Sudan

Sudan enters 2026 as a shattered economy. Real GDP contracted 37.5% in 2023 and a further 12.8% in 2024, with output collapsing from roughly $56.3 billion in 2022 toward an estimated $32–37 billion by end-2025. IMF figures place average inflation near 100% in 2025, easing toward ~46% in 2026 only if peace holds; state revenues have fallen by an estimated 80%. The April 2023 war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has displaced some 14 million people and left around 33.7 million — two-thirds of the population — needing humanitarian aid in 2026.

What distinctiveness remains is structural, not cyclical. Gold has displaced oil as Sudan's principal export, with artisanal output from Darfur, South Kordofan and the Nile Valley financing both warring factions and flowing largely, and informally, to the UAE. Sudan's agricultural base, Nile water resources, strategic Red Sea coastline at Port Sudan, and pre-war IMF/World Bank reform momentum form the kernel of any eventual 'Sudan Rising' reconstruction thesis — but every one of these assets is currently a contested war resource rather than an investable sector.

The defining risk is the war itself, which subsumes all others. There is no functioning national investment climate: territory is split (SAF holds the east and north including Port Sudan; RSF holds most of the west), institutions are dislocated, militia taxation and looting are routine, and famine is widespread. Sudan is a watch-and-wait jurisdiction — any capital thesis is contingent entirely on a credible, durable ceasefire that does not yet exist.