Sudan

Sudan: A Depleted Fiscal Base and an Aging Data Record

Economy

Sudan is a large population resting on a small measured economy. World Bank WDI figures for 2024 put gross domestic product at about $49.7 billion, population at 50.4 million and output per head at roughly $985. The IMF's World Economic Outlook puts general government debt at 169.1 percent of GDP for 2026, meaning obligations run to more than one and a half times annual output.

Foreign reserves are the weakest link in the record rather than simply the weakest number. The only reserves observation available is $177.9 million, from the World Bank's WDI and dated 2017. Nothing more recent is supplied, so Sudan's current external buffer cannot be assessed from this dataset. Any statement about present-day reserve adequacy would be guesswork.

Military weight

SIPRI's most recent entry for Sudan dates from 2021: military spending of $369.4 million, equal to 0.925 percent of GDP that year. No later SIPRI observation is supplied, so the defense burden through the intervening years is unknown here. Correlates of War National Material Capabilities data for 2022 record 104,000 active personnel and a CINC score of 0.00366 — roughly 0.37 percent of global material capability, since CINC is expressed as a share of the world total.

The gap between a sizable standing force and a sub-1-percent spending share is the salient feature: on the 2021 SIPRI figure, Sudan sustains manpower on a budget that is small in both absolute and relative terms. No arms-transfer, nuclear or casualty data is present for Sudan in this dataset, so force quality, materiel inflows and conflict intensity cannot be characterized.

Governance

V-Dem v15 scores for 2025 place Sudan near the bottom of each index, which runs from 0 to 1: electoral democracy at 0.13, liberal democracy at 0.034 and state capacity at 0.174. The state-capacity reading is the operationally important one — it indicates limited administrative reach, which bears directly on revenue collection, service delivery and territorial control.

Energy

Our World in Data records primary energy consumption of 0.3245 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation of 14.77 terawatt-hours in 2024. Oil production stood at 21.614 TWh in 2024. Gas production is recorded at zero, but that observation dates from 2016 and should not be read as a current figure.

Data gaps

Reserves (2017), military spending (2021) and gas output (2016) are all substantially out of date. Trade, arms transfers, conflict events and casualty counts are absent entirely.

Sources: World Bank WDI; IMF WEO; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).