Port Sudan Families Spend a Month's Salary on Water as Shortages Persist

Every day, Amina Khalafallah, who lives in the Deim Mayo neighbourhood of Port Sudan in eastern Sudan, spends 10,000 Sudanese pounds (about $1 at the parallel market rate) on water for herself and her four children. Over a 30-day month, that amounts to 300,000 pounds ($30), the equivalent of her entire monthly salary.

Khalafallah's home is not connected to a piped water network. Instead, she depends on street vendors, who charge 1,000 pounds ($0.10) for 18 litres.

Khalafallah works in a cafeteria at a private institution, while her husband works in another state and sends money to help when he can. Between them, the family barely scrambles enough to get by, and Khalafallah says she often has to borrow money.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Sudan's more than three-year-long war has pushed average incomes back to levels last seen in the early 1990s. The hotter months bring additional challenges, as water prices rise and vendors become harder to find. Khalafallah says the family sets aside money for water in the summer before covering other household needs, even if that means going without some essentials.

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), access to safe water is one of Sudan's most urgent needs, with millions of children at risk of waterborne diseases.

In Port Sudan, relatively safe from the fighting that has plagued other areas of the country, the arrival of people displaced by the war has put additional pressure on already fragile infrastructure. The AfDB has reported that the city's water supply was meeting less than 40 percent of demand.

One of the major issues Port Sudan has faced is the collapse of the Arbaat Dam. Located in the Red Sea Hills northwest of Port Sudan, it once supplied half of the coastal city's daily water needs. But in August 2024, heavy rainfall and flooding caused the dam to collapse, destroying villages downstream and damaging pipelines and wells. As a result, entire neighbourhoods are dependent on expensive water deliveries by truck.

Ahmed Osman, 30, has spent the past three years working at a water distribution station that supplies street vendors who deliver water to households. When Sudan's war began in April 2023, Osman charged vendors 4,000 Sudanese pounds ($0.40) to fill a donkey-drawn cart carrying at least 250 litres of water. Those prices have since risen sharply because of increasing operating costs, particularly fuel.

Osman says a tanker carrying 50,000 litres of water now costs 1.5 million Sudanese pounds ($150), compared with about 450,000 pounds before the war. He keeps water in storage tanks before pumping it into vendors' carts and charges 16,000 pounds ($1.60) to fill a 250-litre cart. After expenses, he typically makes a profit of about 70,000 pounds ($7) per day, split between him and his partner.

Rehabilitation work has restored parts of the damaged water network. According to the UNDP, the work has included drilling or rehabilitating 15 boreholes, laying 17 kilometres of new pipelines and installing solar-powered pumps. The UNDP said the restored system could supply water to nearly 230,000 people. However, that would still not be enough for all of Port Sudan, which the UNDP estimates now has a population of one million people.

Other projects are therefore necessary, including one launched in June by the AfDB and UNICEF, which intends to expand access to safe water for up to 750,000 people in the city.

Emad Hafez, medical director of the emergency department at Port Sudan Teaching Hospital, says the water crisis poses serious risks to public health, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases and making it harder for families to maintain basic hygiene. He warned that disruptions to supplies can force families to rely on untreated water, increasing the risk of cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases, particularly during the rainy season and in overcrowded displacement camps.

Hafez also said water shortages can make it harder to maintain adequate hygiene, increasing the risk of skin infections and other hygiene-related illnesses, while storing water in uncovered containers can create breeding sites for mosquitoes, raising the risk of malaria and dengue fever. Hospitals also require reliable supplies for infection prevention, cleaning and patient care, he said, and water insecurity can worsen food shortages and malnutrition by disrupting agriculture, with children under five and pregnant women particularly vulnerable.