Food Insecurity, Dependency, Islamist Elites in Sudan: The Genesis of the ‘Sudanese Disease’ as a Syndrome of Wealth and War (1989–2011)

Abstract

This article examines the different aspects that converge to explain food insecurity in the Republic of Sudan from 1989 to the secession of the southern states in 2011. Two phases of the 1989–2011 period are analysed, and within these, three fundamental aspects of the Sudanese scenario: the role of political and social elites, economic dependence and food insecurity. The latter is a corollary of the two previous aspects. Consequently, the successive wars in Sudan cannot be understood with a simple and partial approach. Dependency and permanent repression have crystallised as essential elements of the exercise of power by the Islamist elites in order to understand food insecurity in most Sudanese regions in the last decade of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The three aspects mentioned above also give shape to a phenomenon or syndrome and a concept that is not only specific to Sudan, but which has clearly materialised in Sudan: the ‘Sudanese disease’.