About 2.7 million people have returned to Khartoum since Sudan’s army recaptured the capital last year, seeking to rebuild their lives after nearly 4 million people fled when war broke out between the armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in 2023. But many returnees are finding a city unable to provide reliable electricity, water, healthcare, employment and basic services.
Businessman Emad Khaled, 43, said he was sending his family back to Egypt while remaining in Khartoum for work. “Bringing my family back was a mistake,” he said near the city centre, where blackened and bomb-damaged buildings remain. Several government officials ordered to return to the capital have also left their families outside Sudan.
Fighting between the army and the RSF continues in other parts of the country, including Darfur, Kordofan and the Blue Nile regions. The army has encouraged residents to return to Khartoum, rebuilt the airport and reopened it for domestic flights while repairing damaged infrastructure. But electricity and water can still disappear for days at a time. Markets have reopened across the capital, yet unemployment remains high and many residents have little money to spend.
By June, only 1 per cent of Khartoum had been declared safe by the United Nations. Dozens of children had been killed or injured by booby traps and unexploded shells hidden in walls and around streets. Nearly half a million people have returned from neighbouring Egypt, where about 1.5 million Sudanese sought refuge but faced rising living costs, racial persecution, arrests and deportations.
Returnees have been concentrated mainly in working-class neighbourhoods, while those with the means to remain abroad have largely stayed away. In affluent districts such as Khartoum 2, empty villas line tree-lined avenues littered with broken glass. Some buildings have entire sections destroyed by missiles.
Thuraya Babiker, 86, initially expected to remain in Khartoum permanently. Three months after returning, however, she said she, her husband and their youngest daughter were leaving for the United Arab Emirates because medical care was inadequate. “We don’t want to leave,” she said, but added that the lack of healthcare made remaining impossible.
Sudanese charities have worked to restore hospitals since residents began returning last year, and health workers said some facilities were now “better than before”. But shortages persist. Physician Haifa Omar said that “some things just aren’t available”, forcing doctors to ask patients to purchase medicines themselves. “I have a lump in my throat as I say it; we know how difficult people’s situations are,” she said.
The shortages extend into households. College professor Imam Babiker said he sometimes visits 10 pharmacies to find his father’s blood-pressure medication, with prices changing daily. He bought a refrigerator to preserve his diabetic mother’s insulin, but said electricity cuts lasting up to 12 hours a day caused the medicine to spoil. Souad Mohamed, 49, said looters stole her refrigerator, leaving her unable to afford a replacement and forcing her to buy fresh food each day as prices rise.
Khartoum, once a major African capital of more than 8 million people, has been left heavily damaged. A veteran United Nations official said the destruction in the city exceeded that seen in any other crisis they had witnessed, including Ukraine.
Occasional RSF drone strikes continue, while universities are also under pressure to resume normal operations. Authorities ended remote learning in July and ordered students back. Medical professors at Khartoum University have threatened mass resignations, while students complain they are being compelled to return despite continuing difficulties.
One master’s student said the university had refused to allow an online thesis defence even though both the student’s supervisor and the student were outside the country. An undergraduate management student who missed in-person examinations said she was seeking scholarships in Egypt to restart her studies.
“They wouldn’t listen to us; all they cared about was for people to return,” she said. “To me, it’s political, they want people back to show that things are fine, when things really aren’t fine.”
