sudan’s war could drive 34 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, the UN Development Programme warned, as Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan both said they were ready for a long fight. Luca Renda, the UNDP Sudan Representative, said the longer the war continues, the greater the misery.
The warning lands against a toll that already includes more than 150,000 deaths since fighting began in 2023, nearly 15 million displaced people, up to 24 million people facing food shortages, and at least 19 million lacking safe drinking water and sanitation. Renda described the conflict as “the economics of suffering” and said, “A conflict lasting to 2030 would push an additional 34 million people into extreme poverty – that is the entire population of Ghana.”
Luca Renda on Sudan
Renda tied the poverty projection to a broader collapse in living conditions. Under a Protracted Conflict scenario lasting until 2030, Sudan’s GDP in 2043 would be US$34.5 billion lower than it would be with no war, and GDP per capita would fall by roughly $1,700. Renda said that would mean “the difference between being a family that can eat and one that can’t, between being a child who goes to school and one who goes to work.”
The report’s figures describe a country already struggling to keep basic services running. Sudan’s state institutions are on the verge of total collapse, healthcare and education systems have been shattered, and markets have been destroyed as agriculture, manufacturing, and services have been severely weakened. Renda also said, “Natural resources don’t feed people on their own” and “every year of war moves those resources further out of reach.”
Dagalo and al-Burhan
Dagalo said his soldiers were prepared to keep fighting “until 2040 if necessary.” Al-Burhan, who is Sudan’s army chief and Transitional Sovereign Council head, vowed to keep fighting until Sudan was “cleansed” of the RSF and estimated the war could last until 2033. Those statements give the UNDP warning a political backdrop: the two commanders are not signaling a near-term exit from a war that has already reshaped life across Sudan.
The health system shows how far that breakdown has gone. Since the war began, an estimated 70–80 percent of health facilities in conflict zones have become non-functional because of targeted attacks and looting, and at least 145 verified attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel have been documented. About 65 percent of Sudan’s population lacks adequate access to medical care, and in Khartoum only one in four hospitals remains operational.
Sudan’s 2030 scenario
The most severe projection in the report is what a war that lasts to 2030 would mean for daily life: more than 60% of the population living in extreme poverty and another 34 million people pushed into it. For families already coping with hunger, water shortages, and failing clinics, that means the war’s cost is not measured only in front lines or capital-city politics but in whether households can stay fed, treated, and connected to any functioning institution.
The next pressure point sits inside the war itself. Dagalo’s and al-Burhan’s recent statements leave no sign of a mutual move toward a shorter conflict, and the UNDP warning now frames Sudan’s future around that gap between military rhetoric and social collapse.
