Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed

TimesLIVE

29-05-2025

One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum.
Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the centre of service provision, reverberates across the country.
Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300bn for Khartoum and $700bn for the rest of Sudan.
The UN is doing its own estimates.
Sudan's oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3bn in damages during battles, oil and energy minister Mohieddine Naeem told Reuters.
Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.
Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country's main port city in an attack Sudan blamed on the UAE. The Gulf country denied the accusations.
All of Khartoum's power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going.
LOOTED COPPER
Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire.
On Sudan's Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one metre deep and 4km long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning.
Khartoum's two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.
Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.
'There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed,' said health minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11bn.
With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said UN Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda.
But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works.
'What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation,' he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools.
In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralising services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources.