Fuel and Fallout
Marhaba,
This is the 50th issue of Atar English, published by the Sudan Facts Center for Journalism. It reaches you every two weeks, bringing reporting from across Sudan.
In this issue, we turn to fuel, not simply as a commodity, but as a lens through which Sudan’s wider crisis comes into sharp focus. Across the country, rising prices and deepening scarcity have disrupted movement, strained livelihoods, and exposed structural weaknesses that long predate the current moment. What appears at first glance to be a supply shock is, in reality, the convergence of war, policy choices, and a fragile economic architecture.
We open with a general report that situates the crisis at the national level. It makes clear that while recent global shocks, including the war involving the United States and Israel against Iran, have contributed to volatility, they do not fully explain the scale of disruption inside Sudan. The deeper drivers lie within: the damage inflicted by the 15 April war on infrastructure and institutions, the erosion of state capacity, and the long-term effects of fuel price liberalization since 2021. Together, these forces have reshaped the market, concentrating supply, amplifying exchange rate pressures, and transferring risk directly to consumers.
From there, we move west to Darfur, where the crisis takes on a different form. With traditional supply routes severed, traders have redrawn the fuel map, turning toward Chad and South Sudan, navigating border closures, informal levies, and insecurity. The result is a fragmented and high-risk market in which prices are driven as much by checkpoints and convoy protection costs as by supply and demand. In this environment, fuel is no longer just scarce, it is structurally unstable.
In Al-Jazirah State, the country’s agricultural heartland, the crisis intersects with the rhythms of production. Here, fuel scarcity arrives at the worst possible moment, the harvest season. Farmers face an “impossible equation”: rising input costs alongside falling crop prices. Mechanized harvesting stalls, manual labor returns at a cost, and delays threaten entire yields. What is lost is not only income, but a full season of labor, underscoring how fuel disruptions ripple directly into food systems.
Further east, in Al-Gadarif, the effects spread across everyday economic life. Transport fares climb, construction materials surge, and food prices follow. The link between fuel and inflation becomes visible in real time, as each increase cascades through markets and households. What emerges is a pattern of uneven but persistent pressure, where volatility itself becomes a defining feature.
Finally, in Ad-Dweim, at the heart of the country, the crisis is felt most intimately. It is measured in missed journeys, strained family budgets, and difficult choices about mobility, health, and education. Here, fuel is not an abstract economic variable but a daily negotiation, one that exposes the absence of regulation and the burden placed on low-income communities. The human cost of the crisis comes into full view.
Taken together, these reports map a crisis that is both national and deeply local. They show how global shocks interact with domestic vulnerabilities, and how policy frameworks shape the way those shocks are absorbed, or amplified. Fuel, in this context, is not only about energy. It is about access, equity, and the capacity of systems to withstand pressure.
This issue also features a review of Undoing a Revolution: Sudan and the Politics of Debt by Harry Cross, which situates today’s fuel crisis within a much longer economic history. The review traces how sovereign debt, accumulated since the 1970s, has functioned not merely as a financial burden but as a mechanism shaping Sudan’s policy choices, from austerity measures to subsidy removal and currency devaluation. It highlights how external pressures, particularly from international financial institutions, have repeatedly constrained domestic decision-making, reinforcing cycles of vulnerability that continue to reverberate in the present moment.
Atar Editorial Team
