Sudan Crisis Worsens

Abdul Wahab Ahmed is one of hundreds of workers at a brick factory in the el-Giraif neighborhood of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. But Sudan’s dire economic situation has left even those in regular employment struggling to survive, the 45-year-old father of three children told Middle East Eye. “Some of them can’t afford to send their kids to school. Some only eat one meal a day,” he says. Now, with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announcing harsh austerity measures and his second major government reshuffle in the space of four months, Ahmed says he only expects life to get tougher. “These political changes have nothing to do with us. Since the beginning of the year things have got worse and life has really become impossible because the price of everything is rocketing in the local markets.” The “new economic strategy” announced by Bashir on Monday included cutting federal and state-level government spending by 34%, reducing the number of government ministries from 31 to 21, reducing the size of the presidential council and restructuring state-level government.