Sudan War's $6.4B Annual Cost Spurs AU Summit Push

Sudan’s civil war has cost the country an estimated 6.4 billion dollars in a single year, 2023, pushing seven million additional people into extreme poverty and erasing years of economic progress in one of Africa’s most resource-endowed nations. That financial toll frames South Africa’s push to mobilize continental intervention ahead of an African Union extraordinary summit in Luanda, scheduled for the end of August.

International Relations and Co-operation Minister Ronald Lamola outlined South Africa’s position in a statement ahead of the 46th Ordinary SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government in Durban, which concludes on 17 August. South Africa intends to use the Luanda platform as “a critical opportunity to mobilise the continent toward a structured intervention,” Lamola said, though he stopped short of specifying what form that intervention would take.

Additional reference context is available at https://defenceweb.co.za/joint/diplomacy-a-peace/south-africa-backing-au-luanda-summit-for-sudan-conflict-resolution/.

The economic case for urgency is stark. Research by the UN Development Programme and the Institute for Security Studies African Futures team puts Sudan’s 2023 war-related losses at roughly 500 dollars per capita, a contraction that has damaged market infrastructure and weakened production across agriculture, manufacturing and services. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees reports 25 million Sudanese facing food insecurity and 19 million without access to safe water and sanitation. Lamola described the situation as “one of the biggest moral failures in our lifetime.”

The destruction compounds structural vulnerabilities that predate April 2023, when the conflict began. Sudan holds considerable natural resources, vast agricultural potential, and strategic access to Red Sea shipping routes. Those assets have long been constrained by recurrent conflict, political instability, international sanctions, and regional insecurity along a belt stretching from the Sahel to Yemen. The 2011 secession of South Sudan fragmented the country’s economic and political landscape further. The current war has pushed an already fragile development trajectory toward systemic collapse.

The upside, if peace holds, is substantial. Institute for Security Studies researcher Enoch Aikins models a “Sudan Rising” scenario in which conflict resolves this year and governance improves steadily. Under that pathway, Sudan’s GDP could expand by 19.3 billion dollars by 2043, with average annual growth reaching five percent against current projections of 2.4 percent. Some 17.3 million additional people could be lifted out of extreme poverty, a transformation that would, in turn, create the conditions for productive investment to flow back into the country.

Getting there requires something that has so far proved elusive: a unified diplomatic architecture. Multiple mediation efforts have failed. The Jeddah framework, facilitated by the United States and Saudi Arabia, produced no durable results. More recent initiatives include a Quad grouping of the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, alongside an AU-led Quintet comprising the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the UN, the European Union and the League of Arab States. These efforts have not converged. Deep ideological divisions among Sudanese political and civilian groups, compounded by overlapping external initiatives working at cross purposes, have left the conflict unresolved.

Researchers argue the solution lies in assigning distinct functions to each diplomatic track rather than allowing them to compete. The Jeddah framework could concentrate on ceasefire enforcement, the Quad could focus on limiting external military support to the warring parties, and the Quintet could lead an all-inclusive political dialogue to manage Sudan’s transition. Without that division of labor, the diplomatic efforts will continue to undermine one another.

Whether the Luanda summit can impose that kind of order on a fragmented international response remains the open question. Sudan’s development potential, and the capital that could eventually follow a credible peace settlement, hangs on the answer.