Sudan: Hamdok is in a race against time, as reform pain bites

Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok delivered his message emphatically – “we have to rebuild our economy if our political transition is to work.”

That means listening to the calls for economic opportunities from the hundreds of thousands of revolutionaries who had mobilised across the country against the brutality and corruption of then president Omar al-Bashir and the Islamist National Congress Party regime.

For Hamdok, the high-level conference in Paris on financing Sudan’s rebirth was a critical staging post. Held in May, two turbulent years after the ousting of the Bashir regime, the Paris conference elicited pledges for a restructuring and partial cancellation of Sudan’s more than $50bn foreign debt.

More than debt and IMF programmes, Hamdok wanted the Paris conference to showcase the development and commercial possibilities in Sudan in areas such as modernising agriculture,