Glimpse of better life recedes as investment in Sudan slips away
By Andrew England
September 7, 2004 (Financial Times) — With sunglasses coolly perched on their heads, a group of young women huddle around a chrome restaurant table waiting for a pizza to arrive.
Their conversation moves in fits and starts as fancy mobile phones vibrate and ring, interrupting the carefree chitchat.
It could be a scene from most countries in the world, but this is Sudan, a nation better known for war and authoritarian Islamic rule than the trappings of modernisation.
Sudan has the potential to be among Africa’s richer countries. The continent’s largest nation boasts oil reserves estimated at more than 1bn barrels, natural gas, minerals and vast swathes of arable land enabling it to produce cotton, nuts, sugar and 70-90 per cent of the world’s gum Arabic supply, a key ingredient for soft drinks. The US exempted the resin from trade sanctions imposed in 1997 because of its importance to US industry.
But decades of conflict and poor governance have confined Sudan to the ranks of least developed nations, with an average per capita annual income of about $300 (?248, £167).
The students in Khartoum’s Tasty Pizza represent a tiny elite who are able to glimpse how life could be if the country’s wealth were spent on development instead of tanks and helicopter gunships. And they yearn for more.
“It’s better to do what the rest of the world is doing and progress,” said 21-year-old Susan Jaffer. At the beginning of the year it seemed as if Sudan was finally about to have that chance as the government reached a series of peace agreements with southern rebels fighting a 21-year civil war.
The successes sparked talk of much-needed investment and the possibility of Sudan returning to the international fold after years of isolation. The US was getting ready to review its sanctions, the European Union was preparing to unlock ?400m ($482m, £271m) in development funds held back since 1990 and Britain headed a support group seeking ways to deal with Sudan’s foreign debt of more than $21bn. The United Nations and the World Bank set up a joint assessment mission to prepare a reconstruction plan that could be presented to donors once a final peace deal was struck.
But since then the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan has escalated and the talks between the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the government have been put on hold. And no deal means no new development funds.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s Islamic regime has also lost the goodwill it gained and it is now unclear how much of the development assistance previously expected will be made available even if the north-south talks conclude.
“It’s a worry donors have discussed,” said Fridtjov Thorkildsen, a Norwegian government official and chair of a donor co-ordination group. The Darfur crisis would divert some of the funds that would have flowed from a peace deal in the south.
If a final north-south deal had been reached in early 2004, donors could initially have been expected to contribute between $500m and $1bn for reconstruction and development needs, he said.
Mr Thorkildsen said the areas most likely to be affected by the Darfur crisis were road construction, troop demobilisation, and assistance for hundreds of thousands of displaced people expected to return to the south.
Development will be a critical ingredient of any prospect for peace and stability. In the south, where war has raged for 37 of the 48 years since Sudan gained independence in 1956, there is not a single paved road and one out of every four children dies before reaching five.
Although Sudan joined the ranks of oil exporters in 1999 – currently producing 300,000 barrels a day – and has received investment from China and the Arab world, the benefits are hardly felt outside Khartoum. Lack of development and a sense of marginalisation were among the root causes of the southern rebels’ struggle and are sentiments shared by insurgents fighting in Darfur, as well as opposition groups in the east, where there are concerns that another uprising could take shape.
“Darfur has taken the wind out of the peace sails,” said Jon Bennett, UN team leader of the joint assessment mission.
“Now we find all attention is focused on Darfur, and not only that, but Darfur could be the ultimate spoiler in terms of donors and in terms of the peace process,” he said.