SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Reuters - Rising hunger looms in Sudan, with little aid in sight

1/4/2022: Reuters - Rising hunger looms in Sudan, with little aid in sight, by Nafisa Eltahir and Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

 Reuters report that Sudan’s food supplies are at risk, citing economic, geopolitical and environmental causes.

With the costs of small bread loaves rising from 2 SDG in 2020 to 50 SDG today, the 56% of Sudan’s population below the poverty line - up from 43% in 2009 - are exposed to the Russia-Ukraine war, as both comprise 87% of Sudan’s imported wheat. 

UN World Food Programme (WFP) deputy country director Marianne Ward attributed the WFP’s expansion to urban centres to “structural issues such as inflation (and) availability of foreign currency”.

Reuters note that inflation makes seeds, fertilisers and fuel unaffordable for farmers amid rising unrest in farming regions and rainfall either too scarce or heavy. UN agencies project that millet, wheat and sorghum yield swill be 30% lower than they were over the past five years, with Sudan facing its first sorghum deficit since “ravaging” droughts of the 1980s.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Reuters - Factbox: Sudan's worsening humanitarian situation

1/4/2022: Reuters - Factbox: Sudan's worsening humanitarian situation

 Reuters provided statistics on Sudan’s worsening humanitarian situation.

• Sudan’s inflation rate of 250% is one of the highest in the world.

• Aid groups estimate that 14.3 million, a third of Sudan’s population, will need humanitarian aid, reflecting an increase of increase of more than 50% in two years.

• The UN World Food Programme says that about 18 million will face acute levels of food insecurity by September 2022, double last year, due to high prices, a reduced harvest, and conflict in some regions.

• According to UN estimates, over 3 million are displaced across Sudan, about 2.5 million of them in Darfur.

• Aid groups warn that violent incidents, usually in the form of militia attacks are increasing in Darfur, causing over 400,000 to flee, with many already in displacement camps.

• Sudan is also home to 1.1 million refugees, including many from South Sudan Ethiopia and Eritrea.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Radio Dabanga - Sudan fruit export halted due to coronavirus pandemic

1/4/2020: Radio Dabanga - Sudan fruit export halted due to coronavirus pandemic

 Radio Dabanga reports that the export of Sudanese vegetables and fruits has stopped because of the significantly increased costs of transportation, inside the country and abroad.

 The costs of transport in Sudan are soaring because of the continuing fuel crisis, and shipping by air and sea have has become extremely expensive due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Director General of the Sudanese Centre for the Sterilisation of Horticultural Export, Abdelrahman Abdelmajid said.

SUDAN POLITICAL ALERT: Human Rights Watch - Sudan Should Not Let COVID-19 Scuttle Transition

1/4/2020: Human Rights Watch - Sudan Should Not Let COVID-19 Scuttle Transition, by Mohamed Osman

Mohamed Osman, an Assistant Researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) Africa, calls for Sudan’s international donors to not let the coronavirus pandemic “become yet another obstacle to Sudan's transition,” and for Sudanese authorities to “focus on the most vulnerable.”

 Osman argues that the transitional government’s fight against the pandemic could be crucial to the transition, but warns that the precautionary measures taken to prevent the virus spreading “are not enough.”

 Osman points to Sudan’s “long list of poor and vulnerable populations,” including refugees and displaced communities in conflict zones “many of whom live in large camp settings,” as well as the many who work in the informal sector who “may not have the luxury of social distancing or staying home.”

 Osman therefore calls on Sudanese authorities to ramp up health services to crowded and under-serviced urban areas, provide water points and testing facilities, and increase public information about the virus.