Sudan's War Displaces Young Workers, Forcing a Turn to Entrepreneurship

Sudan's prolonged civil war has shattered careers and upended livelihoods, pushing a generation of young people to seek survival through entrepreneurship, art, and informal work. Among them is Yousra Hussein, a medical laboratory sciences graduate whose professional trajectory once seemed assured. After earning her degree from Nahda College in 2022, she launched a women's empowerment initiative called Golden Women in Nyala, a city in western Sudan, the same year. The programme offered psychosocial support and training in marketing and entrepreneurship, reaching more than 70 women. Its goal was straightforward: give young women the practical skills and confidence that available jobs demanded but that many lacked.

That progress came to an abrupt halt when Sudan's civil war erupted in April 2023. By June of that year, Yousra and her family had fled Nyala for Sennar, a central Sudanese city she had never seen before. "Before the war, I was ambitious and had many dreams," she told Al Jazeera. "I started from zero in Sennar, without work experience or connections." Unable to secure employment in an unfamiliar place, she began offering nail services from home, charging roughly ten to fifteen dollars per appointment and saving whatever she could to support her family.

Her displacement did not end there. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces spread to Sennar in mid-2024, forcing Yousra and her relatives to flee once more, this time to Kassala in eastern Sudan. Once again, she found herself starting from scratch in a strange city, while the national economy collapsed under the weight of the conflict. With formal jobs scarce and the need for women to earn money growing ever more urgent, Yousra revived the Golden Women initiative, hoping to replicate the support network she had built in Nyala.

Yet funding remains a formidable barrier. Yousra explained that young Sudanese entrepreneurs face limited access to skills training and institutional backing. Bank requirements for guarantees that few can provide, complicated registration procedures, and heavy taxes all conspire against those trying to establish and sustain a business. Even when an initiative generates some income, as Golden Women has, these structural obstacles make long-term viability uncertain.

Her experience mirrors a broader collapse in employment and livelihoods across Sudan. A 2024 joint report by the United Nations Development Fund and the International Food Policy Research Institute found that 31 percent of 3,000 urban households surveyed had been displaced. The share of respondents reporting no employment or income climbed from 1.6 percent before the war to roughly 18 percent at the time of the survey, while full-time employment fell by half. The World Bank estimates that even as the economy grew modestly last year, with the government attempting to stabilise areas under its control, the proportion of Sudanese living in extreme poverty rose from 33 percent in 2022 to 59 percent in 2025.

For young people whose education and careers have been interrupted, the shrinking labour market has made entrepreneurship and informal work attractive by necessity rather than choice. Many, however, lack the skills or experience to run a business successfully, leaving them vulnerable to failure even as they search for ways to support themselves and their families. The gap between the desire to earn and the capacity to build a sustainable enterprise is one of the war's quieter but no less devastating consequences.

International and government-backed programmes have stepped in to address some of these gaps. The International Labour Organization said in May that its i-UPSHIFT programme had reached 500 young people in Kassala, offering entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and business incubation. Thirty-eight youth-led teams, involving 160 participants, including 66 internally displaced people, went on to pitch business and social-enterprise ideas, a sign that structured support can help translate ambition into action.

Sudan's Ministry of Youth and Sports has also promoted vocational training and youth-led projects. Minister Ahmed Adam Ahmed told Al Jazeera that two youth conferences were held in Atbara and Kassala to understand the views and aspirations of young people and to equip them with practical skills that could help them earn an income. One early outcome of the first conference was a proposed industrial city in River Nile State intended to support youth-led enterprises. "Projects were also directed towards implementation in states considered safe, with some already under way," Ahmed said. The second conference in Kassala focused on practical applications and innovation, particularly artificial intelligence and the use of agricultural waste.

The struggle to earn a living after displacement extends well beyond Yousra's story. Mahira, a 30-year-old visual artist who did not wish to give her full name, moved to Port Sudan after her home in Khartoum was damaged during the war. She now paints decorative pieces and murals, earning about one million Sudanese pounds—roughly $130 at parallel market exchange rates—to help support her husband and son. Since being displaced, she has worked a variety of jobs, a common pattern for those whose careers were interrupted mid-stream.

Before the war, Mahira had graduated with a degree in French and completed a diploma in fine arts, both from Sudan University of Science and Technology. "Since the war began, my main concern has been finding any income, no matter how much, to meet my family's daily needs," she said. Her words capture the central dilemma facing displaced Sudanese: the urgent need for cash to survive has overtaken long-term career planning, forcing skilled professionals into whatever work they can find.

Taken together, these individual stories illustrate how war has reshaped Sudan's labour market and the aspirations of its youth. A generation that once looked forward to formal employment now navigates a landscape of informal enterprise, artisanal work, and small-scale trading. While entrepreneurship offers a path to survival and, in some cases, a rebuilt sense of purpose, it cannot substitute for the stable jobs and institutions that war has destroyed. For Yousra, Mahira, and thousands like them, the immediate goal remains simple: earn enough to keep going, one day at a time, while hoping that the skills they build now might one day anchor a more secure future.