From our Editor: Hatim Elmadani
Modern Sudanese political history stands as a concentrated example of the complexities inherent in state-building within postcolonial contexts, where historical legacies intertwine with social structures and the choices of political and military elites to produce a long trajectory of structural failure in forming a stable, productive, and just state.
Although Sudan entered the mid-twentieth century with significant potential for renaissance endowed with vast agricultural and water resources, a relatively modern administrative legacy, and a strategically vital geography its path since independence veered in the opposite direction: toward coups, civil wars, geographical fragmentation, and developmental collapse is what my article seeks to analyze through an integrated political–historical–developmental approach.
The Dual Rule Legacy and the Seeds of Crisis
The modern Sudanese state was shaped under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium established after the fall of the Mahdist State at the end of the nineteenth century. This joint rule restored order and imposed centralized authority after a period of tribal and religious turmoil. Within its framework, modern administrative institutions were erected, formal civil education introduced, and public health and service institutions established—constituting a partial rupture from the traditional patterns of organization. Large infrastructural projects such as the Gezira Scheme, the railways, and major ports integrated Sudan into the global economy, albeit in a subordinate position.
However, these developments were built upon a distorted social foundation: educational and administrative investment was heavily concentrated in the Nile Valley and central regions, while vast areas in the South, West, and East remained deprived. Thus the outlines of regional inequality were etched early on, soon to develop into one of the main pillars of Sudan’s enduring national crisis.
Sudanization, Independence, and the Colonial Structure Endures
As the nationalist movement gained strength during the first half of the twentieth century, an educated elite nurtured by colonial education emerged as a key actor calling for greater participation in governance. The process of “Sudanization” sought to transfer administrative authority from foreign officials to Sudanese hands. Yet this transition was both hasty and uneven: a narrow elite, predominantly from the northern and central regions, replaced a seasoned foreign bureaucracy without completing the necessary institutional and technical preparation or addressing the lack of broader regional and communal representation within state institutions.
When the flag of independence was raised on January 1, 1956, Sudan attained political independence from colonial rule but not independence from the very structural template imposed by it: a powerful centralized state in Khartoum surrounded by marginalized peripheries, dominated by a narrow elite holding the levers of power.
In this context, the abrupt dismissal of experienced foreign administrators who had long formed the backbone of the modern bureaucracy created an acute institutional vacuum precisely when the nascent state required greater, not lesser, capacity. Independence thus became an emotionally charged symbol rather than a carefully prepared program for institutional construction or for equitable redistribution of power and resources reflective of Sudan’s complex societal mosaic.
Sectarian Politics, Educated Elites, and Militarisation
The political landscape inherited from colonial rule was neither cohesive nor pragmatic. It was characterized by intersecting alliances among three main forces: religiously rooted sectarian families, the educated civilian elite, and the military establishment. The sectarian leaders, drawing on their spiritual authority and social networks, transformed into organized political powers through parties under their patronage, mobilizing religious and emotional sentiments in their struggle for power and representation.
In turn, the educated elite viewed these families as necessary gateways to mass constituencies and electoral bases, entering into alliances that reinforced, rather than restrained, sectarianism—thereby shaping the party system’s structure, methods, and agendas.
With the failure of the first parliamentary experiment, escalating factional disputes, and growing disillusionment with civilian governance, the military increasingly presented itself as perceived by segments of the elite and public as a “savior” capable of restoring order. The 1958 coup inaugurated the military’s recurring intervention in politics, followed later by the coups of May 1969 and June 1989, revealing a pattern in which military takeovers became the “cyclical mechanism” for regime change in the absence of entrenched democratic conventions.
Each successive coup deepened the gulf between state and society, as security and military organs permeated every branch of public administration at the expense of professional civil service and institutional accountability.
Uneven Development and Civil Conflict
On the developmental front, successive governments civilian and military alike failed to transform Sudan’s immense material and human capital into a balanced, sustainable development project. Instead, development was frequently instrumentalized as a tool of political control.
Basic services, infrastructure, and economic opportunities concentrated in the capital and the northern-central regions, while other provinces were left in chronic marginalization, suffering from poverty, poor services, and inadequate political representation. Over time this inequity evolved beyond economic disparity into a profound sense of injustice among peripheral communities, who began to embrace local, tribal, and ethnic identities as substitutes for a national identity that never took shape under an equitable state.
In this environment, civil wars erupted first in the South, then in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and other regions. These conflicts arose from the perception that the central state had imposed multilayered marginalisation onto political, economic, cultural, and later religious. The southern conflict culminated in the secession of South Sudan in 2011 a stark manifestation of the state’s failure to manage diversity and convert it into strength. In Darfur and other areas, mass atrocities, displacement, and destruction accumulated, rendering Sudan in international scholarship a quintessential “fragile” or “failed state”—one unable to monopolize violence, provide basic services, control its borders, or protect its citizens.
From a Promising State to a Failed One
A comparison between mid-twentieth-century Sudan and that of the early twenty-first century reveals a striking contrast. On the eve of independence and shortly thereafter, Sudan was perceived as a promising state: home to a giant agricultural project, an advanced railway network by regional standards, and abundant natural and human resources capable of propelling it toward an African model of progress.
Decades later, those productive structures had crumbled—the Gezira Project withered, railways decayed, essential services like education and health deteriorated, while poverty, migration, and displacement expanded.
This transformation from a “promising state” to a “fragile, failed” one was not the product of sudden misfortune, but the cumulative result of decades of misguided political choices, clientelist appropriation of state resources, the exclusion of administrative competence in favor of partisan, sectarian, and tribal loyalties, and the militarization and corruption of public life through violence as a mode of governance. Consequently, the state’s legitimacy eroded, and citizens lost confidence in its ability to represent, protect, and deliver justice and dignity.
Prospects for Recovery and Reconstruction
Given this intricate reality, the pertinent question is no longer “What happened?” but “What must be done?” and “Under what conditions can the remnants of the national state project in Sudan be salvaged?”
It is now evident that genuine reform cannot hinge on recycling the same elites who manufactured the crisis, nor on superficial approaches that change faces but preserve rules. What is needed is a profound rethinking of the state’s very nature its relationship between center and periphery, authority and society, economy and politics, and between governance and belief.
This requires, first, rebuilding the civil service on principles of competence and neutrality to restore administrative professionalism and end the treatment of public office as spoils for political, sectarian, or religious patronage. Second, real decentralization or genuine federalism must be instituted granting regions the power to manage their own resources, set developmental priorities, and share in governance beyond the logic of central “donations.” Third, the military establishment in all its forms must be subordinated to democratically elected civilian authority, with comprehensive security sector reform ensuring that the state alone lawfully monopolizes the use of force.
Parallel to this, Sudan needs a credible process of transitional justice and national reconciliation that acknowledges crimes and violations committed during conflicts, secures truth and redress for victims, and opens the path toward a new social contract based on equal citizenship rather than competing identities.
A forward-looking developmental vision must also place the human being in every Sudanese region at the center of policy not as a pawn in elite contests.
A Final Word of Truth
Reflecting upon Sudan’s political and developmental trajectory reveals that the current crisis is not a transient stumble, but the cumulative outcome of a deep interplay between a colonial legacy that left behind an unbalanced state and national elites who either failed or refused to transform independence into a project for building just and effective institutions.
As Sudanese people commemorate independence year after year for nearly seven decades, one question remains unresolved: what is the meaning of independence when the state is not free from corruption, sectarianism, and militarization—when its institutions serve a narrow few rather than the nation at large?
The revival of the national state project in Sudan will remain impossible unless the country decisively chooses merit over affiliation, equitable development over elite privilege, and the rule of law over the rule of arms. These are arduous choices, but they alone can end the long descent that has defined Sudan’s post-independence journey.
