Forty thousand people have died since fighting began. A quarter of Sudan’s population has been driven from their homes. "We aren't just facing a crisis – we're witnessing the systematic erosion of a country’s future," Luca Renda, UNDP resident representative in Sudan, said.
Scale of the destruction
Sudan in 2026 looks very different from 2022: whole neighbourhoods and towns that once hummed with trade have been torn apart, cutting off normal life. Cities and towns that once held factories, schools and hospitals have seen large swathes of infrastructure damaged or lost. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Institute for Security Studies say more than 40,000 people have been killed and roughly 14 million people — about one in four Sudanese — have been forced to flee their homes since the fighting began in 2023.
That kind of human displacement doesn’t just show up in camps. It unravels services, markets and the social fabric that keep a country functioning.
Fighting between the Sudanese army, led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces under Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo has hit basic systems — power, water, transport and farms — so hard that daily life has been upended across large parts of the country. Schools are closed or destroyed. Courts and civil offices have struggled to operate.
When one service falls apart — say the power grid — the water treatment plants and markets quickly follow, and each month without repair makes rebuilding that much tougher.
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What the economy has already lost
The economic numbers are stark. Sudan’s gross domestic product was about US$26 billion in 2023. That year alone, the country lost an estimated US$6.4 billion in output as fighting shut factories, halted trade and crushed investment, according to the UNDP analysis.
Industrial activity has virtually stopped in many urban centres — down by about 90 percent in some estimates — as power supplies were disrupted and manufacturing plants were damaged or abandoned. Up to 40 percent of the country’s power generation capacity has been lost, leaving factories and neighbourhoods in the dark and businesses unable to restart.
Agriculture has taken a major hit too; it employs a large share of Sudanese people and supplies regional markets, so damage to farms quickly ripples into food shortages and lost exports. Around 15 percent of cultivated land has been abandoned or rendered unusable because of fighting, damaged irrigation and blocked transport routes. That kind of hit reduces food availability and export revenue for years, not just a season.
Long-term economic outlook
The UNDP and the Institute for Security Studies calculated future scenarios to show how deep the damage runs. Even under the most optimistic path, where peace is reached in 2026, the report estimates a cumulative GDP loss of about US$18.8 billion by 2043. That’s money that could have paid for schools, roads and hospitals. Instead, it’s lost economic activity — forgone growth, jobs and opportunity.
Fixing physical damage will be just the start: months-long factory shutdowns push skilled workers to leave, sever supplier networks and erase tax income, all of which slow any economic comeback. Public institutions that collect taxes, deliver services and manage budgets have been weakened, so the state’s capacity to fund reconstruction is smaller now than it was before the war.
Investors typically sit on their hands until they see real security and predictable courts, so foreign money is unlikely to pour in while fighting and lawlessness persist. Without those, revival stalls. That means Sudan could face years of low growth and high unemployment even after the guns fall silent.
Health, water and the humanitarian toll
Public health systems have been hammered. Outbreaks of disease, including cholera, have followed the breakdown of water and sanitation services. The World Health Organization has verified more than 200 attacks on health facilities since the war began, compounding the challenge of treating the sick and injured and maintaining routine care.
Hospitals and clinics have been damaged, looted, or occupied. Medical staff fled or were unable to get to work. Vaccination campaigns and maternal health services have been interrupted, raising long-term risks for children born during the conflict.
Humanitarian organisations say logistics are a huge barrier. Moving food, medicine and fuel through conflict zones is risky and slow. That delays aid and raises costs, so even well-funded relief efforts struggle to reach those who need help most.
Political consequences and regional risks
The political fabric of Sudan is frayed. The fight between the army and the RSF has hollowed out central authority in many areas, making governance patchy and unpredictable. Local power vacuums have emerged — and where that happens, services and law enforcement often collapse.
Neighbouring countries are already feeling the strain from refugee flows and cross-border instability. Borders that were once open for trade now host blocked convoys and tense checkpoints. The risk of conflict spilling over, or of armed groups exploiting weakened state control, is a live concern for the wider region.
Costs of rebuilding and the barriers to recovery
Reconstruction won’t be cheap or quick. Fixing power grids, rebuilding irrigation systems, repairing roads and reviving factories requires money, materials and secure conditions. And those are precisely the things damaged by three years of fighting.
Debt and liquidity are problems. With government revenues slashed and the economy smaller, Sudan will struggle to borrow or attract the level of foreign direct investment needed for a major rebuild. International aid can help — but aid flows are often conditional, fragmented and sometimes slow to arrive when access is limited by insecurity.
Recovery will stretch over years. The first step is to restore electricity, water, health services and transport so hospitals can run, markets can reopen and farmers can move crops to buyers. businesses and agriculture to return. Rebuilding institutions that can collect taxes and plan investments is next. But all of that needs a stable security environment, and that’s the thing the UNDP report makes plain: without a political settlement, the economics won’t add up.
Voices on the ground
UNDP’s Luca Renda framed the crisis bluntly, saying the conflict represents more than immediate suffering; it's eroding the country’s prospects. The UNDP and the Institute for Security Studies designed their scenario analysis to show how current losses compound into future gaps in income, services and opportunity.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohamad Hamdan Dagalo are named as the main antagonists in the power struggle that sparked and sustained the conflict. Their contest has left Sudan’s institutions weakened and its people paying the price.
People in displaced communities speak of lost livelihoods and children missing school. Humanitarian workers describe access constraints and rising costs of basic goods. Those on the front lines of aid delivery say even getting water and medicines into camps is getting harder by the month.
Why it matters beyond Sudan
Bottom line: the war’s damage is strategic, not just tactical. It’s not merely about buildings or crops; it’s about the ability of a country to generate income, pay teachers, run hospitals and provide stability. That affects regional trade, migration patterns and security.
For the international community, the question is whether diplomacy, aid and reconstruction financing can be aligned quickly enough to prevent decades of lost development. If they can’t, the cost is borne not only by Sudanese families but by the wider region that relies on Sudan’s farms, ports and markets.
There’s no simple fix. But there's one clear truth from the UNDP report: the longer the conflict runs, the deeper the damage — and the harder the rebuild will be.
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Even if peace is secured in 2026, the UNDP and the Institute for Security Studies estimate Sudan could still lose about US$18.8 billion in GDP by 2043.
This article was created with AI assistance.
