Sudanese Mother Spends Entire Salary on Water Amid Three-Year War

Amina Khalafallah wakes up every morning to the same grim calculation. She spends 10,000 Sudanese pounds on water for herself and her four children. At the parallel market rate, that is just one dollar. Over a single month, that bill hits 300,000 pounds, or $30. It eats her entire salary.

She lives in the Deim Mayo neighborhood of Port Sudan, in the east. Her house has no pipe connection. No municipal line. She relies entirely on street vendors. They charge 1,000 pounds for a meager 18 liters.

Khalafallah works in a cafeteria at a private institution. Her husband is in another state, sending money when he can scrape it together. Between the two of them, they barely manage to keep the lights on and the kids fed. But Khalafallah says she often has to borrow. It is a common reality across Sudan. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) notes that the country’s war, now dragging on for more than three years, has pushed average incomes back to levels last seen in the early 1990s.

Summer makes it worse. The heat spikes, and so do prices. Vendors become scarce.

“We make sure to set aside money for water in the summer before covering our other household needs, even if that means going without some essentials,” Khalafallah told Al Jazeera.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) calls safe water access one of Sudan’s most urgent needs. Millions of children face the risk of waterborne diseases. In Port Sudan, a city that has stayed relatively safe from the fighting plaguing the rest of the country, the influx of displaced people has crushed already fragile infrastructure. The AfDB reports that the city’s water supply meets less than 40 percent of demand.

The root of the problem is physical. The Arbaat Dam, located in the Red Sea Hills northwest of Port Sudan, used to supply half of the coastal city’s daily water needs. Then August 2024 hit. Heavy rainfall and flooding brought the structure down. It destroyed villages downstream. It shattered pipelines and wells.

Now, entire neighborhoods depend on expensive truck deliveries.

Ahmed Osman, 30, has worked at a water distribution station for three years. He supplies the street vendors who bring water to homes like Khalafallah’s. When the war started in April 2023, Osman charged vendors 4,000 Sudanese pounds, or $0.40, to fill a donkey-drawn cart with at least 250 liters.

Those prices have jumped. Operating costs, especially fuel, have skyrocketed.

“A water tanker carrying 50,000 litres of water now costs 1.5 million Sudanese pounds [$150], compared with about 450,000 pounds before the war,” Osman told Al Jazeera.

He keeps the water in storage tanks before pumping it into the vendors’ carts. The cost is raw. The desperation is real.

Osman fills a cart holding 250 liters for a fee of 16,000 pounds ($1.60). After covering his costs, he and his partner split a typical daily profit of roughly 70,000 pounds ($7). It is a modest margin for such heavy labor.

Repairs are underway to ease the water shortage. Rehabilitation efforts have already restored sections of the broken network. The UNDP reports that crews have drilled or fixed 15 boreholes and laid 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) of new pipelines. Solar-powered pumps are now part of the infrastructure. The restored system is designed to serve nearly 230,000 people.

That number still falls short. The UNDP estimates Port Sudan’s population has swelled to one million. More projects are needed to meet demand. In June, the AfDB and UNICEF launched an initiative aimed at expanding safe water access for up to 750,000 residents.

The scarcity poses serious public health risks. Emad Hafez, medical director of the emergency department at Port Sudan Teaching Hospital, told Al Jazeera that the crisis makes it harder for families to maintain basic hygiene. He warned that unreliable supplies push households toward untreated water. This increases the risk of cholera and other diarrheal diseases, especially during the rainy season and in overcrowded displacement camps.

“Water shortages can also make it harder for families to maintain adequate hygiene, increasing the risk of skin infections and other hygiene-related illnesses,” Hafez said. “Meanwhile, storing water in uncovered containers can create breeding sites for mosquitoes, raising the risk of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.”

Healthcare services are under threat as well. Hafez explained that hospitals need reliable water for infection prevention, cleaning, and patient care. The impact extends beyond immediate medical needs. Water insecurity worsens food shortages and malnutrition by disrupting agriculture and squeezing the finances of vulnerable households.

“Beyond its immediate health consequences, water insecurity can worsen food shortages and malnutrition by disrupting agricultural activities and placing additional financial pressure on already vulnerable households,” he said. “Children under five and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to the effects of inadequate nutrition.”