SUDAN AND THE GROWTH OF OPPORTUNITIES

By Mohamed Elfatih Ismail

Stories about Sudan focuses more on war and poverty but there is hope and future going by this short piece from a friend in Sudan.

Sudan is one of the war torn countries that is showing signs growth as indicated by its GDP growth rate for some years now. This growth was gained by relying on the oil resources discovered at the end of the last decade. According to Ernst and Young, It was ranked in 2010 as one of the five largest economies in the African sub-Saharan countries. In addition, Sudan has tremendous resources that can be utilized to enable the country to take its position in the regional and the international scene. Although, the referendum results have broken our hearts and ended up shrinking our budget as Sudan now is facing a severe economical downturn (the 2011 GDP growth rate had plummeted by more than -4%), the telecommunication sector is still potential for the existing rivals as well as new entrants.

The telecommunication sector, along with other services, has contributed with nearly 43% of the GDP, with a total investment amounted to more than $5 billion. It has grown by far faster than any other economical sector which is apparently indicated by the Tele-density (number of Telecom users/100 inhabitants) that has risen from 2% in 1995 to more than 50% in 2011 with a growth of 5% from the first half of the year 2011. Mobile customers and internet users have reached more than 22 million and 11 million, respectively, however, the Sudan population (after the secession) is 32 million which clearly portrait the telecom market as unsaturated.

Many economists have emphasized the chain reaction effect of the telecom sector on other economical aspects such as growth, productivity, and job creation. On one hand, Sudan has reaped some of these fruits by the proportionally increasing contribution of the telecom sector in its economy. On the other hand, some hindering challenges need to be tackled. In 2010, the revenue growth was 9.8% while subscribers’ growth was 17.8% which indicted clearly that new users don’t add proportionally equal revenue.

Such decline needs to be handled by introducing new services and triggering innovative content providers to stimulate users’ usage. A thorough market researches and surveys should be conducted so as to create new services that absorb the actual needs (In Japan, for instance, they found out that the animated picture and location-based services are highly demanded) of the developing countries like Sudan. E-health, E-learning, and weather forecasts and crops prices for farmers would be some of services that need to be tapped.