Sudan's Warring Generals Are Starving Children While Aid Workers Charge Phones

Think about what it takes to keep a child alive in Sudan right now. It is not only food and medicine. It is a working phone line, so a mother can learn where the next convoy is headed, so a nurse can call for supplies, so a field team can report that a village has run out of clean water. In a country where two generals have spent more than two years fighting over the spoils of a state they were supposed to protect, connectivity has become a lifeline. That is a terrible thing to have to say about any country in the twenty-first century.

Sudan's war between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, began in April 2023. The UN estimates that more than twelve million people have been driven from their homes, inside the country and across its borders. Famine has been confirmed in parts of Darfur and Kordofan, where families have eaten leaves and animal feed while the men with guns argued over who would rule them. Every one of those displaced people had a home, a school, a shop, a name. Both armies took those things from them.

The latest situation report from the telecoms support operation in Sudan, covering October 2026, gives us a small, precise picture of what survival looks like on the ground. The operation sustained internet connectivity for roughly 1,700 users across 70 humanitarian locations. Five Security Operations Centres kept running in Port Sudan, Kassala, El Gedaref, Kosti and Damazine, providing radio communications to humanitarian partners. At the Al-Aim Community Centre in Khartoum, 392 people came in during October to get data access and charge their phones. Joint assessments with the World Food Programme in Kosti and El Obeid are exploring how to expand these services further.

Read that again and ask yourself what it says about the state of the country. In a functioning nation, charging a phone in a community centre is a banal errand. In Khartoum in 2026, it is an act of resistance. Three hundred and ninety-two people walked to a building, queued, and plugged in because being cut off from the world in a war zone can cost you your life. Those numbers are not statistics. They are 392 people who were trying to find a missing brother, reach a relief office, or tell someone that their village was still standing.

The fact that aid workers must build their own communications infrastructure in the middle of a war tells you where responsibility lies. Who cut the power? Who bombed the towers, looted the exchanges, and turned civilian neighbourhoods into front lines? Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused by independent investigators of serious violations, including attacks on civilians, sexual violence, and obstruction of aid. The UN Fact-Finding Mission has documented atrocities by both sides. Reports from UN panel experts and investigative journalists have also alleged that outside powers, including the United Arab Emirates, have supplied weapons or support that prolonged the RSF's campaign. The UAE has denied these claims. Those denials deserve scrutiny, not silence. When foreign capitals keep bankrolling armed factions in a country where children are dying of hunger, the African Union and the international community must answer for what they permit.

The fall of El Fasher to the RSF in October 2025 showed the world what happens when a city is left to fight alone. Reports of mass killings, abductions, and summary executions emerged from the city and its surroundings. The lesson should have been unmistakable: when a government and its rivals treat civilians as collateral, the people who pay are always the poorest. They are the ones who cannot flee, cannot buy bread at ten times the price, and cannot afford a phone card to ask whether their children are alive.

This is not only a Sudanese tragedy. Sudan sits at the crossroads of the Sahel, the Horn, and the Nile basin. A collapsed state there spills refugees into Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt. It breeds armed networks that move across borders, traffic gold and weapons, and recruit young men who have no other way to earn a living. Every outside actor that treats Sudan as a market for gold, a port for influence, or a battlefield for proxies is building the next crisis on top of this one. The new scramble for Africa has many players, but the victims are always the same.

So what must happen? First, the AU Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council must enforce the existing arms embargo on Darfur, and extend monitoring to every supply route that feeds the war. Sanctions should target commanders on both sides, along with the financiers and foreign suppliers who keep them in business. Second, humanitarian corridors must be guaranteed by agreement and by enforcement, not by promises that evaporate the moment a convoy approaches a checkpoint. Telecoms, water, electricity, and medicine should be treated as protected civilian infrastructure under international humanitarian law, with independent monitors who can name every violation.

Africa has examples to point to. Botswana built one of the continent's most resilient democracies on transparent institutions, diamond revenues managed under strict accountability, and an independent judiciary. Mauritius shows what disciplined governance and open markets can do for a small island state. Ghana's peaceful alternations of power prove that African electorates can hold leaders to account without bloodshed. Sudan's own 2019 revolution, the people who filled the streets of Khartoum demanding civilian rule, showed the same hunger for dignity. The solution is not a foreign rescue mission. It is a credible, civilian-led transition with the army subordinated to elected government, a judiciary that can try war criminals regardless of rank, and an economy that rewards work rather than gunfights.

And here is what you can do. Demand that your government raise Sudan at the African Union and the UN Security Council, not once but every session until the arms flows stop. Support the humanitarian organisations and local Sudanese groups still running those phone lines, clinics, and kitchens. Ask your MP, your editor, and your bank who is financing the arms trade and the gold trade in Sudan. Share the data. Name the generals. A war does not end because it is ignored, and it does not end because a community centre in Khartoum stays open for one more month.

Three hundred and ninety-two people charged their phones in Khartoum last October. How many will be able to do it next October? That answer depends on whether we, as Africans, refuse to let two generals decide who gets to survive.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB