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Sudan faces drought and drone strikes at the same time, and the window for rescuing this season’s cereal crop is closing, the United Nations children’s agency said on Tuesday.
“The planting window for the 2026-27 cereal harvest has largely closed,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told journalists in Geneva, according to UNICEF’s summary of his briefing. “Even if late rains arrive, they cannot undo the damage done.” UNICEF gave no measured planted area or harvest forecast. Elder warned of the combined pressure from drought and attacks on infrastructure that supplies water and power.
On the second, Elder said that in the last week of October “not a single day passed without an armed drone striking a power station in Sudan,” and that up to 15 were hit during the month. He called the strikes, which spread geographically and followed one another quickly, “a serious escalation in attacks on civilian infrastructure.”
From a power cut to a hungry household
“In Sudan, power is water,” Elder said. “When a power station is struck, water pumps stop and water treatment stops.” Families turn to expensive and unsafe alternatives, and UNICEF reports pockets of cholera again in hard-to-reach communities, including among displaced families. Cold storage for vaccines and medicines is also at risk. For farmers using electric pumps, outages also interrupt irrigation. Elder said severe fuel shortages compound that problem, damaging harvests while rising prices put food further out of reach.
The threats do not all operate through electricity. Earlier crop assessments show how rainfall, insecurity and input costs were already constraining production before the latest power-station attacks.
A season already under pressure
In its 24 September country brief, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said planting of the 2026 cereal crops, due for harvest from November, had finished in mid-August. It reported below-average rain over most cropping areas during the June–September season, hurting germination and establishment. This was an assessment of crops already planted, not a forecast of how much land remained available to sow in November. In Sennar and Gedaref states, which together produce about a quarter of national sorghum on average, rainfall was roughly 20 and 30 percent below the long-term average, and FAO’s stress index showed severe drought on up to 55 and 70 percent of cropland. The brief also cites insecurity limiting access to fields in Greater Darfur, Greater Kordofan and Blue Nile, and scarce, costly inputs. The national average diesel price almost doubled between March and August, and sorghum prices more than doubled on average in monitored markets between January and August.
An 8 October Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) update reproduced by Daleel Madani said harvests would be below to severely below average across most of Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan, with localized crop failure, and that very dry September weather limited recovery. It said the risk of famine had extended to parts of South Darfur where displaced people are concentrated, although its camp survey findings “do not establish a Famine (IPC Phase 5) classification.”
What farmers in Darfur are doing
Radio Dabanga reported on Tuesday that 19 agricultural emergency rooms in Darfur had cut their rainy-season planting target from more than 1,800 feddans, a local land measure, to 1,100 feddans, covering more than 1,000 beneficiaries. Jalal Eddin Abkar Yousif, who spoke to the station, blamed limited resources, insufficient rainfall and inadequate funding. Rain was intermittent, so germination was poor from the start and crops failed in some cultivated areas, he said. That is a reduced plan, not a measure of land planted or harvested, and Yousif’s account concerns rain and resources rather than electric irrigation.
Adam Rijal, a spokesperson for the General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, said field monitoring recorded about 538 families, or 3,227 people, arriving between 15 October and 6 November, with families moving between towns in Darfur and others crossing into neighbouring Chad. Radio Dabanga links those moves to hunger and lost livelihoods.
The response
UNICEF said it and its partners had treated hundreds of thousands of children for the deadliest form of malnutrition, provided health care to more than 2.5 million people, and repaired and solarised water systems that keep safe water flowing for close to 8 million. An estimated 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year. Its Sudan response is one-third funded. “Resilience cannot run on goodwill alone,” Elder said, as UNICEF called for an end to attacks on power and water systems, safe access across front lines and sustained funding.