This report is informed by a comprehensive secondary data review of 200+ resources, 16 key informant interviews and expert judgement of the authors & reviewers. The report was developed in September & October 2023 by a multidisciplinary team, with the support of Reference Group compiled of NRC Sudan staff.
See Reference list for more detail and contact NRC Sudan for more details about the Key Informants.
The intended ‘users’ are NRC staff in Sudan country offices (recommendations for support teams, but also for program and M&E, for advocacy and for management. Relevant for country office staff but also at area level as well as for field staff.
An analytical framework was developed to inform the evidence review phase of the project. This lead to the formulation of the Background , which is built upon by the Situation Analysis and then Impact Analysis. All of which comes together to inform the Findings.
Colour coding, tagging and symbols are used throughout to flag content to specific readers and enable searching for topics of interest.
💡 Bulb with orange background = technical data
<aside> 👀 Glasses with grey = Sudan specific detail
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Blue background = links within the content
While we reference “economic dynamics” in the title, we have referred to “economic dynamics” here loosely, to point at the complexity and variety of sources of macroeconomic instability that affect Sudan such that NRC will have to adapt what they do (programming) and how it is done (operations).
The purpose of this resource is not to make humanitarians into economists! There are actually subtle and technical yet important nuances between what qualifies as an economic crisis, a monetary crisis, a currency crisis, an exchange crisis, a financial crisis, or a banking crisis, etc. But overall these phenomena are to some extent intricately related. So for the sake of simplicity, we will use “economic dynamics” as an entry point that everything that in lay language is sometimes described as an economic problem or economic crisis.
<aside> 💡 The need for a technical diagnostic. Why are we using boxes like this to unpack some of the technical language? Beyond analysing trends and making projections, there is a value in using the right word for the right situation. A lot of the difficulties that humanitarian actors have to adapt to these types of complex economic problems comes from the fact that we don’t label them properly and / or we mix them up and mix them together. This leads us to inefficiencies and talking past each other in coordination structures and within organisations, missing opportunities to respond in a relevant, appropriate and timely manner to the needs that arise. It helps to be able to frame discussions appropriately about these problems, not only internally but externally, and in advocacy through coordination structures and other forums
The idea of the technical explanations is to also provide NRC staff with minimal capacity for economic analysis (in this instance, the ability to distinguish between various sources of macroeconomic instability) that can help them in their work as humanitarians in the coming months, including in recognising the signs and anticipating future problems and risks and take the appropriate anticipatory actions and preparedness measures.
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This is not a technical document and it is meant to be readable by anyone with minimum background context about Sudan.
Generic in depth economic analysis is out of scope. We do not look systematically at projections of overall growth or modelling of sectoral contractions. We provide some targeted insights on the broader economic situation, as they are relevant to the Situation Analysis and the understanding of macro challenges and their meso / micro spillovers. But these highlight are included only insofar as they are relevant to other sections that look at the Impact Analysis for humanitarians and the formulation of relevant programmatic, operational and policy Findings.
Since many of the complex elements of the economic crisis in Sudan were already present prior to the outbreak of the current conflict, NRC has already implemented, either partially or fully, some of the best practices listed in the recommendations. However, these best practices are still restated to emphasise the importance of their systematic application and to clarify which processes should be revised as the situation evolves.
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