agricultural output, particularly the agricultural sector’s share of GDP. The Ten Year Comprehensive National Strategy (1992–2002) and the initiatives that followed, such as the Economic Salvation Program and the National Five-Year Strategic Development Plan (2007–2011), focused on supporting “large-scale mechanized agriculture projects” over “smallholder rain-fed traditional agriculture” (Ibnouf 2011, 219). This was to the detriment of female farmers who generally farmed smaller, rain-fed plots. At the same time, females engaged in agricultural activities tend to be overrepresented in unpaid jobs. According to NHBPS 2014/15, more than half of the women working in agriculture were doing this as unpaid workers (53 percent). Only 28 percent worked as own account workers, 16 percent as paid employees, and 3 percent as employers. Male farmers are more likely to be engaged in agriculture as an own account worker (42 percent), followed by paid employee (35 percent), then unpaid worker (15 percent) and then employer (9 percent).

Many of the constraints that female farmers face are similar to the constraints faced by Sudanese women entrepreneurs. A study of the role that female farmers in the western Sudan region play in food security highlights this: “[Female farmers] have limited access to credit and inputs because of gender discrimination and lack [of] collateral. Formal regulations prohibit married women to access credit without the signature of their husband” (Ibnouf 2011, 222–223). Agricultural land that is owned by potential borrowers can be used as collateral for credit. As mentioned earlier in this report, however, Sudan has two different systems of property rights—one based on a statutory legal system and one based on a customary system not regulated by the legal system—both of which include discriminatory measures against women.<sup>24</sup>

# **Informality is high, linked to poverty, migration, and low education**

Those who work in the agricultural sector are more likely to be poor than those who work in other sectors. In 2014, 47 percent of those employed in agriculture were deemed to be moderately poor (using a poverty line of US$3.20 per day) compared to 36 percent employed in industry and 34 percent employed in services (World Bank 2019c). Given the ongoing economic uncertainty with which many rural Sudanese live, some choose to migrate to Khartoum in the hopes of finding more stable employment there. However, these individuals’ education levels and skill sets are generally a poor match for Khartoum’s labor market. About 37 percent of Sudan’s population has no formal education, 41 percent has at most a primary school education, 15 percent has at most a secondary school education, and 7 percent has some post-secondary education (World Bank 2019c). Among those engaged in agriculture, two out of three have no formal education while only one in fifty has some post-secondary education (World Bank 2019c). As a consequence, many of the rural Sudanese who migrate to Khartoum, often for the sole purpose of finding income-generating opportunities, end up working in Khartoum’s informal sector.

Sudan’s population is young and many of the individuals migrating to Khartoum are youth who fit the above-described profile—that is, they are poor, have little to no education, and have few skills that are marketable in an urban area. For example, a study of youth who migrated to Khartoum from Al-Gezira State (44 percent), White Nile State (40 percent), and the Darfur region (16 percent) found that 46 percent

> 24 FAO Country Profile: Sudan.

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