Sudan's Warring Generals Have Turned Its Farmland Into a Killing Field

Sudan was once the breadbasket of the Nile. The Gezira scheme, one of the largest irrigated agricultural projects in the world, has been feeding families between the Blue and White Nile since 1925. Today a Sudanese farmer who wants to plant a field has to ask a different question first: will the army or the militia shoot me on the way there? More than two years of war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have turned fertile land into front lines, grain stores into loot, and harvests into a luxury. The United Nations has warned that millions of Sudanese are facing acute hunger, and famine has been confirmed in parts of the country, including the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur in 2024.

So ask yourself what it means when the world finally responds with a formal, multi-page document. It is called the Environmental and Social Commitment Plan, and it governs a grant for the Sudan Transition to Agriculture Recovery and Resilience Project. The World Food Programme is the recipient. The International Development Association, acting as administrator of the Sudan Transition and Recovery Support Multi-Donor Trust Fund, is the financier. The plan is clean, technical, and carefully worded. It is also, in its current form, a promise that reads like a bureaucrat's lullaby to a family that has already lost everything.

Consider what the document actually commits to. The Recipient must carry out the project in line with the Environmental and Social Standards and the plan itself, in a manner acceptable to the financier. Monitoring will be "proportionate" to the risks. Measures must follow stated timeframes. Grievance mechanisms must exist. Documents must be consulted on, disclosed, and implemented. The plan can be revised through an exchange of letters between the financier and the Recipient's representative, and the Recipient must ensure there is enough money to pay for the plan itself. The text also says something that should make every Sudanese reader pause. Even if an action is not listed among the "implementation readiness" indicators, it must still be carried out on schedule.

That last clause matters, and it deserves credit. It says that readiness is not an excuse for delay. Good. But the word "proportionate" is doing a lot of quiet work. In a country where roads are cut, communications are unreliable, and local monitors can be arrested or killed, what does proportionate oversight look like? Who decides what the risks are? If the answer is decided in Nairobi, Washington, or Paris by people who will never sit in a displacement camp in Kordofan, then we are not looking at safeguards. We are looking at distance dressed up as caution.

This is the pattern we have seen across our continent for decades. International institutions write beautiful safeguard frameworks, then implement them through intermediaries who answer to their own bureaucracies rather than to the people on the ground. The paperwork goes in the file. The grain goes wherever the local strongman says it should. Meanwhile, the farmer who should have been first in line becomes the last person anyone asks.

And let us be direct about who created this catastrophe. The war in Sudan was not an act of nature. It was the product of two men and their armed machines. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan leads the army. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, commands the RSF. Both have been accused by UN investigators and human rights organisations of atrocities, including attacks on civilians and obstruction of humanitarian aid. Both have treated the country's land, its markets, and its people as spoils to be fought over. Any agriculture recovery plan that does not name these men, and demand that they stop, is building a barn beside a house that is on fire.

Sudan also sits inside a wider African failure. The African Union suspended Sudan's membership after the 2021 military coup, and the continent has spent years issuing communiqués while the country bled. Regional bodies that should be enforcing the principle that no African government can seize power by gun and keep the aid money flowing have instead offered statements, mediators who rotate in and out, and a steady flow of photo opportunities. Meanwhile external powers, from the Gulf to Russia to Turkey, have quietly deepened their interests in Sudanese gold, land, and ports. The lesson is brutal and simple. When the continent refuses to enforce its own rules, the vacuum gets filled by people who want the resources without the rights.

So what should happen? The answer is not complicated, even if the politics are difficult.

First, the Environmental and Social Commitment Plan must become a public instrument, not a private arrangement between institutions. It should be translated into Arabic and widely distributed across Sudan, including in displaced communities. Farmers, cooperatives, and civil society groups must be able to read exactly what is promised, by when, and by whom. A grievance mechanism that a displaced woman cannot reach from her tent is not a grievance mechanism. It is a decoration.

Second, the implementation readiness indicators must be binding milestones with public scorecards, not internal checkboxes. Every quarter, the Recipient and the financier should publish what has been delivered, what has been delayed, and why. Revisions made through exchanges of letters should be disclosed promptly, as the plan itself requires, so that no change can be made in a closed room and discovered only when the harvest fails.

Third, money must go to farmers and their cooperatives, through transparent supply chains that verify seed, fertiliser, and equipment at every stage. Where possible, procurement should favour local suppliers and farmer associations that have the trust of their communities. Agriculture recovery requires secure land tenure, so property rights for smallholders must be part of the conversation, not an afterthought. Free markets work for farmers only when someone can prove they own the field and get a fair price at the market gate.

Fourth, we should look to the African countries that have proven good governance is possible. Botswana built one of the most successful economies on the continent by combining rule of law, sound public finance, and institutions that did not collapse when politics got rough. Mauritius shows what transparent administration and open markets can do for a small nation with few natural advantages. Senegal, after years of tension, demonstrated that peaceful transfers of power strengthen investor confidence and public trust alike. Sudan's own history includes periods of civilian rule and institutional reform that can be built upon. None of these examples are perfect. All of them prove that a better path exists, and that it runs through accountable institutions, not through men with guns.

Finally, the African Union and IGAD must stop treating Sudan as a diplomatic problem and start treating it as a human rights emergency. That means insisting on unhindered humanitarian access, supporting a credible ceasefire, and making clear that no faction that commits atrocities will be rewarded with recognition or aid revenue. The Peace and Security Council should be pressed to publish its assessments and to act on them. Silence is not neutrality. Silence is complicity with a longer timeline.

So here is what we demand. We demand that the World Food Programme and the financiers publish this plan in Arabic and make it available to every farming community in Sudan. We demand that every milestone in the plan be tracked in public, with real names of responsible officials and real dates for delivery. We demand that the African Union stop issuing statements and start enforcing its own principles, including sanctions against those who seized power by force and continue to kill for it. And we demand that the generals, Burhan and Hemedti alike, stop turning Sudan's soil into a graveyard.

Sudanese farmers do not need another perfect document. They need seed in the ground, water in the canals, and a government they can trust to protect what they grow. Until those things arrive, every well-drafted safeguard is just another sentence the hungry cannot eat. We have read enough plans. It is time for our continent to deliver.

Based on reporting by RELIEFWEB