The Hundred-and-First Way

Retired Police Brigadier

Omar Mohamed Osman

It is said that a young research assistant, who was new to the job, once told the professor, the senior researcher: “There is no point. We have tried a hundred methods and found no solution.”

The professor replied: “On the contrary, there is great value in what we have done. We now know that the hundred methods we tried do not work. Come on, let us try method one hundred and one.”

I was reminded of this story as I followed the state of the Sudanese economy and what people have been left to live on. For years, we have continued searching for a way out, trying some policies and changing others. Faces come and go, while the same question remains: how much longer?

As the poet Mohammed Al-Hassan Salem Hmeid put it:

“And the market drives you into a state that does not pass.”

There is no doubt that the war is a fundamental factor in the current crisis, and it is impossible to discuss the economy and people’s livelihoods today without accounting for the war’s effects. It has inflicted enormous damage on production, trade, markets and sources of income, and has greatly intensified people’s suffering.

But to put matters in proper context, we need to ask a simple question: Were our economic conditions and people’s livelihoods really all right before the war?

The answer, without question, is no.

The economic crisis did not begin with the war. Clear problems already existed: rising prices, a decline in the value of the Sudanese pound, weakening purchasing power, and growing anxiety about the future. Then the war came, adding further crises to those already in place and pushing the situation to even more difficult levels.

This point is important because the end of the war—which every Sudanese person hopes for—will not automatically erase the economic problems that existed before it.

I am not an economist, nor do I have a ready-made formula for bringing us out of this crisis. But citizens have every right to ask: if we have tried all these approaches and nothing has changed, where is the path we have not yet tried?

Perhaps the time has come to reconsider how the economic portfolio is managed, as well as the people, ideas, and tools that have been responsible for it over the past several years. This is not about condemning anyone; rather, the results themselves compel us to ask whether a different approach is needed.

Many of those entrusted with this portfolio may have exhausted what they had to offer—or perhaps they have simply reached the limits of the tools they know. This happens in every field. Sometimes what is required is not greater effort along the same road, but the search for another road altogether.

And so I return to the professor in the story. The fact that the hundred methods failed does not mean that a solution does not exist. It simply means that we have identified a hundred ways that did not lead us to it.

The question that remains—and one to which we need an answer—is:

Where is method one hundred and one?

And where is the professor who can tell us, with confidence and knowledge: “We have tried what we tried, we have learned from our mistakes, and now we have another way”?

Sudan is not beyond the laws of economics, nor is it trapped in a black hole. Our crisis has causes, and as long as it has causes, there must be a way out.

All we need to do is find it.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=18218