Sudan

Sudan, whose official name is the Republic of the Sudan, sits in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the southeast, and South Sudan to the south. As of 2025, its population is 51.8 million. Covering 1,886,068 square kilometers (728,215 square miles), it ranks as Africa’s third-largest country by area. The capital and biggest city is Khartoum.

The region now called Sudan has a deep prehistoric record. It hosted the Khormusan culture (around 40,000–16,000 BC), the Halfan culture (roughly 20,500–17,000 BC), the Sebilian culture (about 13,000–10,000 BC), and the Qadan culture (approximately 13,000–9,000 BC). The Jebel Sahaba conflict, dated to around 11,500 BC, is recognized as the earliest known war anywhere in the world. Later came the A-Group culture (circa 3800–3100 BC), the Kingdom of Kerma (about 2500–1500 BC), the Egyptian New Kingdom (roughly 1500–1070 BC), and the Kingdom of Kush (around 785 BC–350 AD). After Kush fell, Nubians established three Christian kingdoms: Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia. From the 14th to 15th centuries, Arab nomads gradually settled most of Sudan. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Funj sultanate dominated central and eastern Sudan, while Darfur ruled the west and the Ottomans controlled the east.

Starting in the 19th century, Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty conquered all of Sudan. Religious and nationalist fervor sparked the Mahdist Uprising, but Mahdist forces were eventually defeated by a joint Egyptian-British military force. In 1899, under British pressure, Egypt agreed to share sovereignty over Sudan with the United Kingdom as a condominium. In practice, Britain governed Sudan as a possession. The Egyptian revolution of 1952 overthrew the monarchy and demanded British withdrawal from both Egypt and Sudan. Muhammad Naguib, one of the revolution’s two co-leaders and Egypt’s first president, was half-Sudanese and raised in Sudan; he made Sudanese independence a priority for the revolutionary government. On 1 January 1956, Sudan became an independent state.

After independence, the regime of Gaafar Nimeiry imposed Islamist rule. This deepened the rift between the Islamic north, where the government was based, and the Animists and Christians in the south, who had already fought a civil war from 1955 to 1972. Ongoing disputes over language, religion, and political power erupted into a second civil war between government forces, influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF), and southern rebels, the most powerful faction being the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). This conflict eventually led to South Sudan’s independence in 2011. Until that secession, following a referendum, Sudan had been Africa’s largest country.

From 1989 to 2019, a military dictatorship under Omar al-Bashir, backed by the National Congress Party (NCP), ruled Sudan. It committed widespread human rights abuses, including torture, persecution of minorities, alleged sponsorship of global terrorism, and ethnic genocide in Darfur from 2003 to 2020. The regime killed an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people. Protests demanding Bashir’s resignation began in 2018, leading to a coup on 11 April 2019 and his imprisonment. Since 2023, Sudan has been caught in a third civil war, fought between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Islam was Sudan’s state religion, and Sharia law applied from 1983 until 2020, when the country became secular. Sudan is a least developed country and one of the world’s poorest, ranking 170th on the Human Development Index as of 2024 and 185th by nominal GDP per capita. Its economy depends heavily on agriculture, due to international sanctions, isolation, and a history of internal instability and factional violence. Most of Sudan is dry, and over 60% of its population lives in poverty. Sudan is a member of the United Nations, Arab League, African Union, COMESA, Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

The name “Sudan” was historically given to the large Sahel region of West Africa, just west of modern-day Sudan. It originally referred to both that geographical area—stretching from Senegal on the Atlantic Coast to Northeast Africa—and the modern country. The name comes from the Arabic *bilād as-sūdān* (بلاد السودان), meaning “The Land of the Blacks,” a reference to the very dark skin of the indigenous people. It is one of several toponyms with similar etymologies. Before this, the area was known as Nubia, and to the Ancient Egyptians as Ta Nehesi or Ta Seti, named for Nubian and Medjay archers or bowmen. Since 2011, Sudan has sometimes been called North Sudan to distinguish it from South Sudan.

In prehistoric times, the Affad 23 archaeological site in the Affad region of southern Dongola Reach in northern Sudan contains “the well-preserved remains of prehistoric camps (relics of the oldest open-air hut in the world) and diverse hunting and gathering loci some 50,000 years old.” By the eighth millennium BC, a Neolithic culture had settled there in fortified mudbrick villages, supplementing hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. Neolithic peoples created cemeteries such as R12. During the fifth millennium BC, migrations from the drying Sahara brought Neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture. The population resulting from this cultural and genetic mixing developed a social hierarchy over the following centuries, leading to the Kingdom of Kerma around 2500 BC. Anthropological and archaeological research indicates that during the predynastic period, Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically and culturally nearly identical.