Sudan

Economy & income

Currency

• Sudanese Pound (SDG, ج.س / LS)
• ~4,400 per USD parallel market (Jun 2026) — but wildly split by front-line control: Khartoum >5,500, Nyala ~3,600
• official bank/CBoS indicative rate lags (~2,100, Aug 2025)
• pre-war it was ~600 (early 2023)
• Pound has lost >80% of its value in two years

GDP per capita

• ~$990 nominal (2024, World Bank est.)
• ~$780 (2025 est.) — USD figures understate the damage: real GDP contracted ~13.5% in 2024 (IMF) after ~40% collapse in 2023
• ~$2,127 PPP (2024, World Bank)

Average salary

• n/a for the current war economy — pre-war formal estimate ~85,000 SDG/mo (~$140 gross, 2022, Khartoum/formal sector, TimeCamp/aggregators)
• The formal economy is largely destroyed
• at today's rates a formal wage is worth roughly $20–50/mo, and most of the population is displaced or in informal/subsistence work

Median salary

• n/a — no official median wage
• the statistics office, central bank and labour ministry barely function amid war, and the economy is overwhelmingly informal/displaced

Minimum wage

• SDG 30,000/mo statutory minimum (set 2022) — worth ~$50 then but only ~$7/mo at the 2026 parallel rate
• effectively meaningless given hyperinflation and the collapse of formal employment

Cost of living

• Low in USD terms but with hyperinflation (~150–177% in 2024, IMF) and severe shortages
• poverty jumped to ~71% (2025) from ~36% pre-war (~23M poor)
• Numbeo has almost no reliable Sudan data — treat any cost-of-living index as unusable

Digital landscape

Population

50.8 million (Jan 2025, DataReportal/Kepios)

Internet users

28.7% (~14.6M users, Jan 2025) — low, and depressed further by war-driven network outages

Social media users

• 7.2% (~3.68M identities, Jan 2025)
• 72.6% male / 27.4% female — one of the lowest social-penetration rates anywhere

Mobile connections

21.6M cellular connections = 42.4% of population — down 20.6% YoY (-5.6M), a direct signature of war destroying towers/SIM bases

Devices

mobile ~62.3% / desktop ~37.3% / tablet ~0.4% (StatCounter, Jun 2026) — unusually high desktop share for a poor market (offices/cybercafés/diaspora traffic)

Ad spend

• n/a — DataReportal publishes no ad-spend figure for Sudan
• the formal ad market is tiny and war-shattered, with most spend informal (boosted posts, Telegram/Facebook shops)

Top social platforms

Facebook ~3.5M — long the #1 social network: news, community, Marketplace, diaspora groups

TikTok ~3.68M 18+ ad-reach = 13.6% of adults; fastest-growing, social IDs +26% YoY; youth

• YouTube — ~8% StatCounter referral share; music, news, heavy religious content
• Twitter/X — outsized political/activist/diaspora influence — StatCounter's #1 referral at ~62%; drove the 2018–19 revolution
• Instagram — ~4% StatCounter; small, urban, more female
• Snapchat — popular with Gulf-influenced youth; no SD ad-reach figure published

Messengers

• WhatsApp (dominant personal + business/commerce messenger; the default rail for coordination)
• Facebook Messenger (paired with Facebook's large base)
• Telegram (news channels + coordination, resilient during internet blackouts)
• imo (cheap international/diaspora voice calls — widely used)
• Note: Bankak & Cashi are the mobile-money apps that sit alongside chat

Payments & behaviour

Payment methods

• Cash (still dominant, but crippling cash/liquidity shortages push people digital)
• Bankak — Bank of Khartoum app (the de-facto national rail; usage exploded during the war, ~500% growth over two years)
• Cashi — alsoug's mobile wallet (deposit/withdraw/transfer; ~500% growth, backed by Egypt's Fawry)
• Bank transfers via EBS/BBAN local account numbers
• Telco billing / airtime (Zain, Sudani/MTN) & COD for physical goods
• Diaspora remittances & hawala (a huge share of household income and e-commerce funding)

E-wallets

• Bankak (Bank of Khartoum)
• Cashi (alsoug / Fawry-backed)
• mBOK
• OneCard
• Fawry (via the Cashi investment)

Cash on delivery

High — cash-on-delivery is the default for physical goods, though acute cash shortages have accelerated a shift to Bankak/Cashi transfers

E-commerce

• Very low off a tiny base
• alsoug is the largest platform (classifieds + marketplace + delivery) and raised $5M from Fawry — Sudan's first foreign tech investment in 25+ years
• A big slice of demand is diaspora-purchase (relatives abroad pay, goods delivered inside Sudan)

Notes

• War pushed everything digital faster (banks/branches/cash disrupted)
• Card-out to global networks is effectively impossible — Visa/Mastercard acceptance is near-zero and US sanctions block most rails — so affiliate settlement must be local (Bankak/Cashi), crypto or via the diaspora, not card payouts

Audience & culture

Languages

• Sudanese Arabic (national lingua franca; Arabic is co-official)
• English (co-official — business, higher education, signage)
• 100+ local languages (Beja/Bedawit, Nubian, Fur, Zaghawa, Nuer, etc.)

Religion

Sunni Muslim ~91% (mostly Maliki rite), Christian ~5%, traditional/other ~3–4%

Median age

• 19.3 years (2025, Worldometer/UN) — very young
• ~40% under 15

Key seasons

• Ramadan (peak evening/after-iftar engagement & spend)
• Eid al-Fitr & Eid al-Adha (gifting, clothes, food)
• Independence Day (1 Jan)
• Agricultural/harvest cycles & wedding season (dry months)

Cultural notes

• Conservative Islamic norms shape creatives (modesty, gender sensitivity, no alcohol/gambling/LGBTQ)
• Facebook + WhatsApp + TikTok are effectively 'the internet', with Twitter/X punching far above its size for news and activism
• The war has scattered the audience — many are displaced inside Sudan or in Egypt/Chad/Gulf — so the enormous diaspora is a prime remittance/retargeting pool
• Localise in Sudanese Arabic, price very low, and expect connectivity to drop during blackouts

Where to find creators

• TikTok
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Twitter/X

Media landscape

Creators & public figures

Top creators

Bas (Abbas Hamad) ~561K Instagram

InstagramDreamville rapper (J. Cole's label); biggest Sudanese-heritage hip-hop name — music/streetwear fit

Maha Jaafar ~1.3M Instagram / ~680K YouTube

InstagramSudanese-Iraqi comedian (Arabic-accent skits), Dubai-based — the most-followed Sudanese content creator; FMCG/lifestyle fit

Oddisee (Amir Mohamed El Khalifa) ~117K Instagram

Instagramacclaimed Sudanese-American rapper/producer (Mello Music Group) — music/culture

N

Nancy Agag (Nancy Ajaj) ~60K Instagram

Instagrammodern Sudanese tarab/folk singer with pan-Arab reach — heritage/music, brand endorsements

Sinkane (Ahmed Gallab) ~23K Instagram

InstagramSudanese-American multi-instrumentalist/bandleader (funk/afrobeat) — indie music/culture

B

Batal ~291K YouTube

YouTubetop Sudanese beauty & natural-hair vlogger — cosmetics/haircare fit

Celebrities

Mo Ibrahim minimal personal social presence (n/a) — Forbes 2026 billionaire

Sudanese-British billionaire — founded Celtel, runs the Mo Ibrahim Prize/Foundation on African governance

M

Mohammed Wardi n/a (posthumous; large catalogue on YouTube)

legendary Sudanese singer & national cultural icon (d. 2012) — still revered across the country

A

Alaa Salah ~90K Instagram

the 'Woman in White' — student who became the global symbol of the 2019 revolution; activist

Alsarah ~30K Instagram

Sudanese-American singer & ethnomusicologist (Alsarah & the Nubatones), born in Khartoum — 'East African retro-pop'

Alek Wek ~167K Instagram

pioneering supermodel (note: born in Wau, now South Sudan) — widely claimed across the Sudans

Tayeb Salih n/a (posthumous literary icon)

celebrated Sudanese novelist ('Season of Migration to the North') — towering Arabic literary figure (d. 2009)

Affiliate & traffic

Hot verticals

• Nutra / health COD (where delivery is possible)
• Sweepstakes / lead-gen & mobile apps/utilities/VPN (CPI)
• Betting (grey, high-risk)
• Crypto P2P (grey)
• Diaspora-targeted remittance & e-commerce offers

Active networks

• Nutra COD aggregators (Dr.Cash, AdCombo/TerraLeads) — cover SD grey/ROW where COD works
• Adsterra & PropellerAds (pop/push/native — serve SD traffic very cheaply)
• Betting affiliates for Betwinner/1xBet (grey, via mirror sites; illegal locally)
• Most tier-1 CPA/e-com networks geo-block or avoid Sudan (sanctions, war, no card rails)

Payouts

• Tier-3, very low: nutra COD roughly $4–12 per approved order (where COD functions)
• CPI/sweeps ~$0.05–1
• card-out payouts essentially impossible — settle via crypto, hawala or diaspora

Competition

Very under-served with rock-bottom CPMs, but war, internet blackouts, US sanctions and near-zero card monetisation make it a fringe/grey market that most affiliates skip or fold into generic 'Africa/ROW' traffic

Seasonality

• Ramadan/Eid lift evening engagement
• campaigns are routinely disrupted by nationwide internet blackouts and conflict flare-ups

Traffic sources

• Facebook & TikTok ads
• Twitter/X
• Telegram channels
• Push/pop networks
• YouTube

Good to know

Capital

Khartoum (de jure; heavily war-damaged — Port Sudan has served as the de-facto administrative seat since 2023)

Major cities

• Khartoum
• Omdurman
• Khartoum North (Bahri)
• Port Sudan
• Kassala
• El Obeid
• Nyala
• Gedaref
• Kosti
• Wad Madani

Time zones

Single zone — Central Africa Time UTC+2, no DST (Sudan moved from UTC+3 back to UTC+2 on 1 Nov 2017)

Android vs iOS

98%

Android 98% iOS 2%

Phone brands

• Samsung (~39%)
• Huawei (~12%)
• Xiaomi (~10%)
• Realme (~7%)
• Honor (~5%)
• large 'Unknown'/grey imports (~16%) incl. Transsion (Tecno/Infinix/itel)

Top e-commerce

• alsoug (largest — classifieds + marketplace + delivery, with Cashi wallet)
• informal Facebook / WhatsApp / Instagram shops
• diaspora-purchase services (relatives abroad pay, delivery inside Sudan)

Peak activity

Evenings ~20:00–24:00 CAT (after-iftar during Ramadan); expect gaps during internet blackouts

Creative taboos

• The SAF–RSF war, Darfur atrocities, ethnic/tribal identity, religion/Islam, alcohol, LGBTQ, and any government/military criticism — all extremely high-risk
• tread very carefully

Also worth knowing

1. This is an active conflict market — civil war since April 2023 has displaced ~12M+ people, driven famine and caused repeated nationwide internet blackouts; connectivity and reachability are unstable.
2. Payment card-out is effectively impossible (US sanctions on war actors + near-zero Visa/Mastercard acceptance) — Bankak/Cashi are the local rails and the huge diaspora funds most consumption via remittances/hawala.
3. The reachable audience is young, Arabic-first and mobile-only (~98% Android) on Facebook/WhatsApp/TikTok with outsized Twitter/X activism — but small (7% social penetration) and shrinking (mobile connections -21% YoY).