KHARTOUM: Rich in natural resources but neglected by the international community, eastern Sudan hopes to reap billions of dollars for its development at a donor conference opening on Wednesday in Kuwait City.
East Sudan, an area the size of Italy and divided into the three states of Kassala, Al-Qadarif and Red Sea, is blessed with huge gold, oil and gas resources as well as vast uncultivated arable land.
And yet there is rampant poverty among the region’s five million inhabitants, most of whom live on less that two dollars a day, and mortality and malnutrition rates run high among children.
But the east of Sudan has seen the world direct its attention to other parts of Africa’s largest nation — to war-ravaged Darfur in the west and to southern Sudan.
"And yet some humanitarian indicators for eastern Sudan are even worse than those of Darfur," said an aid worker, on condition of anonymity.
Now it hopes to grab the world’s attention at the December 1-2 meeting, to be attended by more than 50 countries as well as organizations including the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), World Bank and Islamic Development Bank.
"The region is in dire need of investment in infrastructure, human capital, and preservation of peace through new development," Claudio Caldarone, the UNDP country director for Sudan told AFP.
"It is a region with high potential for growth and development … It has the only access in Sudan to the sea, it has the second best preserved coral reef in the world.
"There are also innumerable natural resources … (including) oil, gas, gold, marble and there is also… uncultivated arable land," Caldarone said.
The state-run Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) is organizing the conference in cooperation with a large number of regional and international institutions.
Mustafa Osman Ismail, an advisor to Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, has said 181 projects costing 4.2 billion dollars would be discussed at the conference.
The projects focus on infrastructure, energy, water and agriculture in poor but strategically important east Sudan, Ismail said in a statement released by the organizers ahead of the conference.
Caldarone agreed the region needs around four billion dollars for development.
The east of Sudan was the scene of a decade-long rebellion by ethnic minority groups against the central government in Khartoum that ended with a 2006 peace deal.
The Beja Congress, named after the region’s largest ethnic minority, and the Free Lions of the Rashidiya Arab tribe took up arms against Khartoum in 1994, protesting of an unfair distribution of wealth between Sudan’s regions.
The 2006 peace deal between Khartoum and their Eastern Front coalition promised government jobs and 600 million dollars for development over five years.
An East Sudan Reconstruction and Development Fund was established but little has been achieved, prompting increasing bitterness among the region’s inhabitants.
According to UNDP figures, 58 percent of the population in the Red Sea state and 50 percent of those in Al-Qadarif live below the national poverty line, surviving on 50 dollars per person a month.
UN figures also show that 33 percent of children under the age of five in Al-Qadarif were "moderately or severely" underweight while 61 percent of the population in Kassala state does not have access to adequate drinking water.
With Sudan gearing up for an independence referendum for the south in January, easterners fear the donor conference will fail to raise funds for their underdeveloped region.
"The timing is not right because the country is heading for a referendum and investors don’t like to invest during risk periods," said Abu Fatma Ahmed Unur, an expert on east Sudan.
