Agencies
Sudan’s army-aligned government has issued new banknotes in areas it controls, reportedly aimed at undermining its paramilitary rivals but causing long queues at banks, disrupting trade and entrenching division. In a country already grappling with war and famine, the swap replaced 500 and 1,000 Sudanese pound banknotes (worth around $0.25 and $0.50 respectively) with new ones in seven states.
The government justified the move as necessary to “protect the national economy and combat criminal counterfeiters”. But for many Sudanese it just caused problems. In Port Sudan, now the de facto capital, frustration boiled over as banks failed to provide enough new notes.
One 37-year-old woman spent days unsuccessfully trying to get the new money. “I’ve been going to the bank four or five times a week to get the new currency.
But there is none,” Grocers, rickshaw drivers, petrol stations and small shop owners are refusing to accept the old currency, preventing many transactions in a country reliant on cash.
“We cannot buy small things from street vendors any more or transport around the city because they refuse the old currency,” the woman said.
The currency shift comes 21 months into a war that has devastated the northeast African country’s economy and infrastructure, caused famine in some areas, uprooted millions of people and seen the Sudanese pound plunge. From 500 pounds to the US dollar in April 2023, it now oscillates between 2,000 and 2,500.
Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim defended the switch, saying it aims to “move money into the banking system, ensure the monetary mass enters formal channels as well as prevent counterfeiting and looted funds”.
But analysts say it is less about economics and more about gaining the upper hand in the war between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary RSF.
“The army is trying to weaken the RSF by having a more dominant currency,” Matthew Sterling Benson at the London School of Economics and Political Science told AFP.
