In recent years there have been severe food shortages in the Sudan, Africa’s largest country.

• The UN has estimated that up to 2 million people have been displaced by the civil war and more than 70,000 people have died from hunger and associated diseases.

Physical factors:

• Drought in the southern Sudan → 2015
• Increased rainfall variability → difference of highest vs lowest months 2300 mm
• Increased use of marginal land leading to degradation
• Flooding
• Limited access to famine areas

Social factors

• High population growth (3%) linked to use of marginal land (overgrazing, erosion)
• High female illiteracy rates (65%)
• Increased threat of AIDS 12 in 1000

Economic / political factors

• High dependency on farming (70%) of labour force
• Dependency on food imports and exporting non-food goods like cotton
• Limited access to markets to buy food or infrastructures to distributed it
• Debt repayment limit social and economic spending
• High military spending
• Lack of food surplus for use in crisis
• Conflict in Darfur reduces food production and distribution