She had graduated with a degree in medical laboratory sciences from Nahda College in 2022, and then began developing a women’s empowerment initiative – Golden Women – in the western Sudanese city of Nyala, in the same year. The initiative organised psychosocial support sessions and training workshops in marketing and entrepreneurship that helped more than 70 women. Yousra wanted to help young women like her seeking work, but often lacking the experience and practical skills needed to pursue available opportunities.
Things were going well until Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, upending her life. By June, Yousra and her family fled Nyala to Sennar, a city in central Sudan that she had never visited. Then, fighting between the two belligerents in Sudan’s war – the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces – spread to Sennar in mid-2024, forcing Yousra and her family to flee once again, this time to Kassala in eastern Sudan.
Once again, Yousra was starting from scratch, and Sudan’s economy was collapsing as a result of the war. With few jobs available, and the growing need Yousra saw for women to earn money to support their families, she has resurrected her Golden Women initiative. But while she has been able to raise some income through the initiative, funding remains a major obstacle.
Yousra said young Sudanese entrepreneurs have limited access to skills training and institutional support, as well as struggling with bank requirements for guarantees that many cannot provide. She also pointed to complex registration procedures and taxes as barriers to establishing and sustaining a business. Yousra’s experiences reflect a wider collapse in jobs and livelihoods.
In a 2024 joint report by the United Nations Development Fund and the International Food Policy Research Institute, 31 percent of the 3,000 urban households surveyed had been displaced, while the share reporting no employment or income rose from 1.6 percent before the war to about 18 percent by the time of the survey. Full-time employment also fell by half. The World Bank, meanwhile, estimates that even as the economy grew modestly last year, with the government attempting to stabilise the areas of Sudan under its control, the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty rose from 33 percent in 2022 to 59 percent in 2025.
For young people whose education and livelihoods have been disrupted, the shrinking labour market has pushed some towards entrepreneurship and informal work as they search for ways to support themselves and their families, but they may not have the skills or experience to go into business for themselves. International and government-backed programmes have been initiated to help some Sudanese develop the skills that they’ll need to run businesses. The International Labour Organization said in May that its i-UPSHIFT programme had reached 500 young people in Kassala, providing entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and business incubation.
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