Two years of devastating conflict in Sudan have left a trail of destruction, with destroyed bridges, widespread blackouts, empty water stations, and looted hospitals bearing witness to the war’s catastrophic impact on the country’s infrastructure.
Authorities estimate that reconstruction efforts will require hundreds of billions of dollars, a prospect that appears increasingly remote given the ongoing fighting and drone attacks targeting critical infrastructure such as power stations, dams, and fuel depots.
Furthermore, a global shift away from foreign aid, coupled with significant cuts in assistance from the United States, the largest donor, further diminishes the prospects for a large-scale recovery.
The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been engaged in fierce battles since April 2023, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries and displacing approximately 13 million people. Aid organizations have described the situation as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Residents of the capital, Khartoum, are enduring prolonged power outages, a lack of clean water, and overcrowded hospitals. The city’s airport is burnt out, with the charred remains of planes scattered across the runway.
Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred, and once-affluent neighborhoods have become ghost towns, with destroyed cars and unexploded shells littering the streets.
“Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country, and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control,” said Tariq Ahmed, 56, who briefly returned to his looted home in the capital before leaving again after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum.
One dire consequence of the infrastructure breakdown is a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 lives out of 2,729 cases in the past week alone, primarily in Khartoum.
Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, have been similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, formerly the center of service provision, has had a ripple effect across the country.
Sudanese authorities estimate that reconstruction will require $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan. The U.N. is currently conducting its own assessments.
Sudan’s oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels per day, and its refining capabilities have ceased as the main al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, according to Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem.
Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all of its crude oil and relies on imports. The country is also struggling to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.
Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country’s main port city in an attack that Sudan blamed on the UAE, which has denied the accusations.
All of Khartoum’s power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase the power supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and stated earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks on stations outside Khartoum were straining its ability to keep the grid operational.
As government forces retook Khartoum earlier this year and people returned to homes ransacked by looters, one striking feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to extract valuable copper wire.
On Sudan’s Nile Street, once its busiest thoroughfare, there is a ditch approximately one meter (three feet) deep and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and showing traces of burning.
Khartoum’s two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.
Those who have remained in Khartoum are resorting to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. However, there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.
“There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted, and what remains has been deliberately destroyed,” said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, estimating losses to the health system at $11 billion.
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With two or three million people expected to return to Khartoum, interventions are needed to avert further humanitarian emergencies such as the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda.
However, continued war and limited budget mean that a full-scale reconstruction plan is not currently feasible.
“What we can do … with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation,” he said, such as solar-powered water pumps, hospitals, and schools.
In this way, he said, the war may present an opportunity for decentralizing services away from Khartoum and pursuing greener energy sources.
