SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Atlantic Council – FAST THINKING: What’s behind the coup in Sudan?

25/10/2021: Atlantic Council –  FAST THINKING: What’s behind the coup in Sudan?

The Atlantic Council’s analysts examine the background to the military coup, with Africa Center director Rama Yade arguing that the military “seized the moment to accuse the government of ignoring the people’s needs,” amid the spiralling Sudanese economy.

Senior fellow Cameron Hudson suggested that civilian leaders “reached the limits of their ability to reform the political and economic space without the military giving an inch”, adding that economy recovery “was never going to be achieved without the military relinquishing its control over the major revenue-generating parts of the economy” from port operations to gold mining.

However, Yade blames the structures that came with Sudan’s International Monetary Fund loans, suggesting that western countries should have supported the government economically “rather than suffocating it with tough austerity measures that ended up plunging the population into despair and offering the military the ideal pretext they wanted to pull off this coup”.