Jobs Created as UNDP and Partners Work to Alleviate Poverty Across Sudan

November 27, 2007: More than 7,000 jobs are created across Sudan as UNDP and Partners work to alleviate poverty and hunger

Dong Chol supervises the construction crew the RRP has hired to build local government offices in Aweil West

A year ago, Dong Chol, 32, was struggling to feed his family. The father of five from Aweil West County in Southern Sudan could only find sporadic employment and had to resort to collecting stones to sell as building materials. He was earning less than US $1 a day and couldn’t afford to pay his children’s school fees or buy medicine when they got sick.

After receiving job training from the Sudan Recovery and Rehabilitation Programme, Chol’s predicament became a thing of the past. Chol is now a construction supervisor. He oversees a crew that is building a new office building for the Aweil West local government.

“I have learned how to build walls, how I can lay the brick, carpentry, roofing even and building tussles,” said Chol. “Now I have the confidence to go to Aweil town and compete for jobs where there is a lot of construction.”

Chol makes now about US$10 a day, which is a high income in poverty-stricken southern Sudan. According to the Sudan Interim Unified Millennium Development Goals Report of 2004 more than 90% percent of people living in Southern Sudan live in extreme poverty. Across the rest of the country , up to 60% are poor.

Chol can now afford to feed, educate and care for his family’s health. The Recovery and Rehabilitation Programme is training thousands of Sudanese men and women and helping Sudan in its effort to reach the first Millennium Development Goal: to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

Alamin Maala opened a commodities shop in South Kordofan after receiving a loan from the RRP

The Recovery and Rehabilitation Programme is a 54,325 million Euro programme, funded by the European Commission and managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on behalf of the Government of National Unity, and the Government of South Sudan. The programme runs projects in Abyei Area and the following states: River Nile, Red Sea, Blue Nile, South Kordofan, Upper Nile, Warrap, Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, and Northern Bahr al Ghazal.

Under the Recovery and Rehabilitation Programme, jobs have been created in construction, in the agricultural sector, and through micro-credit loan schemes.

Chol is one of 7,099 people who found employment through the recovery programme. The programme has helped create 879 construction related jobs like Chol’s. The demand for skilled construction workers has increased in Sudan, because of the large number of infrastructure and recovery projects that began after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005. While many of these jobs are temporary, these workers gain valuable training that will help them find sustainable employment in construction

The RRP provides ox-plough training to women farmers in Juba County

The recovery programme has created 4,520 jobs through micro-credit loan schemes. Members of rural communities submit a business proposal to a micro finance committee made up of local leaders in the ten project locations.

Each loan recipient must pay back the amount of credit borrowed, in addition to 10 percent of their profits made during the time it takes to repay the loan to the revolving credit fund. The money in the revolving credit fund is then used to extend a loan to the next entrepreneur.

In addition, the Recovery programme has created 952 jobs in Sudan’s vital agriculture sector. While crop production contributes roughly 45% of Sudan’s gross domestic product, less than 7% of the country’s surface area is used for cultivation. But as the agricultural sector is developed, there will be more opportunity for continued job creation under RRP’s programmes. Agricultural training not only creates jobs, but it also works towards achieving the first Millennium Development Goal by improving food security.

The Recovery and Rehabilitation Programme, which is serving 800,000 Sudanese, is the largest recovery initiative across Sudan. A total of 47 NGOs are working together to build schools, healthcare centers, and water networks; improve people’s livelihoods through vocational training, agricultural projects, and peace-building initiatives; and increase capacity through training local government administrations.

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UNDP is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.