SUDAN’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE Sudan would need to spend $4.2 billion a year—or 20 percent of its GDP—over the next decade to meet infrastructure targets (table 18). After South Africa and Nigeria, these are the largest infrastructure spending needs for any Sub-Saharan African country. They are broadly comparable to the needs faced by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. As explained earlier, the massive needs are driven by the initial starting conditions and are based on reasonable assumptions regarding what outputs are attainable. The estimates are conspicuously large (i) because the land area of the country is massive, with large pockets of uninhabited terrain, and (ii) because of the low starting point, particularly in the water and transport sectors.

**Table 18. Indicative infrastructure spending needs in Sudan, 2006–15**

|US$ million per year|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Sector|Capital expenditure|Operations and<br>maintenance|Total needs|Total needs as<br>share of GDP|
|ICT|267|43|310|1.45|
|Irrigation|—|—|—|—|
|Power (nontrade)|320|104|424|1.98|
|Transport|1,295|490|1,785|8.35|
|Water supply and sanitation|1,422|280|1,701|7.97|
|Total|3,303|917|4,220|19.8|

_Source_ : Mayer and others 2008 **;** Rosnes and Vennemo 2009; Carruthers, Krishnamani, and Murray 2009; You and others, AICD 2009. Derived from models available online at www.infrastructureafrica.org/aicd/tools/models. _Note:_ ICT = information and communication technology. — = Not available The transport and the water and sanitation sectors have the highest financing needs. About $1.8 billion would be needed to provide minimum surface connectivity and around $1.7 billion would be needed each year to meet the MDGs for water and sanitation. Particularly in the water network, decades of war have created an enormous rehabilitation backlog. For example, 40 percent of rural water assets and 42 percent of urban water assets need rehabilitation for Sudan as a whole. Transport needs are largely driven by the need to maintain regional corridors and upgrade existing rural tracks to make them usable.

A distant second are the needs for power, at $424 million. The spending needs estimates assume that only the power infrastructure needed to meet domestic demand is developed. The estimates would be substantially higher if the development of power export potential were also considered—that is, if Sudan were also to fully develop its 3,000 MW of hydropower export potential, a further $1.1 billion would be needed annually to develop additional capacity and interconnectors.

Needs estimates for ICT, at $310 million a year, are the lowest among the sectors. This is because of the recent ICT boom, which has largely been financed by the private sector. While an undersea cable is accessible via Port Sudan, overland connections to the cable need to be financed to complete the national ICT backbone.

At 20 percent of GDP, Sudan’s needs are twice as high as other resource-rich economies in Africa and broadly comparable to those of low-income countries such as Kenya, Senegal, and Madagascar (figure 28). These needs in terms of the economy’s size are strikingly high given the recent oil influx and revamping of infrastructure investments. New investments account for over three-quarters of total needs

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