The Cheapest Investment Sudan Can Make in Its People: Tackling Illiteracy
In rural Sudan, six out of ten people cannot read or write. Among rural women, the figure is closer to seven out of ten. These are not statistics from a century ago. They are from the 2022 Sudan Labor Market Panel Survey, analysed by the Economic Research Forum in 2024 – the most recent serious measurement of a crisis that has been worsening, slowly and largely unnoticed, for decades. The 2023 war accelerated everything. Sudan’s GDP contracted by an estimated 48%. Five million jobs disappeared. School infrastructure across multiple states was damaged or destroyed. The children who were already out of school – and in rural areas, many were – are now further from any educational pathway than they have ever been. ...