Bakeries in the capital are shutting as flour deliveries falter and drone strikes on the grid push them onto diesel that cannot be found, while the Central Bank of Sudan says it will set up a fund to finance imports of strategic goods.
Dozens of bakeries across Khartoum have closed because of shortages of flour and diesel and repeated power cuts, the deputy head of the Bakeries Union, Issam Okasha, told Sudan Tribune on Sunday 1 November. His comments were also reported by Al-Ghad Al-Sudani.
Flour, diesel and the grid
Okasha said wheat allocations to the mills were irregular, mills were producing less and deliveries to bakeries were sometimes delayed by up to a week. Khartoum's bakeries need about 45,000 50-kilogram sacks of flour a day. Without stable electricity, bakeries depend on generators, but diesel is scarce. That has forced many, especially in rural parts of the state, to stop work. He could not say how many have closed. Before the war the state had about 2,860 bakeries; partial figures from September show 275 licensed in Khartoum locality itself. Since 9 October several bakeries have charged 500 Sudanese pounds a loaf.
Okasha said subsidising the roughly 200,000 sacks needed daily across army-held states was beyond the government's means, and that the old flour subsidy had ended more than five years ago.
In Omdurman, a bakery owner told Omdurman Times that a 25-kilogram bag of flour now costs 192,000 pounds and that some bakers have switched to firewood. A mill owner said his mill had stopped for three consecutive days for lack of fuel and power. Traders linked the crisis to the 27 October drone strike on the Al-Markhiyat substation, which cut power to much of Khartoum and River Nile states.
Central bank response
The Central Bank of Sudan said on Sunday it plans to establish a fund, working with commercial banks, to finance imports of strategic goods and stabilise markets, Sudan Tribune and Al-Hayat Al-Yawm reported. Governor Amna Mirghani Hassan El-Tom chaired a meeting on the fund's targeted commodities, participants and financing options. No size or start date was announced. The bank also proposed a Supreme Council for Exports to coordinate production, financing, transport, customs and marketing so as to raise foreign-currency earnings.
Context: The bread crisis in Khartoum, retaken by the army in 2025, shows the economic strain in army-held Sudan. Prices are rising and the pound is falling, while much of the population depends on informal work. The drone campaign against the grid is deepening that strain. In RSF-held areas, the Tasis-led administration faces its own food emergency and has put food supply at the top of its cabinet agenda.
Photo: The Central Bank of Sudan in Khartoum. Mussapedia, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.