Working Paper Series #2020-017 Overview of the Sudan Uprising Samia Satti Osman Mohamed Nour Published: 21 April 2020 Maastricht Economic and social Research institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU‐MERIT) email: [email protected] | website: http://www.merit.unu.edu Boschstraat 24, 6211 AX Maastricht, The Netherlands Tel: (31) (43) 388 44 00 UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872 Maastricht Economic and social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology UNU-MERIT UNU-MERIT Working Papers intend to disseminate preliminary results of research carried out at UNU-MERIT to stimulate discussion on the issues raised. Overview of the Sudan Uprising By Prof. Dr. Samia Satti Osman Mohamed Nour (February 20, 2020) Overview of the Sudan Uprising Prof. Dr. Samia Satti Osman Mohamed Nour1 (February 20, 2020) Abstract This paper provides an overview of the Sudan Uprising and discusses the major causes, factors that contributed to the success of Sudan Uprising and potential opportunities and major challenges following the Sudan Uprising. We improve understanding, fill the gaps in the literature and provide an extremely valuable contribution to the literature by presenting a new and more comprehensive analysis and investigation of the factors that caused and those contributed to the success of Sudan uprising and potential opportunities and major challenges following Sudan uprising. A novel element in our analysis is that we investigate the various causes including economic causes, social and human development causes, political causes, institutional causes and the causes related to the lack of freedoms that caused the Sudan uprising, we examine the dynamic interaction between the internal factors (youth, women, ICT, the Sudanese Professional Association, and University of Khartoum Teaching Staff Initiative), and external factors (diaspora) that contributed to supporting Sudan uprising and we explain potential opportunities and major challenges following Sudan Uprising. From policy perspective, the relevance of our analysis is that we explain the causes of Sudan uprising, the internal and external factors that supported Sudan uprising and potential opportunities and major challenges following Sudan uprising. Our findings support the first hypothesis that a combination of mixed factors and causes including economic causes, social and human development causes, political causes, institutional causes and the causes related to the lack of freedoms caused the Sudan uprising. Our results corroborate the second hypothesis that the dynamic interaction between the internal factors (youth, women, ICT, the Sudanese Professional Association and University of Khartoum Teaching Staff Initiative) and external factors (diaspora) contributed to support Sudan uprising and potential transformation in Sudan. Our results support the third hypothesis concerning the potential opportunities and major challenges following the Sudan uprising. One major policy implication from our findings is that the lack of peace, freedom, and justice motivated the mass street demonstrations and Sudan uprising that called for the achievement of peace, freedom, and justice for all people in Sudan. Another major policy implication from our findings is that it is important for policymakers in Sudan to adopt sound and coherent policies to consider potential opportunities and challenges to achieve comprehensive economic, social, political and institutional reform, to achieve the potential transformation, fulfil the objectives of Sudan Uprising (peace, freedom, and justice) and achieve inclusive growth and sustainable development in Sudan. Keywords: Economic development, social and human development, sustainable development, youth, ICT, Sudan. JEL classification: O1, O10, O11, O15, O43, O55, I3, P16 1 Corresponding Author: Prof. Dr. Samia Satti Osman Mohamed Nour is currently a Visiting Professor of Economic and Research Fellow, the Centre for the study of African Economies (CSAE), Department of Economics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom (UK) (January – March 2020), Affiliated Researcher, UNU-MERIT, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Full Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, Khartoum University, Khartoum, Sudan. E-mail: [email protected]. The second draft of this paper was revised during the author's time as a Visiting Research Fellow, the Centre for the study of African Economies (CSAE) Visiting Fellowship Programme, the CSAE, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK (January – March 2020). The first draft of this paper was originally prepared for presentation at the CSAE Annual Conference 2020 ‘Economic Development in Africa’, the CSAE, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK, March 22-24, 2020. The author gratefully acknowledges CSAE for the two months visiting research fellowship and for the good hospitality during her visiting research fellowship (January – March 2020). The author would like to gratefully thank Dr. Simon Quinn (Deputy Director, CSAE, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, UK) and the CSAE Conference committee for their excellent comments on the first draft of this paper. All the usual disclaimers apply. 1 Overview of the Sudan Uprising Introduction This paper aims to provide an overview of the Sudan Uprising and discuss the major causes, factors contributed to the success of the Sudan Uprising and potential opportunities and major challenges following of the Sudan Uprising. 1. The relevance, importance, objectives, hypotheses and structure of the research This issues discussed in this paper are both timely and relevant in view of the increasing interest to improve the understanding about the Sudan Uprising at the international level. This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing a new contribution to the literature and presenting a more comprehensive analysis of the factors that caused and those contributed to the success of the Sudan Uprising and the potential opportunities and major challenges following the Sudan uprising. We improve understanding, fill the gaps in the literature and provide an extremely valuable contribution to the literature by presenting a new and more comprehensive analysis and investigation of the factors that caused and those contributed to the success of Sudan uprising and the potential opportunities and major challenge following Sudan uprising. A novel element in our analysis is that we investigate the various causes including economic causes, social and human development causes, political causes, institutional causes and the causes related to the lack of freedoms that caused the Sudan uprising, we examine the dynamic interaction between the internal factors (youth, women, ICT, the Sudanese Professional Association, and University of Khartoum Teaching Staff Initiative), and external factors (diaspora) that contributed to supporting Sudan uprising and we explain potential opportunities and major challenges following Sudan Uprising. From policy perspective, the relevance of our analysis is that we explain the causes of Sudan uprising, the internal and external factors that supported Sudan uprising and potential opportunities and major challenge following Sudan uprising. Our findings support the first hypothesis that a combination of mixed factors and causes including economic causes, social and human development causes, political causes, institutional causes and the causes related to the lack of freedoms caused the Sudan uprising. Our results corroborate the second hypothesis that the dynamic interaction between the internal factors (youth, women, ICT, the Sudanese Professional Association and University of Khartoum Teaching Staff Initiative) and external factors (diaspora) contributed to support Sudan uprising and potential transformation in Sudan. Our results support the third hypothesis concerning the potential opportunities and major challenges following the Sudan uprising. We are aware of the fact that the lack of analysis of the consequences and impacts of Sudan uprising may constitute a limitation of our analysis in this paper. However, in this paper we did not focus on the consequences and impacts of Sudan uprising only because of lack of adequate and reliable data covering the short time period following Sudan uprising. We believe that given the short time since the success of Sudan uprising, it is probably too early to assess the impacts, since full assessment of the consequences and impacts would be more practical only after a reasonable time period. Therefore, we plan to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the consequences and impacts of Sudan uprising in our future studies when adequate and reliable data are available within a reasonable time period. 2 Regarding the research method this paper uses new secondary data and uses both the descriptive and comparative approaches to provide overview of the Sudan uprising. As for the structure, the rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 1 presents the introduction. Section 2 shows the general political context and socio economic characteristics of Sudan. Section 3 investigates the major causes including economic causes, social and human development causes, political causes, institutional causes and the causes related to the lack of freedoms that caused the Sudan uprising. Section 4 discusses the internal and external factors that contributed to the uprising in Sudan (including the role of youth, women, ICT, the Sudanese Professional