The Price Sudan Has Paid: When the State Lacked an Educational Strategy

Adil Al-Rifai Abu Al-Hassan
If we wish to understand an important aspect of Sudan’s developmental stagnation and the setbacks it has experienced over the years, we must pause to consider a fundamental question that has long been present in Sudanese reality, even if it has not received the attention it deserves:
What has Sudan lost because it lacked a coherent state strategy for education?
The issue is not simply one of having schools and universities or increasing the number of graduates. Rather, it concerns the existence of a clear national vision that defines the role of education in advancing development and links educational outcomes to the needs of society, the economy, and the country’s future.
For generations, Sudanese families have fulfilled their responsibilities towards education with a deep belief in its value and its power to improve the lives of individuals and households. They have invested money, effort, and time in pursuit of it, associating success with academic achievement and educational qualifications. Without this deeply rooted societal conviction, education would not have retained its esteemed place in the Sudanese consciousness despite the many crises and challenges the country has endured.
Yet what families have done should have been part of a broader national project led by the state, not a substitute for one. The role of the family is to encourage learning; the role of the state is to formulate a strategy that defines the philosophy, objectives, and direction of education and aligns its outcomes with national development priorities.
However, for much of Sudan’s modern history, education has proceeded without a stable and clearly defined national strategy. Families pursued what they believed would secure the best future for their children, and obtaining a degree followed by a government or professional position became the clearest and safest path in the eyes of society.
It was here that a profound transformation began.
Over time, education ceased to be viewed primarily as a means of developing productive, creative individuals capable of driving change. Academic achievement became an end in itself. Educational qualifications evolved from instruments of knowledge into social symbols by which success and status were measured.
The dominant questions became: What qualification does this person hold? What position have they obtained? rather than: What can they produce? What contribution can they make to their country and society?
Consequently, we became more concerned with reaching the destination than with what would follow upon arrival. We celebrated certificates more than we celebrated the impact they were meant to create. The means became the end, and education increasingly became a pathway to employment rather than a pathway to productivity, innovation, and development.
By contrast, countries that successfully achieved economic and social transformation did not allow their education systems to operate without direction. They aligned education with their economic, agricultural, industrial, and scientific objectives and used it to prepare the skilled workforce required to implement their development plans.
In successful nations, education is not a sector detached from the state’s broader vision; it is one of the principal instruments through which that vision is realised.
This raises several important questions:
How can a country endowed with vast agricultural potential allow its education system to remain disconnected from the needs of the agricultural sector?
How can it aspire to industrialisation and increased production without a comprehensive educational strategy designed to support those goals?
And how can a strong economy be built if educational outputs are not aligned with the needs of society, the labour market, and the productive sectors?
One of Sudan’s most compelling examples of the value of a national educational strategy is the experience of the former Technical Institute—later the Institute of Technological Colleges, and today Sudan University of Science and Technology.
The establishment of this institution was not merely an expansion of educational provision. It was a direct response to a developmental vision that recognised the country’s need for qualified technicians and technologists to support production, services, and infrastructure development.
The institution successfully graduated generations of skilled professionals who contributed to various sectors of the economy both within Sudan and abroad. Its significance lies in demonstrating a practical lesson. When the state clearly identifies its developmental needs and directs education towards preparing the human resources required to meet them, educational outcomes become more relevant to development and better able to serve society and the economy.
Sudan has paid a heavy price for the absence of this kind of strategic thinking.
The country lost the opportunity to build an educational system linked to national development priorities. It lost the opportunity to transform knowledge into production. It lost decades during which national expertise in economic, scientific, and technical fields could have accumulated and matured.
Nations do not advance through qualifications alone. They progress through the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and experience that are transformed into productivity, added value, and sustainable development. When strategy is absent, the gap between education and societal realities widens, and educational outputs become less capable of contributing meaningfully to economic and social advancement.
Sudan’s crisis has never been one of inadequate resources or insufficient human potential. Rather, it has been the absence of a stable national project capable of linking education to development and integrating it into a comprehensive state vision.
There may have been initiatives, ideas, and reform efforts at different stages. What has consistently been missing, however, is a strategy capable of enduring, institutions capable of implementing it, and the national will required to protect it from political fluctuations and changes of government.
For this reason, the need today is not merely for incremental curriculum reforms or the expansion of universities and colleges. What is required is the reconstruction of Sudan’s educational strategy from its foundations so that it becomes an integral component of the country’s broader economic and social development agenda.
Such a strategy must begin with a simple yet profound question:
What types of skills, expertise, and competencies will Sudan need over the coming decades?
The entire educational system—its stages, pathways, and specialisations—should then be designed to provide a practical answer to that question.
The greatest loss Sudan has suffered has not been a shortage of money or resources. There has been an absence of a coherent state strategy for education. This absence has affected not only the educational sector but also the economy, production, public administration, the labour market, and the overall trajectory of development. When an educational strategy is absent, the state loses its ability to prepare the human capital necessary to achieve its national objectives.
Restoring the state’s role in shaping educational strategy is therefore no longer an intellectual luxury or a matter reserved for educators alone. It has become a national imperative directly linked to Sudan’s future.
The country’s renaissance will not begin with increasing the number of graduates or expanding educational institutions quantitatively. It will begin with the emergence of a clear national vision that treats education as a tool for developing people, stimulating production, and achieving comprehensive development.
Perhaps the most important lesson to draw today is that education does not automatically drive development. It does so only when it forms part of a clearly defined national project.
When a state possesses an educational strategy aligned with its developmental vision, education becomes a powerful engine of progress. When that strategy is absent, the nation continues to pay the price—generation after generation.

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