Sudan State Overview

By | November 28, 2021

The country is a member of the United Nations, the African Union and the Non-Aligned Movement

Geography

According to PHARMACYLIB, Sudan is located in North Africa, on the shores of the Red Sea, between Egypt and Eritrea. It is partly crossed by the Nile and its tributaries. Until the separation of the country it was the largest country on the African continent.

In the center is a great plain, bordered to the east and west by mountains. In the south the climate is tropical, while in the north it is desert, where daily temperatures exceed 42 ° C. The desertification that extends to the passage of time to the south, and soil erosion pose serious problems for the country.

Ecology

The main biomes present in Sudan are the desert to the north and the savannah to the south. According to WWF, the main ecoregions present in Sudan are, from north to south:

  • Sahara desert
  • Steppe and wooded savanna of southern Sahara
  • Savannah of acacias of the Sahel
  • Eastern Sudanese savanna

In addition, there are the coastal desert of the Red Sea on the north coast, the xerophilous mountain of the Tibesti massif and the Uweinat mountain in the extreme northwest, the xerophytic mountain of the eastern Sahara, in a center-west enclave and the flooded prairie of the Sahara, in the Sudd. Along the border with Eritrea are several enclaves of Ethiopian montane rainforest, Ethiopian montane and highland grassland, Ethiopian xerophilous grassland and scrub, and Somali bush savanna.

Demography

The population of the Khartoum metropolitan area (including Khartoum, Omdurman and North Khartoum) is growing rapidly and is approaching 6-7 million, including about 2 million people displaced from the war zone in the south, as well as of the areas affected by the drought in the east and west.

Sudan has two main cultural groups – Arabized Black Africans (but also some Egyptian, non-Negroid Arabs) and non-Arab Black Africans – with hundreds of ethnic divisions such as the Mangbetu, Tribal, and language groups, making effective collaboration between them a bigger problem.

More than 22 million Sudanese are Arabic- speaking Muslims, although the majority speak a mother tongue other than Arabic – Nubian, Beja, Fur, Nuban, Ingessana, and so on. Among them are several different tribal groups. The Kababish of northern Kordogan are camel herders. The Ga’alin, Rubatab, Manasir, and Shaiqiyah are sedentary and live on rivers. The Bagara of Kurdufan and Darfur are semi-nomadic; the Beja Hamitics from the Red Sea areas and the Nubians from the northern Nile areas, some of whom have resettled on the Atbara River ; and the Nuba Negroid of southern Kurdufan and the Fur in the extreme west of the country.

Social development

According to World Bank data [11] , Sudan is a lower-middle-income country. 73% of the population has completed, at least, primary education and 46.5% of it lives below the poverty level. Only 52% of the residents have access to drinking waterand life expectancy at birth is just 61 years.

Health

Years of civil war in Sudan decimated the infrastructure and staff of what was once an excellent healthcare system. The population is widely dispersed, lacks medical care, mortality is very high and has not decreased since 1990. Those who provide the majority of medical services in these places lack sufficient scientific training and are very poorly paid [18] .

According to data from the World Health Organization [19] (WHO), the probability of dying before reaching five years of age in Sudan is 85 per thousand live births; the maternal mortality rate of 216 per 100,000; and the population has a medical coverage of 1.7 primary care units for every 10,000 residents.

The main diseases that kill Sudanese are HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Child malnutrition is also the cause of numerous deaths in minors. The situation is most severe in conflict areas such as Darfur and in camps for displaced people [20] .

Sports

The football is the most popular sport in Sudan and was one of the first powers of the sport in Africa. In 1957, Sudan was one of the founding members of the African Football Confederation (CAF). Along with Egypt, Sudan dominated international soccer competitions on the continent during the 1950s and 1960s. His national team won the African Cup of Nations in 1970. In the country there are a large number of clubs that are dedicated to the practice of this sport.

The Sudan National Olympic Committee was founded in 1956 and was recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1959. The best Olympic performance by a Sudanese athlete occurred during the 2008 Beijing Olympics when runner Ismail Ahmed Ismail won a silver medal in the men’s 800-meter event [21] .

Armed forces

Sudan’s armed forces have an estimated 104,800 troops supported by 17,500 paramilitary troops. These are divided into ground, air, navy, and militia forces. The Sudanese Armed Forces have operated under the authority of the People’s Armed Forces since 1986.

Sudan receives most of its military equipment from the People’s Republic of China and Russia. The country also has a military industry that manufactures ammunition, machine guns, and mortars.

Sudan State Overview