At the kind invitation of the Sustainable Development Response Organization (SuDRO: https://sudro.org/), I participated in a virtual seminar on “Famine and Conflict in Sudan,” held on October 31, 2025. The organization seeks to build sustainable communities through partnership, knowledge sharing, and capacity building. It operates through youth volunteerism and community-driven initiatives designed according to local needs. According to its website, SuDRO has a field presence in Sudan and a sister organization in the United States. It brings together a distinguished group of public health and nutrition consultants, along with experts across various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The seminar was chaired by Professor Ibrahim Bani, a public health and nutrition expert and former professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Gezira. He outlined the seminar’s objectives as follows:
- Examining the health and nutritional impacts of famine in Sudan.
- Discussing clinical consequences, including refeeding syndrome.
- Highlighting human rights dimensions, including the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
- Assessing the economic effects of famine and conflict on Sudanese households, livelihoods, and long-term recovery.
- Promoting policy dialogue and linking scientific evidence with humanitarian action.
This seminar was educational and illuminated the severity of famine in the country as a result of this war and the grave health consequences, particularly for children. I sincerely hope the organizers will write opinion pieces for the broader public so that non-specialists understand that Sudan today is living through a pivotal moment – measured not only by the intensity of war and the scale of destruction, but by a far more dangerous reality beneath the political and military surface.
The ongoing war in Sudan does not kill by bullets alone. There is another form of death – slower and more devastating – that cameras do not capture and daily news bulletins rarely mention. It is death by hunger, creeping into children’s bodies, eroding their cognitive and physical capacities, and dismantling what remains of the human capital that could form the foundation for rebuilding Sudan once the fighting ends.
Hunger is not merely a humanitarian tragedy; it is an intergenerational economic shock, consuming the country’s future before its present. It is more dangerous than physical destruction. Bridges can be rebuilt, factories reconstructed – but a damaged human mind cannot be restored once the critical window of childhood development is lost.
We are not facing a food crisis alone. We are approaching what can be called a “demographic and economic point of no return”: when a large cohort of children becomes permanently unable to integrate into the productive labor market due to malnutrition, school dropout, and arrested cognitive and skill development.
I was asked to speak about the long-term economic impacts of famine, which will be the focus of the remainder of this article.
The Map of Sudanese Hunger: A Nation on the Brink of Biological Collapse
Figures released by international organizations are stark and shocking: more than 25 million Sudanese are experiencing acute food insecurity, including 3 million children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.
These are not abstract statistics. They signal a systemic collapse of human survival mechanisms, extending beyond food shortages to displacement, educational loss, and the breakdown of health and supply networks. The nation is becoming an environment hostile to life – not only because of war, but because of the erosion of its capacity to produce and sustain human beings.
What many fail to recognize is that a child deprived of nutrition today will not simply grow up physically weaker, but economically less productive. Malnutrition during the first years of life – especially during the “first 1,000 days” – affects:
- Educational attainment: lower academic performance
- Cognitive development: weakened memory and attention
- Physical development: stunting and weakened immunity
Hunger Is Not an Event – It Is a Delayed Economic Landmine
Figures released by international organizations are stark and shocking: more than 25 million Sudanese are experiencing acute food insecurity, including 3 million children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.
These are not abstract statistics. They signal a systemic collapse of human survival mechanisms, extending beyond food shortages to displacement, educational loss, and the breakdown of health and supply networks. The nation is becoming an environment hostile to life – not only because of war, but because of the erosion of its capacity to produce and sustain human beings.
What many fail to recognize is that a child deprived of nutrition today will not simply grow up physically weaker, but economically less productive. Malnutrition during the first years of life – especially during the “first 1,000 days” – affects:
- Cognitive development: weakened memory and attention
- Physical development: stunting and weakened immunity
- Educational attainment: lower academic performance
Hunger Is Not an Event – It Is a Delayed Economic Landmine
What is required here is not only humanitarian sympathy, but economic clarity. Hunger is not temporary. It is a developmental shock with irreversible consequences.
A child deprived of adequate nutrition in early years does not merely lose weight and height; he or she loses cognitive ability, learning capacity, and the physical strength necessary for future productivity. This means that millions of Sudanese children today may be unable – twenty years from now – to integrate into productive labor markets. The result will be a weak workforce, a distorted economy, and deep social inequality transmitted across generations – what economists call dynastic poverty.
Together, these factors will reproduce the same structural roots that have fueled underdevelopment and conflict in Sudan for decades.
Famine directly undermines two of the most important drivers of long-term growth:
- Human capital (cognitive ability and educational attainment)
- Raw labor capacity (healthy physical development)
A smaller, weaker, and less skilled workforce discourages investment – especially in high-productivity sectors.
Scientific literature confirms that early-life malnutrition can reduce lifetime productivity by up to 10 percent. This is an alarming figure for Sudan’s future unless the war ends urgently and a robust child nutrition program is implemented to halt the cumulative damage.
Hunger today is not just an “aid problem.” It is an economic catastrophe that will manifest as:
- A less efficient workforce
- Lower economic growth for years
- Intergenerational poverty
- Broad-based national productivity decline
Estimating the War’s Economic Cost
In a co-authored paper, Sudan’s Future Between Catastrophic Conflict and Peaceful Renaissance Growth Trajectories: Long-Term Growth Model Simulations (Elbadawi and Fiuratti), we estimated the economic cost of the war by simulating the destruction inflicted on growth drivers – including hunger, school dropout, and labor force erosion.
Our findings show that even if the war ends within months, Sudan would require unprecedented growth – averaging 10 percent annually for seven consecutive years – just to return to its pre-war GDP level of approximately $50 billion. For a population nearing 50 million, that GDP level already reflected a poor country despite its rich resources.
War destroys not only infrastructure but also human capital. Nations can rebuild buildings; they cannot recover lost childhoods, unfinished minds, or children who died before entering school or the workforce.
Lessons from Successful Post-War Recoveries
International evidence shows that societies emerging from war begin their renaissance not with infrastructure, but with people.
Vietnam built its economic miracle on nutrition and education before industrial expansion. Rwanda, after genocide, rebuilt children, schools, and national identity – not only physical structures.
A research study in Guatemala found that children who received early nutritional support earned nearly 50 percent higher wages in adulthood compared to those who did not.
Human capital is not a slogan. It is the greatest investment in post-conflict transformation.
Nutrition Is an Economic and Sovereign Priority
The most dangerous aspect of Sudan’s famine is that it is viewed solely through a humanitarian lens when it is a fundamentally economic, investment-related, and sovereign phenomenon.
Nutrition is not charity – it is a pillar of economic policy and perhaps the most critical foundation of post-war reconstruction. A 2024 World Bank study shows that globally, scaling up high-impact nutrition interventions would:
- Prevent 6.2 million deaths of children under five and 980,000 stillbirths over the next decade.
- Prevent 27 million cases of child stunting and 144 million cases of maternal anemia.
- Generate $2.4 trillion in economic benefits – yielding $23 in returns for every $1 invested.
The cost of inaction over ten years is estimated at $41 trillion globally.
Investing in saving children today yields higher returns than any post-war infrastructure project. Without this understanding, talk of renaissance, development, or a new state is meaningless.
What Must Be Done: A Four-Step Rescue Strategy
Recovery does not begin after a ceasefire. It must begin now – with a strategy centered on nutrition, restoring education (even through temporary schools), reviving primary healthcare networks, providing targeted cash transfers, and linking all of this to future reconstruction planning.
The children saved today are not a burden. They are Sudan’s only non-importable human capital stock.
An urgent four-component strategy must be adopted during the war and sustained afterward as part of a comprehensive reconstruction and peace strategy:
- Emergency nutrition for mothers and children: milk, supplements, ready-to-use therapeutic foods, direct food support.
- Education restoration – even in temporary schools – with school meals serving educational, health, and economic functions.
- Intensive public health programs: vaccinations, clean water, diarrhea and parasite control.
- Cash transfers to households: stimulating local demand and reducing reliance on food baskets.
Conclusion
Ending the war is the singular national decision necessary to preserve the country. But in the meantime, all segments of Sudanese society must prioritize the famine crisis – especially child hunger – rather than waiting for international organizations alone. That response will be insufficient and fails to treat hunger as an investment and development issue.
I commend the remarkable grassroots efforts of community kitchens across Sudan, which, though modest, are vital in mitigating hunger and preparing the ground for recovery.
After the war, Sudan must avoid excessive reliance on official foreign aid, given the shrinking traditional funding streams. Innovative financing – public-private partnerships and collaboration with private charitable and faith-based organizations – must be explored.
Sudan today is not dying by weapons alone. It is dying silently, inside fragile bodies unable to scream.
The moral, political, and economic imperative is one: saving the Sudanese child is not temporary humanitarian relief. It is a foundational act for a viable state.
True reconstruction begins not with bricks, but with children – not with deposits, but with healthy births. If people are the primary resource of the state, protecting children is not a social item. It is a sovereign one – determining whether Sudan will have a future at all.