SUDAN’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE company and the rest is owned by other private entities. Shares in Sudatel have been available to the public since 1997 and are traded on several Middle Eastern stock markets. Sudatel is also a strategic investor in its own right, with operations in Mauritania and Senegal as well as Ghana and Nigeria. Now there are two fixed-line operators (Sudatel and Canar) and three nationwide GSM mobile operators (Sudatel, MTN, and Zain), which also operate in South Sudan.

By establishing a universal service fund, Sudan is garnering funds to expand service coverage to economically unviable rural areas. Effective from 2009, mobile network operators pay 2 percent of their gross revenues into a universal access fund, plus $0.87 per customer per year. Proceeds from the fund are expected to be used to subsidize rollouts in otherwise economically unfeasible rural areas (Lange 2010).

# Financing Sudan’s infrastructure

To meet its most pressing needs, Sudan has to significantly improve infrastructure in key areas. For the purpose of this report, illustrative targets have been set using standardized criteria and assuming a time horizon of 10 years to meet the targets. For example, it is reasonable to assume that the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be attained using a mix of technological options. Similarly, targets for increasing electrification assume, at least, doubling the current access rates, which in one case implies reaching 55 percent of the population on average. In the case of transport, national connectivity involves connecting centers with populations larger than 25,000 people. This translates into a need for 5,372 km of road in good condition in the north (table 17).

**Table 17. Illustrative investment targets for infrastructure in Sudan**

|Sector|Economic targets|Social targets|
|---|---|---|
|ICT|Install fiber-optic links to neighboring capitals and submarine cable.<br>Add 26,900 base stations for urban and 41,204 base stations for rural.|Provide universal access to GSM<br>signal and public broadband facilities.|
|Power|Assuming trade stagnation, estimate optimal (least-cost) investment strategies for<br>generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity in response to demand increases.<br>Achieve exogenously determined electrification rates.<br>Develop 440 MW of new generation capacity (no trade scenario). This scenario could<br>be replaced under trade expansion with 2,200 MW of generation capacity and the<br>needed megawatts in interconnectors.|Raise electrification from 37 to 55<br>percent of population (100 percent<br>urban, 30 percent rural).|
|Transport|Achieve regional (national) connectivity across Sudan with good-quality 2-lane (1-<br>lane) paved road.<br>Provide rural road access to 100 percent of the highest-value agricultural land based<br>on current production, plus providing rural road access to 50 percent of the<br>nonproductive agricultural land with highest potential.<br>Add or rehabilitate roads to have the following number of kilometers in good condition:<br>5,372 km for national connectivity, 2,893 km for regional connectivity, 4,226 km in<br>urban areas, and 34,200 km in rural areas.|Provide urban road access within 500<br>square meters.|
|Water|Increase population with access to improved water to 72 percent of the population and<br>access to improved sanitation to 76 percent of the population.<br>Target technology mix for improved water:<br>Piped water (23% urban, 0% rural), standposts (52% urban, 12% rural), safe wells<br>(25% urban, 88% rural).|Achieve Millennium Development<br>Goals by preserving the current mix of<br>sanitation technological options and<br>clearing the sector rehabilitation<br>backlog.|

_Source:_ Mayer and others 2009; Rosnes and Vennemo 2009; Carruthers, Krishnamani, and Murray 2009; You and others 2009.

> <sup>38</sup>