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Can Sudan's Railway, Once Largest in Africa, Get Back on Track?

Naba Mohiedeen

   KHARTOUM - Sudan once had the largest railway network in Africa, with
   most of the train cars obtained from the United States. But decades of
   negligence, economic troubles, and U.S. sanctions have made the railway
   reliant on Chinese-made trains and parts that it can hardly afford.
   With the recent ouster of Omar al-Bashir, the railway's supporters are
   hoping the United States will soon lift sanctions to help restore it to
   its former glory.

   Sixty-five-year-old Mahdi Yassin has been working for the Sudan
   Railways Corporation since 1972.

   Yassin remembers the railway's glory days, when it was the largest in
   Africa, running 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from the Egyptian Red
   Sea and crisscrossing Sudan to what is now South Sudan.

   Yassin said Jebait school was graduating one hundred students per year
   - all qualified to work on the railway. It was a strong corporation.
   There was abundance in spare parts and locomotives.

   But the railway fell apart through mismanagement and a fear of
   organized labor's influence on the economy and politics.

   Now, railway workshops in Sudan look like a graveyard, littered with
   dozens of vehicles, some of them idle for decades.

   Sudan fired thousands of qualified rail workers, replacing some with
   political appointees put in place after former president Omar al-Bashir
   came to power.

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