Hello everyone! Welcome back to the blog where we look closely at stories unfolding around the world. Today, we are turning our attention to a very heavy and deeply concerning situation in northeastern Africa. While some parts of the world take clean running water completely for granted, others are fighting just to afford a single drop. In Port Sudan, families are currently facing an immense struggle with basic survival as water shortages and skyrocketing prices grip the coastal city.
Life has become an exhausting daily calculation for many residents. Take Amina Khalafallah, for example. She lives in the Deim Mayo neighbourhood of Port Sudan with her four children. Her home does not hook up to any piped water network. Instead, she and thousands of others rely entirely on street vendors who charge steep prices for tiny amounts of water. Amina spends about 10,000 Sudanese pounds—which equals roughly $1 at the parallel market rate—every single day just to keep her family supplied with water. Over the course of a 30-day month, that adds up to 300,000 pounds, or about $30. To put that into perspective, that matches her entire monthly salary working in a cafeteria at a private institution.
Her husband lives and works in another state, sending money back when he can, but the household barely scrambles enough together to get by. Amina frequently finds herself needing to borrow money just to make ends meet. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), this financial squeeze is a typical story across Sudan. The country has been enduring a war for more than three years, a conflict that has dragged average incomes back down to levels not seen since the early 1990s. When the hotter summer months roll around, the situation gets even worse. Water prices jump higher, and vendors become much harder to track down. Amina shares that her household prioritizes setting aside money for water before anything else, even if it means going without other vital household essentials.
The Roots of the Crisis: Infrastructure and Conflict
The African Development Bank (AfDB) points out that having access to safe water is one of Sudan’s most urgent needs right now, warning that millions of children face risks from waterborne diseases. While Port Sudan has stayed relatively safe from the active combat that devastated other parts of the country, a massive wave of people displaced by the war has moved in. This influx has placed an enormous amount of stress on an already fragile local infrastructure. Reports from the AfDB indicate that the city’s water supply has been meeting less than 40 percent of the actual daily demand.
A major turning point in this crisis happened when the Arbaat Dam collapsed. Situated in the Red Sea Hills northwest of Port Sudan, the dam historically supplied half of the coastal city’s daily water needs. However, in August 2024, severe rainfall and heavy flooding caused the structure to fail completely. The collapse wiped out downstream villages and wrecked critical pipelines and wells. Ever since that disaster, entire neighbourhoods have had to depend entirely on expensive water deliveries brought in by trucks.
Workers on the ground see the impact of these rising costs every day. Ahmed Osman, a 30-year-old working at a local water distribution station, notes that operating costs have spiked drastically. When the war in Sudan started in April 2023, he charged vendors 4,000 Sudanese pounds (about $0.40) to fill a donkey-drawn cart carrying at least 250 litres of water. Today, those prices have climbed steeply because of higher operating expenses, particularly the fuel required to transport water to his distribution hub. A massive water tanker carrying 50,000 litres now costs about 1.5 million Sudanese pounds—roughly $150—compared to around 450,000 pounds before the war began.
After storing the water in tanks and pumping it out to vendors, Osman charges 16,000 pounds (about $1.60) to fill a 250-litre cart. After covering his expenses, he usually makes a daily profit of around 70,000 pounds ($7), which he splits with his business partner.
Relief Efforts and Public Health Concerns
There are, thankfully, ongoing efforts to fix the broken system. Rehabilitation work has successfully restored parts of the damaged water network. According to the UNDP, these efforts have involved drilling or fixing 15 boreholes, laying 17 kilometres (about 10.5 miles) of new pipelines, and installing solar-powered pumps. The agency estimates that this restored infrastructure can supply water to nearly 230,000 people.
Even with these improvements, the supply falls drastically short of what is needed. The UNDP estimates that Port Sudan’s population has now swelled to one million people, meaning the current fixes cannot cover everyone. Additional initiatives are underway, including a project launched in June by the AfDB and UNICEF aimed at expanding safe water access for up to 750,000 residents in the city.
The public health implications of this ongoing shortage are severe. Emad Hafez, the medical director of the emergency department at Port Sudan Teaching Hospital, explains that the crisis creates immense risks. Disruptions to clean supplies force families to consume untreated water, driving up the threat of dangerous illnesses like cholera and other diarrheal diseases, especially during the rainy season and within crowded displacement camps.
Furthermore, simple hygiene becomes a massive hurdle. Without reliable water, families struggle to wash properly, leading to higher rates of skin infections and hygiene-related sicknesses. At the same time, storing water in open or uncovered containers turns those vessels into breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which heightens the risk of vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Healthcare facilities themselves feel the pinch, as hospitals desperately need consistent water supplies for proper infection control, cleaning, and general patient care.
Reflections on the Ground Realities
As I look over the details of this situation, my thoughts go entirely to the civilians caught in the middle of these systemic collapses. Based on the reports from international organizations and local medical staff, it is clear that water scarcity is not just an inconvenience in Port Sudan; it is a full-scale public health emergency that intertwines with economic ruin and displacement.
However, reading reports like this also calls for a healthy dose of balanced perspective. While international agencies highlight the impressive scope of newly laid pipelines and solar-powered boreholes meant to serve hundreds of thousands of people, the hard truth remains that the population has surged to one million, and the daily cost for ordinary workers like Amina Khalafallah remains completely unsustainable. When a person spends their entire monthly income on water alone, emergency relief efforts—while crucial—are clearly struggling to bridge the gap between temporary fixes and true economic stability.
It is also important to recognize how interconnected these crises are. The destruction of the Arbaat Dam was an environmental and infrastructural disaster brought on by extreme weather, but its aftermath is magnified tenfold by the ongoing war and the sudden surge of displaced people. The crisis touches every corner of daily life, from household hygiene and childhood nutrition to the operational capacity of local hospitals. Until long-term structural repairs can match the massive population demands of the city, families in Port Sudan will continue walking a dangerous tightrope between thirst and financial ruin.
That is all for today’s update. Let’s keep our thoughts with those affected by these challenging conditions, and I will see you all in the next post with more global news stories broken down simply.
source: aljazeera.com (www.aljazeera.com)
Photo by matthiaskost on Pixabay