Endowed with rich natural resources and vast, fertile land, Sudan has great potential to become a major international agricultural producer. However, the country remains as one of the least developed in the world.

Past growth in Sudan was not sufficiently broad-based. Investments and services are concentrated in and around Khartoum State with little infrastructure in rural areas. The significant disparities between rural and urban regions has contributed to growing inequalities in the different regions and to an increase in the urban informal sector accounting for more than 60% of the Gross Domestic Product. This state of affairs has encouraged a rural-urban migration that has weakened the agricultural productivity and consequently deepened poverty in both urban and rural areas.

According to the 2011 Human Development Report, Sudan ranked as the 169th country among 177 states. The hardest sector hit by poverty are people living in rural areas, in particular women and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who constitute about 12% of the total population. Latest figures on the Sudan’s poverty rate estimates that 46.5 % of the total population lives in poor conditions and that only 58.7 % of Sudan’s population had access to improved sanitation.

In the educational sector, access to school enrollment has reached 71.1 % in 2010 with notable regional disparities ranging from 93.75% in Khartoum to only 36.1 % in the Red Sea state. Prevalence of child malnutrition is high, at 31.8% in 2010 with a target of reaching 15% for the year 2015.

Gender equality is one of the priority issues for development in Sudan and women are granted a quota of at least 25 percent representation in national or state parliaments in the 2008 Electoral Law, which is also reflected in the real political representation of women in the National Assembly.

UNDP's support in the area of poverty reduction focuses on improving the national capacity to plan and monitor a comprehensive approach to the reduction of human and income poverty, in line with the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for Sudan.

In addition to supporting a variety of income-generating activities to reduce poverty, and increase food security and employment in rural Sudan, UNDP continues to promote an institutional, social and economic environment conducive to poverty reduction.

UNDP and the Poverty Challenge in Sudan
As a Member State of the United Nations and in signing the Millennium Declaration, Sudan has committed itself to reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, which is the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - a goal that developing countries aim to have achieved by 2015
The main objective of the UNDP’s development interventions in Sudan is to support progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This involves strengthening national and sub-national capacities for MDG reporting, promoting MDG based policies, as well as MDG-based strategic planning. UNDP works closely with the Ministry of International Co-operation and the Ministry of Social welfare.

Key policy interventions in this area have included the preparation of the (1) MDG Report 2010, which aims to measure progress towards the MDGs in Sudan, and generate national and public awareness and policy dialogues for the MDGs and pro-poor policies and the (2) National Human development Report 2011 on “Peace and Human Development”, which will support continuing discussion, understanding and action towards promoting sustainable human development in Sudan.

UNDP currently provides capacity development support to the Ministry of International Co-operation, the Ministry of Finance and National Economy (MOFNE) and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. Collectively, this support represents a comprehensive strategy for strengthening national capacities for aid management and co-ordination in Sudan involving all national and foreign aid partners. National counterparts are also assisted in the facilitation of aid planning, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in line with the Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) Results Framework for Sudan and 5 year strategic development Plan for Sudan.

As part of its anti-poverty strategy, UNDP works with the Central Bank of Sudan and the Sudanese Microfinance Development Facility to strengthen the national micro-finance coordination mechanism and expand microfinance services across the country through mobile phone technology (jointly with the Central Bank of Sudan and the Sate of Northern Kordofan.)
Strategic development interventions in UNDP aspire to develop the capacity of the Government to manage, coordinate external assistance, and facilitate aid planning and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

UNDP collaborates with the Ministry of Youth and Sports to help micro business and enterprises create career opportunities for graduate students. Additionally, UNDP supports the Ministry of Labor in establishing a voucher based training system that will expand job opportunities for under-graduate students.

The following projects provide detailed information on UNDP’s interventions for poverty reduction and progress on the MDGs across the country: