer, export, repatriated proceeds, treasury receipt, state and producing-community shares, and the final funded asset.

This is not foreign theory imposed on Sudan. In August 2026, the government’s own mining-policy discussions called for federal-state coordination, limits on unregulated mining, and the participation of local communities in setting social-responsibility priorities. (Cabinet technical committee) The five-year plan should turn those principles into a transparent fiscal system.

Build the dashboard before announcing victory

The Central Bank’s own 2026–2030 strategic plan contains six strategic objectives, 30 general objectives and roughly 150 initiatives and operational objectives. It proposes scenario planning reviewed every six months, performance indicators, periodic reporting, digital monitoring and independent audit. (CBOS Strategic Plan)

If the Central Bank can publish that architecture, the national plan and every major production program can do the same.

The public dashboard should show, for each compact and supported firm:

  • baseline, target, actual result and variance;
  • money budgeted, released and spent;
  • procurement contracts and beneficial owners;
  • output, jobs, exports and foreign exchange saved;
  • delivery delays and the named institution responsible;
  • independent verification and audit findings;
  • corrective action and the next release decision.

Indicators can be gamed. That is why the plan needs both output measures and outcome checks. A factory opening is an output; goods sold competitively, jobs retained and imports displaced are outcomes. Solar panels installed are an output; functioning systems, diesel saved and crops processed are outcomes.

Peace is not a footnote

No economic plan can compensate for continuing war, arbitrary seizure, unsafe roads, destroyed markets or institutions controlled by armed interests. Peace, civilian legitimacy, rule of law and secure property are not separate from development policy. They determine whether farmers plant, traders move goods, workers return and investors risk capital.

But “wait for perfect peace” cannot become an excuse for doing nothing. The plan should use scenarios: protect life and productive assets under conflict; restart local systems where security permits; and scale investment as movement, law and national settlement improve. Distributed power, local maintenance, diversified transport and state-level production are valuable partly because they are more resilient when a single central system fails.

The test for 2030

By the end of the plan, citizens should not have to judge success from speeches. They should be able to answer concrete questions:

  • Is the replaceable part of the import bill smaller?
  • Are productive machinery and technology imports generating output?
  • Are more exports processed rather than raw?
  • Are rehabilitated factories still operating?
  • Are jobs still present after twelve months, and who holds them?
  • Did every state receive a fair chance to build from its own capabilities?
  • Can mineral revenue be traced into lasting assets?
  • Were failed projects stopped instead of hidden?

Sudan does not need to reject outside finance, trade or assistance. It should welcome partnerships that strengthen Sudanese capability and refuse dependency disguised as development. The standard is not isolation. It is agency.

The 2026–2030 plan will succeed only if it changes what the state rewards: from announcements to delivery, from raw extraction to value addition, from central allocation to negotiated local responsibility, from political access to verified performance, and from spending mineral wealth to building assets.

That is development without waiting for rescue.

Sources and further reading