The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has warned that the continuation of the war in Sudan until 2030 could set the country’s economy back by decades, with extreme poverty expected to rise to over 60 percent and deprivation expanding on an unprecedented scale. This comes as losses in production and income intersect with the collapse of basic services and the worsening crises of displacement and hunger.
In a joint report with the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, the UN agency stated that Sudan lost an estimated $6.4 billion from its GDP in 2023 alone, while nearly 7 million additional people fell into extreme poverty within a single year.
Sudan’s GDP stood at $32.4 billion in 2023 after contracting by 12 percent compared to the previous year. This comes amid record inflation, which reached 360 percent in 2021 and remained high at around 170 percent in 2024. Public debt also surged to approximately 148 percent of GDP by the end of 2024.
According to the report, this means that the war has not only undermined economic growth, but has also drained households’ spending capacity, deepened crises in markets, employment, and production, and severely limited the government’s ability to finance any meaningful economic or social response.
