following then President Omar al-Bashir’s decision to end fuel and other subsidies. Many of the leaders of these protests, like many of the leaders of the earlier post-Arab Spring protests, were youth who had access to smartphones and social media. Kadoda and Hale (2015, 223) argue that “social media not only facilitated civil society’s mobilization and greater visibility, but they (the media) raised consciousness and drew in greater numbers.” Their research demonstrates that the youth activism that took place in 2013 on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube succeeded in cross-cutting socioeconomic and other divides in ways that the ‘traditional’ protest movements in the mid-1960s and mid-1980s could not.<sup>26</sup> Building on that, access to social media in 2013 allowed many women who might not otherwise have been able to participate—due to the patriarchal norms discussed earlier—to actually participate, because social media enabled them to mask their identities. As mentioned earlier in this report, youth, including female youth, were active in the protests that led to the toppling of President Omar al-Bashir mid-2019, and they typically relied on social media to organize their protests.

The expansion of digital technologies and social media has the potential to contribute to expanding women’s and youth’s economic opportunities. Household possession of assets such as a computer and a phone has been shown to have a positive influence on labor force participation. Women living in households with access to a computer improve their chances of being in the labor force and employed by 33 percent and 77 percent, respectively, while phone availability is linked to a 34 percent better chance of employment for youth.<sup>27</sup> Based on the FGDs, a number of Sudanese are already relying on social media—in some cases exclusively so—to help them learn about job opportunities. For example, when asked about sources of job information, a female youth from Khartoum who was not working said, “Facebook.” A male youth from Madani who did not have a job said, “Through some social networking applications, such as Facebook, for example.” While a working female youth from Nyala said, “Via social media for example.” There is a gender digital divide in Sudan with respect to the access and use of digital technologies. The International Telecommunications Union (2016) reports that 17 percent of men and 11 percent of women use the internet. That said, the penetration of the internet as a tool for economic transactions is low in Sudan, with only 1.3 percent of men and 0.7 percent of women having used the internet to pay bills or buy something online in the past year (Global Findex 2014). In addition, men are twice as likely as women to make or receive digital payments; 16 percent of men and 8 percent of women made or received a digital payment in the past year (Global Findex 2014). Some focus group discussants raised the issue of not having the same access to technology and social media as others. For example, a female youth from Madani who was not working said, “Some people don’t know about job opportunities because they can’t use the internet.” A man from Nyala who had a job said, “For example, the one who called us, and asked us to come, if he didn’t call us, we wouldn’t know about this. But if he announced through [social] media, we may not know about it, even if there are people with experience for the job offered.”

> 26 Kadoda and Hale (2015) are careful to note that meaningful social and other divides have existed and continue to exist among the youth who live in greater Khartoum, such as the divide between Riverain youth, or youth who are native to Khartoum, and Darfuri youth who migrated to Khartoum to escape conflict and unemployment.

> 27 World Bank Staff calculations based on NHBPS 2014/15.

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