SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Spectator – Sudan: coup, what coup?

26/10/2021: Spectator – Sudan: coup, what coup? by Richard Walker

Arguing that “the price of bread always determines the fate of Sudanese leaders”, Richard Walker, a former Financial Times foreign affairs correspondent, argues that the fate of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok - a “politically untried UN economist [and] child of the multilateral agency mindset” – was sealed by IMF reforms. 

Walker argues that the IMF pre-requisite for debt relief, “the pain of immediate government cuts, including an end to subsidies on essentials,” balances budgets at the expense of unbalancing the government, with the removal of fuel subsidies “the worst of bad options” for Sudan.

Walker suggests that international lenders should have “taken the process of normalisation and democratic gains at face value, calculated the ghastly cost of another failed state in north east Africa, and come to the necessary conclusion: continue to feed the Hamdok government with as much cash as it needed for as long as it took”.