In 1955, the year before Sudanese independence, the Sudan Railways network stretched across 4,756 kilometres of track. It connected Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, south to Sennar and Kosti on the White Nile, west through Kordofan to Nyala in Darfur, north along the Nile to Wadi Halfa on the Egyptian border. It was, at independence, one of the most extensive rail networks in Africa — the physical infrastructure of a country that moved its cotton, its sorghum, and its people on steel rails through the desert.
Today, Sudan Railways operates, at most, a few token services on a fraction of that network. The tracks are broken, the rolling stock is decrepit or absent, the management is hollowed out, and the institutional knowledge built over a century of operation has dispersed. What was once one of Sudan’s most significant economic assets has become a symbol of national decline — a reminder of what was possible and what was squandered.
The collapse of the railway did not happen in the war. It happened over decades, through neglect, under-investment, and the systematic failure to adapt the network to a changing economy. Understanding why it collapsed is the prerequisite for rebuilding it correctly.
How Sudan Lost Its Railway
The story of Sudan Railways’ decline follows a pattern common to African railways of the colonial era. Built for a specific commercial purpose — in Sudan’s case, primarily to move cotton from the Gezira Scheme to Port Sudan for export — the network was never substantially developed or modernised after independence. The economics that justified it in the colonial period (cheap labour, captive markets, no alternatives) gradually eroded as roads were built, trucks proliferated, and the political preference for road spending became entrenched.
The financing trap. Sudan Railways was run as a government enterprise, and governments facing fiscal pressure consistently chose to extract cash from it rather than invest. Maintenance deferred, rolling stock not replaced, tracks not rehabilitated: the classic state enterprise death spiral. By the 1980s, the service had degraded to the point where it was losing freight and passengers to road transport — not because road was better, but because rail had become unreliable.
Structural adjustment’s collateral damage. The IMF programmes of the 1990s, and the associated pressure to cut government spending, accelerated the decline. Staff were cut, workshop capacity was lost, and the institutional knowledge embedded in the workforce began to drain away. A railway system requires a specific, specialised workforce: locomotive drivers, track maintenance gangs, signals and communications technicians, workshop engineers. These skills take years to develop and are not easily recreated once lost.
The road lobby. Every dollar spent on road construction was a dollar not spent on rail rehabilitation. Sudan’s road-building since independence has consistently been prioritised over rail — partly because roads have lower capital cost per kilometre, partly because the political returns from road construction are more immediate (a new road connects a constituency, a railway rehabilitation on an existing line connects no one new), and partly because the trucking industry, unlike rail, generates a dispersed constituency of road users with political voice.
South Sudan secession. The loss of the south in 2011 removed Sudan’s oil revenues and deepened the fiscal crisis. It also severed the southern sections of the rail network, which had been projected to connect to East Africa as part of a continental rail integration vision. The economic logic for investment in the south-connected sections evaporated overnight.
The cumulative result: by 2020, the operational network had shrunk to a few hundred kilometres at most. A Bloomberg report that year described Sudan’s $640 million railway revival plan as the government’s attempt to restart a system that had been largely inoperable for years. The plan required external financing that did not materialise, and the 2023 war ended whatever momentum remained.
The Economic Case for Revival
Why does the railway matter? At a time when roads exist and trucks can reach most of the country, is rail still worth the investment?
The answer is yes, and emphatically so, for several reasons that are specific to Sudan’s geography and economic structure.
Scale and distance. Sudan is the third-largest country in Africa. Distances from production areas to markets and ports are enormous. Khartoum to Port Sudan is 1,200 kilometres. El Obeid to Port Sudan is over 1,400 kilometres. At these distances, and at the volumes involved in bulk commodity movements — sorghum, sesame, cotton, groundnuts, livestock, minerals — rail is dramatically cheaper per tonne-kilometre than road. The economics are not comparable: a tonne of grain moved by train costs a fraction of what it costs by truck, and at Sudan’s distances, that fraction compounds into a decisive competitive advantage or disadvantage.
Road degradation. Sudan’s road network, such as it is, suffers from the same basic problem as its railway: under-investment in maintenance. The heavy trucks that move freight across Sudan’s roads damage the road surface faster than it is repaired. A tonne of goods moved by road creates road damage; moved by rail, it creates none. The hidden cost of road freight in Sudan — the potholed highways, the bridge failures, the seasonal impassability of unpaved roads during flood season — is enormous and largely unaccounted for in any comparison of rail versus road costs.
Regional integration. Sudan sits at the geographic centre of a regional transport network that is still being built. The African Union’s integrated high-speed railway vision includes a corridor running through Sudan connecting Egypt to Ethiopia and onward to East Africa. The OIC railway project envisions a west-to-east axis crossing Sudan. Port Sudan, Sudan’s only major sea port, is the natural outlet for landlocked South Sudan, Ethiopia, Chad, and Central African Republic. A functioning Sudanese railway is a regional asset — and a source of transit revenue — not just a domestic one.
Mineral extraction. The revival of Sudan’s mineral sector — particularly gold, chromite, and iron ore — is partially contingent on transport costs. Chromite ore from the Ingessana Hills to a processing facility or port requires transport. At current road costs over these distances, marginal deposits become uneconomic. At rail costs, they may not. The railway and the mining sector are complementary investments.
What Revival Requires
Rebuilding Sudan Railways is not simply a matter of finance, though finance is substantial. It requires a sequence of decisions and investments that go beyond the physical track.
Track rehabilitation, not greenfield construction. The existing network right-of-way is Sudan Railways’ most valuable asset. The land corridor is cleared, surveyed, and historically established. Rehabilitating existing track is dramatically cheaper than building new. The priority sections for rehabilitation are the Port Sudan corridor (the economic spine), the Kordofan branch (connecting the agricultural heartland), and the Kassala line (connecting the agricultural east and providing the eastern corridor toward Ethiopia).
Rolling stock acquisition. Sudan Railways has virtually no operational locomotives or wagons. A realistic restart requires acquiring used rolling stock — freight wagons and a modest number of diesel locomotives — from international markets, while planning for new procurement over a longer horizon. Chinese, Indian, and South African manufacturers have supplied African railways at competitive prices. This is a solvable problem given financing.
Institutional rebuilding. The organisation that ran Sudan Railways for a century needs to be reconstituted. This means not only hiring staff but rebuilding the training infrastructure — the workshops, the apprenticeship programmes, the technical schools — that produced the workforce. Several generations of Sudanese railway workers have retired or died. A new generation needs to be trained from near-scratch.
Private sector participation. The model of a fully state-owned and state-operated railway, which failed across Africa, should not be simply recreated. Freight operations particularly are suitable for private sector involvement — concession agreements that give private operators the right to use infrastructure in exchange for maintenance obligations and service commitments have worked in some African contexts. The Kenya-Uganda railway, the Tanzania railway, and Senegal’s experience all offer lessons, positive and negative.
Sequencing of investment. Not all of the network needs to be rebuilt at once. The economic returns from the Port Sudan corridor are highest and should come first. The Kordofan and Darfur branches can follow as agricultural zones are stabilised and demand recovers. The southern corridor toward the Ethiopian border is the longest-horizon investment, contingent on regional agreements and South Sudanese stability.
The Counter-argument and Its Limits
The standard counter-argument to railway investment is that roads are more flexible, serve more people, and cost less upfront. There is truth in this, but it has limits.
Roads serve dispersed populations efficiently. Railways serve high-volume corridors efficiently. Sudan has both types of transport need, and the answer is not roads or railways but roads and railways. The road network connecting Sudanese villages and towns to each other and to the main railway lines is irreplaceable. The bulk freight moving from agricultural zones to Port Sudan, or mineral ore from Ingessana to processing facilities, is exactly the traffic that rail handles better than road at any realistic price.
The opportunity is clearer now than it has been at any point in decades. Sudan’s reconstruction will require massive investment regardless. The choice is whether that investment reproduces the road-dependent model that has failed, or whether it takes the longer view — building the infrastructure foundation for a more competitive, more connected, more productive Sudanese economy.
Further Reading — Kandaka Library
- Appraisal of the Development Program of the Sudan Railway — World Bank technical and economic assessment of Sudan Railways’ development programme.
- Sudan Railways Development Project — African Development Bank project documentation for Sudan Railways rehabilitation.
- Information Note on the African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network — African Union framework for continental rail integration, including Sudan’s role.
- Sudan Infrastructure Sector Overview — Comprehensive infrastructure assessment covering transport, energy, and water.
- Railway: A Better Option than Pipeline for South Sudan — Economic analysis comparing rail and pipeline options for regional transport, with relevance to Sudan’s corridor role.