The Impact of War on Sudan’s Higher Education and Academic Communities

The outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023 has created immeasurable suffering and damage, threatening critical institutions across the country, among them, Sudanese higher education. Sudanese universities and secondary schools have faced not only the destruction of critical facilities, but also the mass displacement of students and faculty in a disruption to institutions of education large enough to constitute scholasticide. At the same time, faculty and administrators in higher education have worked heroically to maintain university operation in the face of a war in which students, academics, and institutions of higher education, like all civilians and institutions that serve them, have been caught in the middle. Drawing on research conducted for our Rift Valley Institute report, “Research in Displacement: The Impact of War on Sudan’s Higher Education and Academic Research Community,” as well as our ongoing engagement with Sudanese educational institutions as this war has continued, this paper outlines the current state of Sudanese higher education, describing the ways that Sudanese institutions of higher education have continued since the war in spite of the immense, existential challenges to their existence and the needs of academics and students displaced into neighboring countries. It concludes by describing concrete measures that outside institutions, particularly universities and academic institutions, can take to support Sudanese academics and students and ways that international networks of academics might channel their solidarity into support for their displaced colleagues and their students.