Nahla Khalifa woke on April 15, 2023, to the sound of artillery in Omdurman. She could not have known that the war that sent her and her five children scrambling under beds and tables would upend even the most basic aspects of their lives: food, water and medicine.
At first, the family survived on what remained of its Ramadan provisions. Supplies, however, were limited. Sudan’s economic hardship had begun years before the conflict, and salaries were already insufficient to meet the needs of many households.
‘We eat so we don’t die’
Years of financial strain had forced most Sudanese to cut their daily meals to two. As the fighting dragged on and intensified, household stocks dwindled, leaving stale bread and small portions of lentils or beans supplied by communal kitchens, known as takayas, as staples.
“We ate simply so we wouldn’t starve to death,” Nahla told Asharq Al-Awsat. Meat, milk, vegetables and fruit vanished from the family’s diet, while even a cup of tea became a luxury. Her children often went to bed hungry and frightened, and her diabetic husband’s health deteriorated amid scarce food and limited access to treatment.
More than three years later, Nahla’s experience is no longer merely a reflection of the conflict’s early days. Food shortages have grown into a nationwide emergency, compounded by continued fighting, the collapse of the Sudanese pound, lost livelihoods and deteriorating public services.
Currency collapse
The Sudanese pound recently breached 6,000 to the dollar on the parallel market, compared with rates of 3,500 to 4,000 at bank exchange counters.
A currency trader told Asharq Al-Awsat that the pound’s plunge had immediately driven up the cost of basic goods as household purchasing power eroded to unprecedented levels.
Economist Mohamed al-Nayer noted that the currency had remained relatively stable for about three months, trading between 5,500 and 5,800 pounds to the dollar, before weakening again this week.
Inflation, poverty, unemployment and currency depreciation are predictable consequences of a wartime economy, al-Nayer explained, although the easing of fighting in some areas has allowed limited economic activity to gradually resume.
Any sustained recovery in the pound, he argued, hinges partly on controlling Sudan’s gold resources. Official production reached about 70 tons last year, while declared exports amounted to only 20 tons. Curbing smuggling and allowing the central bank to retain some output as reserves could bolster the currency, while the widening gap between official and parallel-market rates risks affecting remittances from Sudanese abroad.
A chronic problem
University of Khartoum economics and finance professor Ibrahim Ahmed Onour sees deeper structural problems behind the pound’s decline, pointing to the absence of effective monetary policy and weak coordination with fiscal policy.
He explained that limited central bank tools have left the exchange rate vulnerable to parallel-market speculation, while gold revenues have not been sufficiently harnessed to shore up the currency and finance imports of wheat, fuel and medicines.
Onour called for restructuring the banking sector, reassessing bank assets, increasing capital and merging struggling lenders. Without a coherent monetary and fiscal strategy, he warned, pressure on the pound will persist.
The crisis at street level
The economists’ figures translate into a harsher reality in Sudan’s markets.
Grocer Ibrahim Idris told Asharq Al-Awsat that his working capital no longer buys the quantities it once did, forcing him to concentrate on essentials as demand for other products declines.
A 36-pound container of cooking oil that cost around 170,000 pounds before the conflict now sells for about 350,000, while a sack of onions can jump from 5,000 to 7,000 pounds in a single day.
For Idris, however, the clearest indicator is his ledger of unpaid debts. More customers are buying on credit, while many can no longer repay what they owe after losing jobs or other sources of livelihood.
Shrinking household incomes
Employment alone does not guarantee security. Amal Abdullah, a pseudonym, explained that although all her children work, the family’s combined earnings cannot cover food and medical care. Before the conflict, she received kidney transplant medication free of charge. She must now pay for it herself, sometimes obtaining medicines from Egypt and borrowing from her grocer to cover expenses.
“Some days, my family makes do with one meager meal,” she told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Such accounts mirror food-security indicators showing millions of Sudanese facing acute hunger. Conditions are most severe in conflict-hit Darfur and Kordofan, where the problem extends beyond soaring prices to disrupted markets, roads and agriculture, as well as restricted humanitarian access.
Communal kitchens close
In Khartoum, takayas helped fill part of that gap for a time.
Osman al-Jundi, who oversees several communal kitchens, recalled that they once provided one meal a day. Many have since closed because of dwindling funding, rising food costs and volunteers returning to work or studies.
The return of residents to parts of the capital has not eliminated the need, he noted. Many came back without jobs or livelihoods, while fighting in Kordofan has brought a fresh influx of displaced people.
Children, the elderly, women and people with disabilities are among those most dependent on the meals.
“The war impoverished the rich and made the poor even poorer,” al-Jundi said.
Shortages beyond food
Securing a meal does not end the hardship. Power cuts halt water pumps and disrupt bakeries, workshops and shops.
Ahmed Abdullah, director general of Sudan Electricity Holding Company, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the sector had suffered enormous losses, with repairs underway on transmission and distribution lines and transformers as residential areas are gradually reconnected.
Nahla recalled that during one prolonged water outage, young men in her neighborhood reopened old wells to obtain drinking water. Intense heat and electricity cuts have also forced families at times to sit and sleep outside in search of a breeze.
During the rainy season, failing water and electricity services pose an additional health threat.
Mohamed al-Hassan al-Amir, Khartoum state’s director of preventive medicine, warned of malaria, watery diarrhea, gastrointestinal diseases and dengue fever. Stagnant pools, poor drainage, accumulated waste and murky water facilitate the spread of disease, while the suspension of some control measures during the fighting has expanded the habitat of dengue-carrying mosquitoes.
Sudan’s hardships have become mutually reinforcing: conflict has crippled production and employment, the pound’s collapse has sent prices soaring, shrinking purchasing power has reduced both the quantity and quality of meals, and the closure of takayas has weakened one of the last remaining safety nets. Electricity and water outages, meanwhile, heighten the risk of disease.
For Nahla, years of conflict can be distilled into a single image: her children going to bed hungry, her sick husband needing medicine and a family table reduced to a bowl of lentils from a communal kitchen — when one is available — marking the thin line between starvation and surviving another day.
