Higher Education in Sudan: A Practical Framework for Recovery
18 October, 2026
Khartoum (Sudanow)
The war that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 left the higher education sector facing a crisis that goes far beyond conventional reconstruction, which might otherwise be addressed by repairing buildings and gradually reopening universities. The damage has affected lecture halls, laboratories, libraries, and technological infrastructure, while students and faculty members have been displaced across Sudan and abroad. At its core, the crisis has become one of educational capacity itself: the ability of universities to restore teaching, training, and research and to operate sustainably.
General indicators for 2026 published on the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research platform show that Sudan's higher education system comprises 37 public universities, 26 private and non-governmental universities, and 92 private and non-governmental colleges, in addition to institutes and academies. According to a UNESCO report issued on 16 April 2026, 124 universities and colleges were destroyed or looted. A further 1,880 laboratories were damaged, while Sudan lost 241 libraries, 2,550 lecture halls, and 6,175 offices in Khartoum and six other states.
A 2025 study on the impact of the Sudanese war on higher education and scientific research highlights the scale of displacement, financial constraints, and difficulties in sustaining academic activities. A systematic review published in 2025, covering 85 studies on higher education in various conflict settings—including Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone—found that higher education need not wait for a crisis to end before contributing to recovery. Rather, it can form part of the response, recovery, and reconstruction process.
On 3 June 2026, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research issued Decision No. 83 of 2026, requiring higher education institutions to return to their original licensed premises and discontinue alternative or temporary sites and centres no later than 1 August 2026. Accordingly, the framework proposed here does not envisage relocating universities to other states or maintaining them at alternative premises. Instead, it focuses on tools that can make returning to their original campuses feasible, more efficient, and sustainable.
The central question, therefore, is this: How can the educational process be restored efficiently while using the recovery phase to develop a higher education system suited to Sudan's resources and future needs?
The following proposals are guided by one fundamental principle: each institution remains academically responsible for its programmes, students, and outcomes, while opportunities for resource sharing, student mobility, digital learning, and the use of expertise are expanded within an organised national framework.
Pillar One: Assessing Readiness and Prioritising Rehabilitation According to Impact
The recovery process should begin with a detailed national assessment of the educational capacity that remains, rather than simply estimating the percentage of damage sustained by each university. An initial rehabilitation priority index could combine repair costs, the time required to restore a facility to service, the expected number of students to benefit, and the facility's importance to the resumption of academic programmes.
The assessment should extend to individual facilities. Which laboratories could resume operations after minor repairs? Which lecture halls require only limited intervention? Where should priority be given to electricity, connectivity, or computer centres? For example, if one laboratory could be restored quickly while another requires extensive reconstruction, rehabilitating the first would be the more rational option during the emergency phase.
This approach is consistent with international recovery methodologies. In Ukraine, periodic assessments conducted by the government in cooperation with the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations distinguish between damage, losses, and recovery needs to establish priorities. In Lebanon, a World Bank recovery project sequences interventions to achieve the greatest social and economic impact in the shortest possible time. Nepal's Post-Disaster Needs Assessment following the 2015 earthquake also included higher education in its planning and linked the scale of damage to short-, medium-, and long-term recovery needs.
The assessment should not end with identifying facilities worthy of rehabilitation. It should also consider whether a restored facility could serve programmes or institutions beyond its original users. This leads directly to the concept of shared educational resources.
Pillar Two: Sharing Educational Resources and Infrastructure
Once operational facilities have been identified, the next challenge is to maximise their utilisation. Resource sharing can be organised at three levels.
The first level is within each university, through the redistribution of lecture halls and laboratories among faculties, the use of facilities during morning and evening sessions, and, where necessary, the scheduling of activities on weekends.
The second level involves higher education institutions within the same state. One university may have suitable lecture halls, while another has better laboratories, workshops, or computer centres. Their shared use could be organised through clear schedules and agreements covering public, private, and non-governmental institutions.
The third level extends to other state-owned assets within the same state, including schools after regular hours, government training centres, technical institutes, cultural halls and centres, and suitable public buildings, provided they meet safety standards and educational requirements.
The University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina applied this principle during the war. Official records from its Faculty of Medicine indicate that 11 university faculties operated within the Faculty of Medicine's facilities during the first three years of the siege of Sarajevo. In Timor-Leste, the national university began operating from existing buildings following the events of 1999, including schools and former educational facilities that were gradually rehabilitated.
In Sudan, each state could develop a network of educational resources that makes efficient use of available assets without relocating universities to other states or changing their original campuses.
Pillar Three: A National Regulation for Visiting Students, Transfers, and Recognition of Study Between Universities
Sharing facilities alone does not address the circumstances of students whose family residences and financial situations have changed during the war. A unified national regulation for visiting students, transfers, and the recognition of study completed at other universities could therefore be introduced.
The regulation could offer students two options: remain enrolled at their original university while studying as visiting students at another institution, or transfer fully if their circumstances make continuing at a different institution more practical.
Under the visiting-student arrangement, exact course-by-course equivalence would not necessarily be required. The home university could recognise an equivalent course, an alternative course that achieves the required learning outcomes, or an agreed package of courses. This would allow the system to operate under both credit-hour systems and semester- or year-based programmes.
Sudan already has a regulatory foundation on which to build. In 2025, the University of Gezira issued regulations governing the transfer of undergraduate credit hours, covering transfers between universities inside and outside Sudan as well as between the university's own faculties.
In Syria, the Ministry of Higher Education allowed students in January 2025 to study temporarily at other public universities while remaining affiliated with their original institutions. It established procedures for course arrangements and the transmission of results to the home university.
The European Erasmus+ programme offers a more flexible model. Participating institutions use a Learning Agreement to specify in advance what students will study and how their achievements will be recognised. European Commission guidance makes clear that recognition does not necessarily require course-by-course equivalence; one set of learning outcomes may replace another within the original programme.
Such a regulation could achieve two objectives simultaneously: enabling students to continue their education under changed circumstances and reducing pressure on universities returning to their campuses, particularly in terms of lecture halls, laboratories, accommodation, and student services.
Pillar Four: Flexible Scheduling of Theoretical and Practical Components in Applied Programmes
While visiting and transfer arrangements address student mobility between institutions, applied programmes also require flexibility in how their components are organised. This flexibility should concern the timing and location of practical training, not the reduction of its requirements.
If a laboratory, teaching hospital, or workshop becomes unavailable, theoretical instruction could continue online or in person, while practical training is rescheduled for a later period or delivered at another accredited facility.
This approach is also consistent with the 2026 Regulations on E-Learning and Blended Learning, which established a regulatory framework for flexible learning models within higher education institutions.
Sudan's own experience provides early evidence of this form of adaptation. A study of 58 Sudanese medical schools during the first three months of the war found that several institutions attempted to resume teaching through e-learning and cooperation with other institutions.
In Ukraine, a 2023 study on medical education during the war, involving 239 students and faculty members from 19 medical schools, documented the use of remote and hybrid learning to maintain teaching continuity. Clinical and practical components, however, remained dependent on the availability of hospitals and training centres and on prevailing security conditions.
The Lebanese American University provides a clear operational example. In March 2026, it continued lecture-based courses online or in hybrid formats, while laboratories, studios, and clinical courses were conducted in person whenever possible. Opportunities were also provided to make up missed practical activities at a later stage. The Lebanese University similarly adopted flexible arrangements combining in-person and remote learning according to the readiness of individual locations.
Sudanese universities could therefore continue theoretical instruction without making it contingent on the readiness of laboratories. Practical components could then be organised through intensive training periods or at other accredited facilities, while ensuring that all professional requirements are completed before graduation.
Pillar Five: A National E-Learning Infrastructure and Shared General Education Courses
This academic flexibility requires a reliable technological infrastructure on which universities can depend. One proposal is to establish a national e-learning platform jointly supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Communications.
The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has already taken an important regulatory step in this direction by approving the 2026 Regulations on E-Learning and Blended Learning under Decision No. 138. These regulations provide a framework on which a shared national e-learning infrastructure can be developed and its use across higher education institutions organised.
The platform could be built on an open-source learning management system such as Moodle. Each university would have its own environment for managing courses, students, faculty members, and examinations, while centralised infrastructure would provide hosting, technical support, backup services, and data protection.
The platform must be designed around Sudan's realities of internet connectivity and electricity supply. It should allow users to download content and access it later, provide low-bandwidth files, audio recordings, and short videos, and avoid dependence on continuous real-time connectivity.
One of its most important applications could be the development of shared general education courses, including Islamic culture, Arabic language, history and civilisation, Sudanese studies, English, computer skills, communication skills, and other university-wide requirements.
Specialised national teams could develop these courses into interactive learning materials, question banks, activities, assignments, and online assessments wherever the nature of the course permits.
A 2025 study on digital transformation in higher education in conflict-affected regions reinforces this proposal, concluding that digital solutions can improve access, increase flexibility, and support institutional recovery.
In Gaza, the UNESCO-supported Gaza Virtual Campus operates as a federated system, providing each university with its own digital space within shared infrastructure that includes an educational platform, a national data centre, and temporary learning spaces, while preserving each institution's academic identity.
The platform should therefore be conceived not as a temporary response to war, but as a permanent national higher education infrastructure that can evolve into a repository of digital academic content.
Pillar Six: Protecting Academic Expertise and Mobilising Knowledge Inside and Outside Sudan
Digital platforms and technological infrastructure can provide the means to sustain education, but their success ultimately depends on the people who teach, supervise, and conduct research. Protecting academic staff is therefore a fundamental component of recovery.
Domestic protection begins with sustainable salaries, appropriate incentives, stable conditions of service, and measures addressing accommodation and transport difficulties, alongside support for research activities.
In March 2026, the government announced a plan to increase the salaries of academic staff and supporting personnel by 100% and to work towards approving new conditions of service. This recognises that employment and living stability are integral to the stability of universities themselves.
A 2026 study on academic freedom in Sudan, published by Cambridge University Press, highlights the profound impact of the war on Sudanese academics and university employees, as well as the expansion of the academic diaspora.
Academics living outside Sudan should not be disconnected from their home institutions. A national network of disciplines and expertise could be established to engage them in teaching courses in scarce specialisations, supervising postgraduate research, developing programmes, conducting collaborative research, peer reviewing academic work, and training younger academics.
According to a report issued by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in May 2026, Syrian academics in the diaspora continued to teach remotely, transfer knowledge, and develop scientific networks. The report recommended expanding their participation through teaching, consultancy, partnerships, and research programmes.
This initiative requires a formal framework covering appointments, teaching loads, incentives, and performance evaluation. The objective is to make remaining in Sudan a viable option for academics while ensuring that those abroad remain part of Sudan's national knowledge network.
Pillar Seven: Restructuring Higher Education for Greater Efficiency and Sustainability
Once the national readiness assessment outlined in Pillar One is completed, the same data can inform a broader review of institutions, programmes, resources, capacity, and labour-market needs, rather than requiring a separate mapping exercise.
Where supported by the evidence, this review could lead to the merger or discontinuation of duplicated or low-demand programmes, the redistribution of certain specialisations, the consolidation of high-cost laboratories and research centres, the reduction of duplicated administrative and technological services, and the development of programmes directly linked to Sudan's post-war priorities.
Restructuring should be aligned with the country's own recovery needs. Engineering can support infrastructure rehabilitation; medicine and public health can contribute to restoring the health system; agriculture can strengthen food security; information technology can advance digital transformation; economics and management can support the reconstruction of institutions and markets; and the social sciences can address displacement and social cohesion.
A 2025 comparative study on the role of higher education institutions in post-war reconstruction, examining Germany, Finland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Japan, South Korea, Lebanon, and Iraq, highlights the connection between higher education reform and broader strategies for state reconstruction and institutional modernisation.
International experiences demonstrate different pathways. Rwanda established the University of Rwanda in 2013 by merging 14 public higher education institutions and institutions specialising in health training and teacher education. In Timor-Leste, existing institutions were reorganised into a single national university in 2000. Sierra Leone, meanwhile, reorganised Njala University College and other institutions under the Universities Act of 2005, establishing Njala University.
The objective is not to replicate any single model, but to use evidence to answer a practical question: What kind of higher education system will Sudan need over the coming decade?
Conclusion: Decisions That Can Begin Now
The decision requiring universities to return to their original campuses has established the institutional direction for the current phase. The success of that return, however, will depend on the tools that make it feasible and sustainable.
Three regulatory decisions could be initiated immediately without requiring new construction investments.
First: Issue a national regulation governing visiting students, transfers, and the recognition of study completed at other universities.
Second: Adopt an academic framework allowing the theoretical and practical components of applied programmes to be separated in time and location, while fully preserving professional requirements.
Third: Approve a standard framework for agreements on sharing lecture halls, laboratories, and facilities among institutions within each state, including suitable government assets outside the higher education sector.
These three decisions will not, by themselves, solve the reconstruction challenge. However, they can create room for action before substantial funding becomes available, ease pressure on universities returning to their campuses, and help more students resume their academic journeys.
If these immediate decisions are combined with a rigorous assessment of resources, national digital infrastructure, policies that retain academic expertise, and evidence-based institutional reform, Sudan's recovery phase can become an opportunity to build a higher education system that is more efficient, sustainable, and responsive to the country's future needs.
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