perthes24_YASUYOSHI CHIBAAFP via Getty Images_sudaneconomy Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

Sudan Opens for Business

After decades of strife and bloodshed, Sudan has made significant gains in the two years since its revolution, adopting important economic reforms and gradually rejoining the international community. Now, the country needs investment, and it has no shortage of profitable opportunities to offer.

KHARTOUM – Investing in Sudan may sound like a strange idea, given that the country has long been marred by civil war and intercommunal conflict, crippled by sanctions, and, until recently, ruled by a president facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Nonetheless, the French government has invited Sudan’s political leadership, as well as other world leaders, to an investment conference in Paris on May 17, and there are good reasons to believe it is the right move.

Much has changed in Sudan since April 2019, when a popular uprising toppled President Omar al-Bashir. The country has been removed from the US Department of State’s “Sponsors of Terrorism” list, and it has begun to cooperate with the ICC. With the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund both acknowledging Sudan’s progress on economic reforms, the country is moving closer to qualifying for debt relief.

Currently, Sudan is governed by a transitional administration under a power-sharing agreement between the military and a broad civilian coalition of party and civil-society representatives. Though the arrangement is hardly a marriage of love, it offers a model of pragmatism in a region that sorely needs it.

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