For the previous three years, studies of wartime atrocities and dire humanitarian crises have been making the headlines from Sudan. Now, satellite tv for pc imagery reveals the extent of the harm to the nation’s agriculture and industrial sectors.
An Al Jazeera digital investigation utilizing Sentinel-2 satellite tv for pc imagery and the Normalised Distinction Vegetation Index (NDVI) reveals the devastating toll of the struggle on Sudan’s largest irrigated farming tasks within the central states of Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum.
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The fertile plains of central Sudan – referred to as the nation’s “breadbasket” – have been devastated, the photographs present, with the colourful, geometric inexperienced grids that after outlined the nation’s agricultural heartland now pale right into a barren, dusty brown.
Sudan descended right into a bloody civil struggle on April 15, 2023 following an influence wrestle between the Speedy Help Forces (RSF), a robust paramilitary drive, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
Combating first erupted within the capital Khartoum, however quickly unfold to different areas. The RSF initially made swift positive aspects, advancing throughout Sudan’s agricultural heartland, primarily in central and jap Sudan, particularly the states of Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum – in late 2023. The preventing devastated an enormous swath of the area that’s essential for the meals safety of one of many poorest nations on earth.
Within the city of Abu Quta in northern Gezira state, RSF fighters geared up with heavy machine weapons looted markets, the native police station, and the agricultural financial institution in December 2023. In response, determined farmers resorted to flooding their very own irrigation canals. They sacrificed their crops, turning fields into mud traps to halt the RSF’s closely armed pickup vehicles.
What started as a determined defence on the bottom has now been captured from area.
The info exposes a stark sample: a catastrophic agricultural collapse throughout RSF management in 2024, adopted by a fragile, restricted restoration after the SAF regained territory in 2025.
The collapse of Gezira
For many years, the Gezira Scheme, an irrigation mission launched in Gezira state, was the agricultural spine of Sudan. Spanning some 924,000 hectares (2.28 million acres) between the Blue and White Nile Rivers, the mission options greater than 8,000 kilometres (4,970 miles) of canals and traditionally produced half of the nation’s wheat.
After the RSF captured Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira state, in December 2023, the agricultural system disintegrated.
The collapse was not attributable to local weather anomalies. Unbiased assessments, together with a study by the United Nations Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO), affirm that wheat manufacturing in Gezira plummeted by 58 % in the course of the 2023-2024 season.
This decline was the results of a scientific dismantling of agricultural infrastructure. The European Union Company for Asylum documented RSF fighters diverting irrigation channels, flooding agricultural lands, and even utilizing baggage of harvested crops as makeshift bridges over canals. The FAO famous that the al-Haiwawa canal, a crucial artery serving 2,360 farmers throughout 48 villages, was among the many most severely broken.
The financial impression on the farming neighborhood was extreme. Hussein Saad, a former farmer and member of the Gezira and Al-Managil Farmers Alliance, instructed Radio Dabanga that the price of a 50kg bag of fertiliser skyrocketed from 20,000 Sudanese kilos ($33) to 120,000 ($200), whereas tractor rental costs tripled.
Armed fighters looted the nationwide seed financial institution and drained World Meals Programme warehouses in Wad Madani that had held sufficient meals to maintain 1.5 million folks for a month.
Moreover, an RSF-imposed telecommunications blackout in early 2024 paralysed monetary transfers. This compelled the closure of 200 out of 300 native soup kitchens that had been holding displaced households alive.
Comparable devastation was recorded within the Rahad and Suki Schemes positioned in Sennar and Gedaref states, masking 126,000 hectares (311,350 acres) and 37,800 hectares (93,400 acres), respectively. Below RSF management all through 2024, crop well being in each areas drastically deteriorated.
Studying the satellite tv for pc information
Measuring the destruction required distinguishing between precise agriculture and overgrown weeds. Whereas the NDVI measures the density and well being of inexperienced vegetation, it can not inherently differentiate between crops and wild grass that usually reclaims deserted fields.
Nevertheless, in engineered, irrigated schemes like Gezira and Rahad, agriculture depends on human coordination: working pump stations, opening water gates on strict schedules, and making use of fertiliser. When the system works, satellite tv for pc imagery reveals unmistakable, geometric rectangular grids. When the system collapses, because the Famine Early Warning Programs Community (FEWS NET) noted, these distinctive patterns vanish, changed by chaotic, irregular patches of inexperienced and brown indicating deserted lands.
A fragile restoration
The satellite tv for pc information highlights a direct correlation between navy management and meals safety. In November 2024, the SAF recaptured Singa in Sennar state, adopted by Wad Madani in January 2025. By March 2025, the military managed most of each states.
Following the military’s management, NDVI information from December 2025 confirmed a notable enchancment in crop well being throughout the Gezira, Rahad, and Suki Schemes. Whereas removed from pre-war ranges, the return of geometric inexperienced grids signifies that farmers cautiously resumed planting.
This aligns with an Built-in Meals Safety Section Classification (IPC) report, which beforehand warned that 25.6 million folks, which is half the nation’s inhabitants, confronted acute meals insecurity, together with 755,000 in catastrophic famine circumstances.
By late 2025, the IPC famous that 3.4 million folks had been now not in disaster ranges, attributing the advance explicitly to the gradual stabilisation in Gezira, Sennar, and Khartoum following the RSF withdrawal.
The Khartoum management group
To definitively rule out local weather anomalies, investigators used Khartoum state as a “management group”. Khartoum shares the identical local weather zone and rainfall patterns as Gezira, positioned simply 150km (93 miles) to the north, but it surely skilled a distinct navy trajectory.
The SAF solely declared full management of Khartoum in Might 2025, simply six months earlier than the December satellite tv for pc evaluation.
Imagery of 4 main agricultural tasks across the capital – North Bahri, East Nile, Sundus, and Kutranj, all positioned inside Khartoum state, which got here underneath military management in Might 2025 – confirmed no vital restoration in 2025.
The fields lacked the precision of energetic farming, remaining barren and overgrown with wild grass. The distinction proves that safety alone just isn’t sufficient; farmers want a full season of stability to restore canals, supply seeds, and harvest crops.
Industrial smash
The struggle’s scars prolong past the fields. Excessive-resolution satellite tv for pc imagery from Planet Labs reveals widespread destruction of commercial infrastructure. In response to statements made by Sudan’s Minister of Trade Mahasin Ali Yagoub to the Al-Sudani newspaper, 126 massive industrial services and three,131 small factories in Gezira state alone had been severely broken.
Whereas restricted reconstruction of factories was noticed in Wad Madani by early 2026, Khartoum’s industrial zones stay largely in ruins, with practically 3,200 services destroyed and no tangible indicators of restoration.
As for agriculture, for the tens of millions of Sudanese who rely on these lands for survival, the return to the fields is shadowed by the sheer scale of the loss. Whereas the satellite tv for pc imagery reveals geometric inexperienced grids slowly returning to the area, the scars of looted infrastructure and flooded canals stay – a haunting reminder of a “breadbasket” pushed to the brink of hunger.
