- By overwhelming majorities, Sudanese citizens said their government was doing a poor job of providing water and sanitation services (86%) and a reliable supply of electricity (79%).
- Afrobarometer field teams found that 68% of the communities they visited had an electricity grid “that most houses can access,” while fewer had a piped-water system (52%), a borehole or tubewell (49%), and/or a sewage system (13%). o Urbanites and economically well-off citizens were considerably more likely to have access to basic service infrastructure than rural residents and poor citizens.
- About two-thirds (65%) of citizens reported that they or someone in their household had gone without enough clean water at least once during the previous year. The prevalence of water shortages increased by 9 percentage points between 2013 and 2022.
- One-third (34%) of Sudanese said they had piped water in their home, while one fourth (25%) relied on public taps or standpipes as their main water source. o In-home piped water was far more common among urbanites and well-off citizens than among rural residents and the poor.
- About seven in 10 respondents (69%) said they a toilet or latrine in their home, while another 19% had such facilities inside their compound.
- Pollution of water sources and sanitation ranked as the most important environmental issues in respondents’ communities.
- More than six in 10 respondents (63%) said they were connected to the national electricity grid. Grid connectivity was higher among city dwellers than rural residents (87% vs. 51%) and among the wealthiest compared to the poorest (84% vs. 54%). o But overall, only 35% of all respondents enjoyed a power supply from the national grid that worked “most” or “all” of the time.
Sudan’s civil war has manifested itself in what has been described as the largest displacement crisis in the world, and the repercussions of the war are unfolding in major resource and demographic stress throughout the country and in neighbouring Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt (International Organization for Migration, 2024; World Health Organization, 2025). The war has exacerbated already-precarious water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems, and the destruction of power stations has led to frequent power cuts (Singh, 2025).
Accentuated water shortages are forcing citizens, most often women and children, to undertake perilous journeys in search of water, which may be from unsafe sources and cause diseases such as diarrhea and cholera (International Medical Corps, 2025). At the same time, power outages have had crippling effects on the health-care system, making it increasingly difficult to store medications (Elamin et al., 2024).
Recent studies have worked to assess the impacts of the war on health, education, livelihoods, migration, and basic services, among other sectors (Asmally et al., 2025; International Food Policy Research Institute, 2024). To complement these assessments, the present dispatch examines key findings on Sudanese perceptions of essential services – water, sanitation, and electricity – based on an Afrobarometer survey conducted before the current conflict started in 2023, thus providing a pre-war on-the-ground look.
Survey findings show that water shortages were already a reality shared by an increasing majority of Sudanese, most frequently by poorer citizens. Access to in-house piped water was skewed in favour of city dwellers and economically well-off citizens. Pollution of water sources and inadequate human-waste management were cited as the most important environmental challenges affecting communities.
Although more than six in 10 said their households were connected to the national electricity grid, only about one-third of all respondents enjoyed a reliable supply of electricity.
Vast majorities gave the government poor marks for its management of water, sanitation, and electricity services.
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