How Will Sudan Sail Through Floods, Bad Governance and Inflation?

• Alaina
• . October 10, 2022
• . Update: November 11, 2022 12:42 am
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Problems for Sudan aren’t getting any lesser as the torrential rains have wiped off communities and eaten away cultivatable land, making survival next to impossible.

As the country is already facing mass hunger issues, with low availability to food, Sudan has been reeling under huge flooded waters, wiping off rural communities all together, forcing displacement as well. Floods have been ongoing since August and now continue into September.

Their woes have also compounded and have crippled a country that has been reeling under political stalemate for decades together.  A battered unfunctional economy is also another thing to worry, apart from them struggling with frequent collapses of security in its western and southern regions.

The floods have fuelled opposition to the country’s military rulers, with many in the opposition accusing them of an inefficient and inadequate response to the disaster. The loss of crops follows an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that there has been a 187 per cent increase in the price of basic food items over the past year in conflict-affected areas.

Read | Will Democracy Become A Distant Dream In Sudan, Again?

Some 80,000 families are now in need of desperate help and aid.  Others are also blaming the less-than-hoped-for emergency foreign aid on the international isolation the country has faced after the generals seized power last October.

The coup also derailed the country’s democratic transition following the removal in 2019 of long-time dictator Omar Al Bashir.

In response, the West has suspended billions of dollars worth of economic aid and debt forgiveness to Sudan. Repeated pleas by the generals for the resumption of aid have fallen on deaf ears.

Sudan has continued to be plagued by three-digit inflation that is fuelled in part by the depreciation of the Sudanese pound and the continuing political deadlock since the October 25 military coup.