Sudan seeks foreign aid to resolve economic crisis

Now that the people in Sudan have been on the streets for two weeks against the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s regime, the Sudanese authorities are announcing the search for foreign currency. The governor of the central bank, Mohammed Khair al-Zubair, called foreign funding a possibility.

Which countries Sudan wants to ask for help is not yet clear. Since South Sudan became independent in 2011, Sudan has often faced economic problems. At the end of 2017, after more than twenty years, the American sanctions against Sudan came to an end, in an attempt to reverse the economic malaise.

In 2015, several Gulf States borrowed around 2 billion dollars (converted about 1.75 billion euros) at favourable conditions. Sudan has long been chronicled as an ally of Iran, but has been working with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the past four years. It supplies aircraft and thousands of troops to the war in Yemen.

Protests

Since mid-December from the growing displeasure among the Sudanese people in protests in the capital Khartoum and some other cities. The regime of Bashir, under power since 1989, has rarely suffered so hard in the past thirty years. According to the government, 19 people were killed in these protests, but Amnesty International announced on Christmas Eve, after barely a week of protests, that 37 people were already shot by Bashir’s defence forces.

75-year-old Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in the Sudanese region of Darfur.