Khartoum, Sudan – December 1, 2025
In the shadow of Sudan’s unending civil war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the nation’s financial backbone has crumbled into oblivion. What began as a power struggle between two rival generals has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes: tens of thousands dead, more than 12 million people displaced, and an economy reduced to primitive barter systems and handwritten promises of future payment.
As the conflict drags into its third year, residents across army-held northern strongholds and RSF-dominated western territories face a reality where physical cash is not merely scarce — it is dangerous. “Having cash puts you in danger,” warns Dafallah Ibrahim, a grocer in the besieged city of Omdurman, where armed looters and roaming militias have turned money into a target rather than a tool.
The war’s destruction of Sudan’s financial infrastructure is almost total. The Central Bank of Sudan, once reconnected to the global SWIFT network after decades of sanctions, was set ablaze in the first weeks of fighting in Khartoum and remained under RSF occupation for nearly two years. Commercial banks were systematically looted, vaults emptied, and ATMs stripped for parts. The Sudanese pound has collapsed: one euro, worth around 450 pounds before the war, now trades for approximately 3,500 pounds on the black market. The World Bank estimates that Sudan’s GDP has contracted by more than 40 percent since 2022, with extreme poverty soaring from 23 percent to nearly 60 percent of the population.
In Dilling, a town in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan that has been under RSF siege for over two years, 33-year-old civil servant Ali says he has not touched a banknote in nine months. “I once exchanged a hoe and a chair for three bags of sorghum,” he explains. Clothing, furniture, cooking oil, soap, and farming tools have all become makeshift currency. Motorcycle and tuk-tuk drivers accept bars of soap or litres of fuel instead of fares. Families trade sacks of corn or sugar for vehicle repairs. In famine-stricken areas where the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system has declared the highest levels of acute hunger, every transaction is a matter of survival.
Merchants in blockaded towns like Kadugli keep simple notebooks filled with IOUs. “I tell customers, ‘You can pay when Bankak works again,’” says trader Abdelrahman, referring to the once-popular mobile-money app run by the Bank of Khartoum. He records each debt by hand, relying entirely on personal trust and community reputation — the last remaining currency that still holds any value.
Before April 2023, Sudan appeared on the verge of a financial renaissance. Sanctions had been lifted, foreign debt relief was in sight, and digital banking was expanding rapidly. Only 15 percent of Sudanese had traditional bank accounts, but the Bankak app had millions of users and was processing a growing share of salaries, remittances, and small-business payments. Analysts compared Sudan’s trajectory to the mobile-money revolutions in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana. The war erased that progress in weeks.
Today the country is effectively split in two. In army-controlled areas of the north, east, and centre — particularly Port Sudan, Sudan, the temporary seat of government — patchy internet and electricity allow Bankak to function as a lifeline. Civil servants, displaced families, and aid recipients can still receive salaries, remittances from the diaspora, and humanitarian cash transfers. The Bank of Khartoum relaxed identity requirements and permitted remote account opening with expired documents to keep the system alive.
In RSF-held territories and besieged cities, however, telecommunications blackouts and total isolation have forced complete reversion to pre-modern exchange. When the RSF seized control of telecom infrastructure in early 2024, nationwide internet and mobile networks collapsed for months. Smuggled Starlink satellite dishes began appearing, often controlled by RSF commanders who rented access by the hour at exorbitant rates or demanded a 25 percent commission to convert digital Bankak balances into scarce cash. The Sudanese military declared Starlink illegal in December 2024, but the dishes remain in widespread clandestine use.
Even where Bankak technically functions, millions lack the basic requirements: a working phone, a national ID or passport, or a bank account in their own name. Rural residents frequently ask neighbours or relatives to receive transfers on their behalf, accepting the risk that the money might disappear with no legal recourse. New banknotes printed by the army-led government in Port Sudan are rejected in RSF zones, deepening the monetary fragmentation.
The United Nations now describes Sudan as host to the world’s largest displacement crisis and the largest child hunger crisis on record. Over 30 million people — more than half the pre-war population — require humanitarian assistance. Agricultural production has fallen almost 50 percent, markets are empty, and famine has been formally declared in parts of North Darfur, and projections warn that hundreds of thousands could enter catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) in 2026 if the war continues.
Amid the devastation, small seeds of adaptation persist. Informal hawala networks and new wartime fintech startups attempt to route remittances and aid around the broken system. Humanitarian agencies and the Bank of Khartoum work to protect the remaining digital infrastructure, viewing it as critical for any future recovery. Yet for the vast majority of Sudanese, daily survival still depends not on money, apps, or banks, but on whatever goods they can carry, whatever favours they can trade, and whatever fragile threads of trust still bind their shattered communities together.
In a country where bombs fall on markets and hospitals, where children die of malnutrition within sight of aid warehouses, and where a single sack of grain can be worth more than a month’s salary on paper, the most basic human exchange — barter and promise — has become the only economy left.
