How Long Must We Rely on “Emergency Fodder” Instead of Sustainability?

Adil Al-Rifai Abul Hassan

“Emergency fodder” is a well-known Sudanese expression. It refers to the feed given to a working animal for the few minutes it takes to prepare it before setting off on a journey. It is a temporary provision for a brief period, and the expression came to be used colloquially to describe a stopgap measure meant to meet an immediate need.
This simple image opens the door to a broader issue in state governance: when do we move from dealing with immediate circumstances to building a policy framework that can accommodate changing conditions?
For decades, whenever resources have become scarce or foreign currency has been in short supply, we have turned to the quickest solutions: banning certain goods, raising customs duties on them, or classifying them as “luxuries” or “provocative” commodities, rather than developing solutions that address the root of the problem and broaden the sources of revenue.
What one party regards as a luxury may be essential to another, while what one considers non-essential may form part of an important economic or productive activity. It is therefore better to avoid such labels and assess goods and activities by their impact on production, employment, value added, exports, and the economy as a whole.
We use the economic sector here merely as an example, because the issue extends far beyond the economy and public finance. It concerns how policies are formulated across the entire state: education, health, agriculture, industry, water, energy, and other sectors.
Sudan is rich in expertise, knowledge, practical experience and vision. Its people include professionals with the skills, ideas, and foresight needed to formulate sound national policies that can endure while remaining open to development. By their nature, sustainable policies are characterised by continuity, with only a limited part changing in response to new circumstances. Markets change; the economy grows or experiences recession; and conditions evolve. The instruments may therefore be refined, while the overall direction remains constant. The challenge is to translate this accumulated expertise into sustainable policies, using change to develop policy rather than replace it altogether.
Economic and fiscal policy provides a clear example. Instead of going round in circles over foreign-currency shortages, the focus should be on creating abundance. The path begins with production: a better operating environment for the private sector, expansion in agriculture and livestock production, agro-processing and other manufacturing industries linked to these sectors, and the infrastructure and value chains needed to open up export opportunities.
Agriculture does not end with crop production. It encompasses storage, transport, processing, packaging, finance and exports. Livestock production extends into meat, leather, animal feed, veterinary services, refrigeration, processing and exports. In this way, resources are transformed into value, value into exports, exports into foreign currency, and economic activity into a broader revenue base for the state, more jobs and higher incomes for citizens.
Consider the countries that have achieved major advances. They expanded production, created new revenue sources for the state and the private sector, raised citizens’ productivity and incomes, and linked their resources to manufacturing, exports, and value addition. Sudan has diverse resources and strong comparative advantages, along with wealth in human capital and accumulated expertise. The issue, therefore, comes down to choice, strategy, implementation and continuity.
The war makes this moment different. It has exposed structural weaknesses, revealed the consequences of complacency and quick fixes, and demonstrated the limits of repeatedly relying on short-term remedies. Sudan has paid a heavy price in lives, resources, and lost years. The post-war period must therefore mark a turning point in the way the state is built.
We must also make good use of the tremendous sense of national solidarity the Sudanese people displayed during the war: their patience amid its tragedies and costs, their cohesion and support for state institutions and the Armed Forces, and their ability to endure the harshest conditions. This represents an enormous national resource that can be channelled away from mere endurance and confrontation towards construction, reconstruction and reform.
The reform process may require two or three years of patience and sacrifice, perhaps even five. The difference lies in ensuring that this endurance follows a clearly defined path, with objectives and stages citizens can understand, and that they recognise the present costs as an investment in a better future.
As we noted in a previous article, turning adversity into opportunity requires frankness with the people and their involvement in major choices. Citizens who know the path and understand its purpose become partners in reform. Likewise, sectors that help shape their own policies are better placed to implement, safeguard, and improve them.
One of the most pressing duties facing the Sudanese people today is to stand together in a united national effort and press the state to adopt a comprehensive strategy for Sudan’s advancement—one with clear objectives, defined stages and a binding commitment from state institutions and successive governments. The time has come to make this a shared national demand: move away from governing through temporary policies and from dealing with one crisis by creating another, and towards a strategy that puts Sudan on a path of production, growth, and prosperity.
These are fundamental principles of state-building and national development. Countries that have achieved progress have done so on clear strategies, carefully prepared by specialists and adopted by state institutions, which have refined their instruments as circumstances changed.
Sudan today needs a national strategy spanning thirty to fifty years that addresses its major challenges, defines its priorities, builds its institutions, and directs its resources toward production and value addition. A thirty- or fifty-year horizon does not mean rigid policies. It means maintaining a consistent national direction, while policies and instruments can evolve in response to changing circumstances.
It should be a strategy through which we can envisage genuine national advancement, social cohesion, prosperity and well-being, and a strong country whose strength rests on its people, institutions and economy.
This is a historic opportunity we must not let slip away: to turn the patience shown by the people during the war into determination to build; to turn the lessons learned into knowledge that guides reform; and to transform national solidarity into a project of national advancement.
The time has come to move beyond “emergency fodder” towards sustainability, and from crisis management to shaping the future. Sudan needs a clear strategy for national advancement to which the state is committed, in whose formulation the people participate, whose course they help safeguard, and towards whose fulfilment successive generations work.

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