Sudan
Land of the two Niles, where Arab and African Africa meet
Sudan sits at the seam of the Arab and sub-Saharan worlds, a large country in northeastern Africa where the Blue Nile and the White Nile converge at Khartoum to form the main stem of the great river. Once the largest nation on the continent, it lost a third of its territory when South Sudan seceded in 2011, yet it remains vast, spanning Saharan dunes in the north, savanna and the Nuba Mountains in the center, and the war-scarred plateaus of Darfur in the west. Its roughly 50 million people are a mosaic of Arab, Nubian, Beja, Fur, and many other peoples.
The Nile is Sudan's spine, its valley a green corridor through the desert where most farming and population concentrate. The arid north blends into the Sahara, while seasonal rains green the central clay plains and the Sahel-like belt to the south. The Red Sea Hills rise along the eastern coast, and the volcanic Jebel Marra massif in Darfur reaches about 3,042 meters, the country's highest point. Sudan grows sorghum, cotton, and gum arabic, of which it is the world's leading source, and pumps modest oil, but its economy has been crippled by sanctions, debt, and the devastating civil war that erupted in 2023.
The Nile valley nurtured the ancient kingdoms of Kush and Meroe, whose steep pyramids still rise from the desert at Nuri and Meroe, rivaling Egypt's in number. Islam and Arabic spread southward over centuries, and the region fell under Ottoman-Egyptian and then British control before independence in 1956. Sudan's modern history has been scarred by long civil wars between the Arab-dominated center and marginalized peripheries, the genocide in Darfur, the 2011 partition, and the 2019 revolution that toppled Omar al-Bashir, followed by a ruinous 2023 conflict between rival generals that has displaced millions.