On May 20, 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) announced full control over Khartoum State after more than two years in which the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) held most of its territory. As the return of the displaced to the Sudanese capital continues, seeking to reclaim lives and livelihoods in a city yet to regain its footing, and as many confront rebuilding amid a deteriorating economy and soaring living costs, small businesses have emerged as a principal option for many women to secure an income that helps their families endure.
But how do these ventures strive to survive in a punishing economic climate, despite scant support and climbing operating costs?
A Fruitful Passion
I chose not to raise my prices steeply for fear of losing customers. Preserving their trust matters more than quick profit.
Fatima, pastry and sweets entrepreneur
Fearing the ravages of war, Fatima left Khartoum for Kosti when fighting erupted on April 15, 2023. Yet she returned to Omdurman in 2024, before the SAF secured the whole of Khartoum State, driven back by the siege the RSF had then tightened around White Nile State from Al-Jazirah and North Kordofan.
She came home to Omdurman’s Al-Thawra neighbourhood hoping to give a fresh start to the small business the war had interrupted, resuming her trade in pastries and sweets, a venture launched only months before the conflict began.
Fatima told Atar that passion for cooking, more than the pursuit of profit however needed, was what anchored her to the project. Demand for her products was healthy, she said, and quality earned her customers’ trust. Though margins stayed thin because of relentless increases in the prices of flour, oil and cooking gas, the staples on which the business depends, she chose not to raise her prices steeply for fear of losing customers, reasoning that preserving their trust matters more than quick profit.
She markets her goods through her Facebook page, she explained, alongside customer referrals, now a vital channel to new buyers.
Amid the crushing inflation weighing on residents of the capital and the states, Fatima affirmed she has received no support from any government body or organization. Her family shouldered the cost of the equipment and materials needed to begin.
Among the venture’s hardest trials, she added, are rising prices, periodic gas shortages and packaging materials sold at exorbitant rates and difficult to import from abroad despite their modest cost.
Even with raw material prices climbing sharply, particularly in recent months, Fatima never contemplated quitting, propelled by her love of cooking and her conviction that persistence is the only path to preserving and growing her enterprise. The challenges confronting women entrepreneurs, from high costs to weak financing, have only hardened her resolve to press on, certain that success begins with patience and hard work, whatever the circumstances.
The chart traces the sustained rise in the prices of flour, sugar and cooking oil from February 2023 to June 2026, driven by the deteriorating exchange rate and higher fuel prices, with the increase accelerating since the start of 2026.
Fatima’s account lays bare the magnitude of the surge in the cost of basic materials and necessities, including the gas cylinder essential to her work: its price has leapt from roughly 5,000 SDG before the war to more than 100,000 today, a rise of nearly 95,000 SDG.
A kilogramme of sugar has climbed from 750 SDG to 6,000, and a kilogramme of flour from about 800 SDG to 3,700. These steep jumps reveal the depth of the collapse in staple prices and the mounting economic pressure bearing down on small business owners and residents alike.
Adapting After the Return
Renting a shop is no realistic option for most of us. Rents reach about one million SDG a month, far beyond what small businesses can afford.
Hiyam Abdallah, incense and perfume entrepreneur
From Omdurman to Khartoum North, in the Al-Mazad neighbourhood, Hiyam Abdallah, a homemaker who produces traditional Sudanese incense and women’s perfumes, recounted to Atar her journey to restart her work after returning from displacement in Al-Jazirah State following the SAF’s announcement in May 2025 that it had regained Khartoum State. She launched her current venture relying entirely on her own effort.
Before the war, Hiyam said, her activity centred on pastries and pies. But she had to abandon it upon returning because of steep flour and oil prices compounded by weakened demand even as commerce resumed and markets reopened, a slump she attributes to the incomplete return of residents to Khartoum Bahri’s neighbourhoods.
Her incense and perfume business, she added, yields an acceptable income, especially when she takes part in the bazaars held around the city.
She cites one staged at Al-Hurriya School in Al-Mazad, which gathered a number of women-led ventures spanning accessories, traditional perfumes, housewares, clothing and pastries.
The turnout, Hiyam told Atar, was relatively good, and the aim was not merely commercial: the event signaled that activity and life are flowing back into the city. She also notes the growing frequency of such bazaars across Khartoum Bahri, citing the “Asrar” bazaar in Hillat Hamad, which, by her account, draws a solid crowd.
Hiyam regards the absence of permanent, dedicated venues to host such activities as the greatest obstacle facing her business, and the many others that depend on bazaars to display their products.
Relying on bazaars alone, she explained, chains a venture’s continuity to their schedules, absent fixed markets where small business owners can sell. Renting a shop is no realistic option for most of them, she added, with rents reaching about a million SDG or more a month, a sum far beyond the capacity and returns of small enterprises.
Organizing bazaars faces further hurdles, she noted, among them the long lead time to ready event sites and sluggish administrative procedures for obtaining permits from local authorities, disrupting the events’ regularity and narrowing marketing and sales opportunities.
Hiyam affirmed she began her project through her own effort and received no support from any government or private body, explaining that some entities provide in-kind assistance, flour and food baskets, and occasionally cash, but such help does not reach every family, being allocated through defined targeting mechanisms.
Hiyam’s testimony intersects with reports examining the challenges of distributing humanitarian aid in Sudan, which document complaints that some assistance never reaches its rightful recipients, alongside accusations of corruption or favouritism in certain distribution areas, though these do not necessarily apply to all organizations or programmes, as implementation and oversight mechanisms differ from one body to another.
Closing her conversation with Atar, Hiyam appealed to local authorities and the relevant bodies to provide permanent, dedicated sites where small business owners can display their products, stabilize their activity and broaden their access to customers.
She also called for genuine government support for women entrepreneurs by lowering the cost of production inputs and extending facilities that let them keep working through harsh economic conditions.
The chart reveals the sharp climb of the dollar against the Sudanese pound amid the country’s economic deterioration, illustrating how this surge feeds into the prices of goods and consumer staples, placing heavy pressure on the survival of women’s ventures.
Survival Strategies
To hold on to my customers, I charge two prices, one for regulars and another for newcomers
Saida, tea seller
When the war broke out, Saida, a tea seller working at the western campus of the Sudan University of Science and Technology, was forced to flee to the city of Atbara. Though she kept working there, her activity stayed limited and fell short of the income she had hoped for.
With classes resuming and her return to her workplace in recent months, and though she has received no assistance from any government body or organization, relying entirely on the project’s profits to fund and sustain it, Saida began noticing a tangible pickup in the movement of students, faculty and administrators, buoying daily sales to a level she called “satisfying,” despite the relentless rise in the prices of essentials, above all sugar and tea.
To hold on to her customers as prices keep climbing, she told Atar, Saida follows a simple strategy: two price tiers for her drinks, a lower one for regulars and another for newcomers. This approach, she said, helps her retain her clientele, mostly university students whose purchasing power a price increase could strain in these hard economic times.
Costs, she added, are not confined to sugar, tea and other inputs. They begin the moment she leaves home.
“Every day I cover nearly 20 kilometres from Al-Kadaro to the western campus of Sudan University, bearing transport costs of roughly 17,000 SDG each way and back, which cuts into my profits on top of the strain of the daily commute and its long hours,” she said.
Balancing drink prices her customers can afford against the ceaseless rise in raw material costs, ranks among her hardest challenges.
A Minimum of Stability
With the war stripping vast numbers of citizens of their jobs, women’s small businesses have become a lifeline and a primary income source for many families. However modest the returns, they help close part of the gap opened by swelling household expenses and a deteriorating economy.
These ventures do not necessarily generate sufficient income. But they offer a means of preserving a minimum of economic stability under profoundly complicated conditions.
And although inflation has eased since 2024, the women’s accounts reveal the improvement has not reached their economic reality. The prices of goods and raw materials have kept climbing, driven by the sliding exchange rate and rising transport costs, forcing business owners to change their activities, freeze their prices to keep customers, or lean on their own efforts to ensure their ventures survive.
