The Sudan War series is a joint collaboration between the Center for Economic, Legal, and Social Studies and Documentation – Khartoum (CEDEJ-K), Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC) and African Arguments – Debating Ideas. Through a number of themes that explore the intersections of war, displacement, identities and capital, Sudanese researchers, many of whom are themselves displaced, highlight their own experiences, the unique dynamisms within the larger communities affected by war, and readings of their possible futures.
“Be my guest!” A young man reaches across the cart handing out a cup of expertly brewed coffee. His colleague films the interaction on his phone and zooms in on the customer taking a deep sip of his coffee. “How is it?” The client smiles shyly at the camera and says, “It is delicious!” Around them, throngs of people pass by as they wind their way through the stalls presenting goods to prospective customers, investors, and each other. This warm Friday night in May 2024, the Sudanese community came together to organize a bazaar to showcase and promote the many small businesses started by displaced Sudanese who now inhabit the Egyptian capital. Women dressed in their finest clothes, draped in gold, browse the stalls filled with beautiful hand-stitched garments, smell the many perfumes on offer, or assess the bakhoor. The park is filled with families enjoying socializing, while young entrepreneurs have set up stalls offering their goods and services.
Behind this lively scene is a more somber reality – the Sudanese war is now moving into its second year. The displaced Sudanese community in Cairo is beginning to shift from immediate survival to more long-term strategizing. As the bazaar unfolds, the reception of the Sudanese brothers and sisters by their Egyptian neighbours is marred by increasing scapegoating of the Sudanese for the increasingly dire economic situation. The community, this evening bedecked in finery, is feeling the strain.
“It is fake. Of course, it is all fake,” says the proprietress of one of the shops selling goods at the bazaar. Holding up the gold coins draped across her chest, tears fill her eyes as she describes how she, like so many others, left most of their gold and wealth behind, thinking the visit to Cairo would only be for a few weeks as they waited for the fighting in Khartoum to die down. “What I brought I have sold by now, and what was left they took. They have looted everything. They have looted everything but our names.”
This blog explores Sudanese investment in entrepreneurship within displacement, characterized by the leveraging and direct monetization of trust relationships and networks. On an individual level, reputation and brands (names) form the single most important capital that remains for Sudanese who may have exhausted their funds in the process of leaving Sudan and establishing themselves in displacement. Safeguarding one’s name and reputation is essential for any business owner, but in the context of displacement, one’s reputation and trustworthiness become existential. Sudanese business owners rely heavily on trust-based transactions to conduct their business. Many operate informally, with no safety net, no formal credit institutions, and no accountability as the business landscape is entirely irregular. Regulation would exclude them from business transactions as many do not fulfill the requirements to run and own businesses, access credit, or conduct transnational trade.
We reject the argument that sets out trust as an essentialized cultural trait of East African cultures. Instead, we highlight the way that trust functions in the absence of effective regulation, formal financing, and out of necessity. Trust-based transactions flourish due to unmet economic needs in the population. The availability, efficiency, and permeation of these pre-existing trust relationships are not a testament to some essential Sudanese cultural trait, but rather to the inefficient business ecosystem in Sudan, making many of our interlocutors primed and skilled at operating within these informal trust networks. Further, we argue that while mainstream definitions see trust as the willingness to be vulnerable, in the case of displaced populations trust is by default due to vulnerability, which aligns us more with social historical conceptions of trust, and the complications of trust as a socially produced phenomenon in the anthropological tradition. We further operationalize trust in this blog, as a type of credit-relation which is how we have observed the practice of trust-relationships.
Trust functions as a crucial form of capital for Sudanese entrepreneurs in Cairo, who rely heavily on trust-based networks to sustain their businesses amidst displacement and economic uncertainty. In its most stripped-down form, it directly functions as economic capital. In the absence of formal financial systems, trust becomes the primary currency for Sudanese entrepreneurs. With reputations as their most valuable asset, these business owners conduct transactions based almost entirely on mutual trust. This reliance on trust is not a cultural idiosyncrasy but a response to an environment lacking effective regulation and formal financial support. In one instance we sit sipping our coffee at a small café while our interlocutor executes a complicated set of transactions from his phone. Entirely trust-based, he explains how cash changes hands only at the very start and end of a long trade chain moving from a raw goods market outside Cairo, through a network of transporters, border brokers and distributor all the way to Khartoum where goods are traded in kind, before the chain is reversed.
The Sudanese community in Cairo is diverse, shaped by a history of migration driven by conflict, education, and economic opportunity. The outbreak of war in 2023 forced many to seek refuge, adding to the estimated four million Sudanese already in Egypt (IOM, July 2022). This influx has intensified the reliance on trust networks, which have become essential for both survival and economic participation. Historically, Sudanese migration to Egypt was facilitated by agreements like the Nile Valley Treaty, allowing free movement and access to services. However, changes in political relations have eroded these privileges, transforming migration from voluntary to forced. In this context, trust-based networks are not just economic tools but lifelines that enable displaced individuals to navigate their new reality.
For entrepreneurs like Khalid, who runs a Sudanese fast-food chain, trust is both a challenge and a necessity. Having established a brand in Khartoum, Khalid relies on his previous reputation to attract new customers in Cairo. The quality of his food, a cornerstone of his brand’s trustworthiness, depends on maintaining high standards despite supply chain challenges.
Khalid’s relationships with suppliers are built on trust, allowing him access to credit and stable supply chains without formal contracts. His story highlights the dual role of trust: securing business operations and maintaining customer loyalty. In a market where formal mechanisms are absent, trust ensures continuity.
The Sudanese diasporic community’s reliance on trust-based networks reflects broader themes of social capital and collective resilience. In a context where legal and economic structures often exclude them, these networks provide a framework for solidarity and mutual support. Trust enables the community to mobilize resources, but also to turn profit from them, in many ways monetizing the very networks that they are part of, profiting from some degree of solidaristic capital. Perceptions of superior quality and a sort of moral responsibility for their compatriots also fuel demand for more expensive Sudanese products, foodstuffs, beauty products and raw goods. Many speak of the reasons why they pay more for Sudanese breads. “They are heavier, and made with pure flour.” Walking through a side street in a Cairo neighbourhoods we greet our interlocutor working at his bakery. The machine churns out the golden, fluffy, fragrant loaves of bread and he expertly bundles them into bags of fives. He both sells bread directly and supplies grocery shops in other parts of town. “Even Syrians and Egyptians buy our bread now”, although the main market for the bread is other Sudanese who willingly pay the premium cost for his bread.
While we do not question the motives and considerations of the business owners here, we wish to highlight that the displaced community of Sudanese not only forms a labour pool, but also a market. Sudanese entrepreneurs are poised to utilize it to make a living. The complete lack of regional and international responses to support the Sudanese displaced by war further generates the kind of transactional dynamics that we describe here. As displacement becomes prolonged, we may hypothesize that state actors in neighbouring countries may identify and seek to maximize on the capital flows, perhaps by seeking to formalize, and thus tax, or co-opt them. For now, the displaced Sudanese populations are trading trust for cash, and relying on the transfer of their social capital, names and trust in each other.
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Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.
Abdelmageed Yahya is Associate Professor of Geography at Sudan Open University. He is a peace building expert, specialist of migration studies, natural resource management and resource-based conflict in Sudan. His work combines academic and practitioner approaches, and he serves as trainer, facilitator and consultant with diverse national and international NGOs, UN agencies and other international institutions. His career has for many years been entangled with the Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC), currently in research partnership with Mari Norbakk, who is a senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway. She is a social anthropologist by training and is interested in research on gender, migration and the interactions with capital, specifically across the MENA and Norway. She is co-lead for the cluster on Migration under SNAC which is funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Khartoum.