276 thE sudan handbookFollowing the May 1969 coup in Khartoum, the government of Sudan
briefly turned to the Soviet Union for support and drew on socialist
inspiration to drive state-directed economic development. President
Nimeiri, combining Arab nationalism and anti-Americanism, dreamed
of Khartoum becoming the Havana of Africa. During a programme of
extensive nationalization, Sudan saw thousands of Western expatriates
leave and Soviet and East European technicians arrive. But Sudan’s Soviet
moment was short lasting. After the failure of the Sudan Communist
Party’s July 1971 coup attempt, and Moscow’s botched response to it, the
majority of Soviet personnel left Sudan and Nimeiri opened up to the
West, switching to Western assistance and especially US aid. This Soviet
period may have been brief, but it was a turning point in that control of
commerce was taken into Sudanese hands; from then on, most expatri-
ates going to Sudan were aid or development workers, or engineers in
extractive industries.
Nimeiri sought political legitimacy through economic development,
partly as a result of his new alliance with political forces in southern
Sudan following the 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement. International
assistance was mounted to support reconstruction and refugee resettle-
ment in the south; a Relief and Resettlement Conference on the Southern
Region was held shortly afterwards. Three months after an official Appeal
for Assistance to the Government of Sudan in July 1972, US$12.5 million
was sent or pledged to Khartoum, including US$7.8 from the United
States. Assistance also came from Eastern Europe and China. The United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially played a
coordinating role, sub-contracting most of the projects it supported to
international non-governmental agencies such as the Lutheran World
Federation, which built schools, for example, in Upper Nile. During this
period an international presence became active in southern Sudan: Juba,
the region’s new capital, became second to Khartoum as a centre for
international development operations. It was home to at least six UN
agencies, four bilateral development agencies and 22 international NGOs,
all involved in post-war refugee repatriation, construction and develop-The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors ment activities.
(www.riftvalley.net).