Sudan Launches Stand for Sudan Campaign

On 2 April 2020, Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok announced the launch of Stand for Sudan national campaign, calling on Sudanese nationals around the world to contribute financially to support the country’s economy.

@standforsudan_#القومة_للسودان pic.twitter.com/qKnXCSqTLO

— @SudanPMHamdok (@SudanPMHamdok) April 2, 2020

The donations will go to rebuilding Sudan. Sudan’s economy is in crisis and has been so for decades under the leadership of former Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir. According to the transitional government, they have inherited a bankrupt country. The government has repeatedly said that tackling the country’s problems is challenging due to a lack of financial resources.

Since after the revolution, Sudan has been seeing little improvement. The annual inflation rate continues to increase in Sudan and reached over 60% in January 2020. According to the IMF, the Sudanese economy contracted by 2.3% in 2018 and by 2.5% in 2019 and is projected to contract by 1.2% in 2020.

Since he came into power along with the transitional Sovereign Council in August 2019, Hamdok has been working on removing Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism and enable it to access financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Both the IMF and the World Bank will not consider the country for more lending or debt relief until it clears arrears of USD16 billion owed to creditors.

An EBS website ebs-sd.com:444/StandForSudan/ has been setup to allow people to know more about the campaign, track the donations towards the campaign and as well as make donations.

Those in Sudan, can donate by dialing *19#. In addition to SMS, donations can also be made online through the ebs-sd.com:444/StandForSudan/ website, banks and bank applications, as well as other mobile payment methods.

STAND FOR SUDAN IS NOW LIVE ON BANKAK-Account and Bankak-Mobile….

Now you can support Sudan by sending funds to this account i#Bankaknstantly.

Login to Bankak now!#StandForSudan#BOK pic.twitter.com/6IPZxH9uzH

— Bank Of Khartoum (@bankofkhartoum) April 2, 2020

The campaign has been well-received by Sudanese citizens. As of 3 April 2020, the campaign reached SDG30 million (USD542,495).