Port Sudan (Sudan) (AFP)

Everywhere, hundreds of trucks loaded with import-export goods or fuel to run factories and supply power stations are waiting: in Port Sudan, for a month, demonstrators have brutally cut off supplies to the whole of Sudan.

The protesters cut the roads leading to other provinces and especially to Khartoum, for a time blocked the Port-Sudan airport and almost all of the Port-Sudan docks.

Moustafa Abdelqader, truck driver, is quite upset.

"I have been stuck for 24 days. I could have delivered six loads and earn 120,000 Sudanese pounds", or 235 euros, "while there, I have nothing to feed my family," he told the AFP.

But for the demonstrators, there is no question of giving in.

Since September 17, they have been calling for the cancellation of a peace agreement signed in October 2020 between Khartoum and rebel groups which, according to them, does not give their region the representation it deserves within the authorities of transition.

Sudan AFP

- Zero planning -

In a country already taken by the throat by decades of American sanctions recently lifted, these blockages lose every day "50 to 60 million dollars", assures AFP the economist Mohamed al-Nayer.

For its part, the Shipowners' Union reports that in September only 27 ships were able to dock in Sudan, against 65 in August.

Many have in fact been diverted, especially to Egypt, in order to unload their goods.

According to the association of dockers, since September 17, 13,000 employees are on technical unemployment and therefore without income, as well as 20,000 others, indirect employees of the port economy.

Ahmed Mahjoub, director of the southern docks of Port-Sudan recalls that "60% of Sudan's trade, or about 1,200 containers per day, pass through Port-Sudan".

Each day of closure therefore represents "hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss".

View of Port Sudan, in the south of the country, October 9, 2021 ASHRAF SHAZLY AFP

A hard blow for the Sudanese economy already on its knees and forced into austerity by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has canceled its debt in exchange for the removal of subsidies, especially on fuels.

For Mr. Nayer, "the transitional authorities, and the former regime before, failed to plan for the future and to build up strategic reserves".

With this new crisis, households, which already had to deal with inflation of around 400% and a floating rate led by the Sudanese pound continuing to soar on the black market, are now suffering from shortages resulting from blockages.

- "We are already suffering enough" -

"We spend hours looking for bread but the bakeries have closed because they were no longer supplied with wheat," Achgan, a tea seller in Khartoum, told AFP.

"We really didn't need that, we're already in enough pain," he laments.

For lack of bread, too, schools have stopped welcoming children for lunch in a country ravaged by poverty and malnutrition.

Many drugs are also lacking even if the protesters now allow medical containers to pass.

Members of the Beja ethnic group demonstrate near the port of Osman Digna in northeastern Sudan on October 9, 2021 ASHRAF SHAZLY AFP

The blockade of Port Sudan has repercussions across the country, such as in Darfur, where residents are protesting against shortages.

This crisis also undermines a little more authorities caught in a difficult transition after 30 years of dictatorship and who have just suffered a failed putsch.

It also adds to the fractures that are growing between civilians and the military in power.

But in Port Sudan, under the green-yellow-blue-red flags of the Beja Congress party, surrounded by branches and flaming tires, the demonstrators did not budge.

"We submitted our grievances to the government", reports to AFP Abdallah Abouchar, one of their leaders who wants "the cancellation of the agreement (of October 2020) and new negotiations for the East".

In an attempt to calm the protest movement, Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok spoke of a "just" cause, acknowledging that the region was "the poorest while it is the richest in resources".

And he assured to work at "an international conference to obtain funding" and called for "direct discussions" as soon as possible, while the UN mission in Sudan spent a week there listening to the demands of the protesters.

What is needed as quickly as possible, for Mr. Nayer, is an agreement.

"Because a longer blockade will have catastrophic consequences."

© 2021 AFP