Read This First: Sudan in 2026
Sudan has been in civil war since 15 April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The war started in Khartoum and spread to Darfur, Kordofan and beyond. It is now in its fourth year.
What the UN reports
- • 13.6 million people uprooted: 9.3 million displaced inside Sudan, 4.3 million refugees abroad
- • 21 million people facing acute food insecurity
- • 33.7 million people — around two thirds of the population — expected to need humanitarian assistance in 2026
- • Described by UN agencies as the largest humanitarian emergency in the world
Source: UN News, 10 January 2026, and the OCHA Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026.
What governments advise
- • UK (FCDO): advises against all travel to Sudan because of the ongoing military conflict, with a narrower “all but essential travel” advice for the Hala'ib Triangle and Bir Tawil Trapezoid. Last updated 11 May 2026.
- • Spain (MAEC): travel to Sudan is advised against under any circumstances.
- • The British and Spanish embassies in Khartoum are closed. Neither can provide in-person consular assistance inside Sudan.
Always check your own government's current advisory. Travelling against it can also void your insurance.
What this page is, and is not
This is a connectivity page, not a travel guide. It will not tell you where to go or what to see. The people who realistically read it are aid and humanitarian staff, journalists and researchers, and Sudanese people travelling to or within their own country. It is written for them.
The honest framing of the whole topic is this: an eSIM cannot survive a network shutdown, and no data plan changes the underlying situation. What a data plan does is remove one small problem — finding connectivity on arrival — on the days when the network is up.
Quick Facts
Country
- Capital: Khartoum — extensively damaged during the fighting and only partly functioning
- Population: roughly 50–52 million (World Bank put it at 50.4 million for 2024; UNFPA at about 51.7 million for 2025). No single settled figure is meaningful right now: the UN counts 13.6 million people displaced from their homes, 4.3 million of them outside the country
- Languages: Arabic (official), English
- Currency: Sudanese pound (SDG). The official rate and the parallel-market rate are far apart and the parallel rate is reported inconsistently by different trackers, so we do not print one. Sudan runs largely on cash; foreign cards are effectively unusable
- Time zone: UTC+2 (Central Africa Time), no daylight saving. Sudan moved back from UTC+3 on 1 November 2017, so older sources are wrong
- Emergency number: 999 (police and general emergencies). Expect Arabic only, and do not assume a response
Connectivity
- Mobile country code: 634
- Operators in the country: Zain Sudan, MTN Sudan and Sudani (Sudatel), plus Canar for fixed and fixed-wireless service
- What our plans use: every Sudan country plan declares Zain at 4G. Our Africa regional plan declares MTN for Sudan. Nothing we sell uses Sudani
- Plan sizes: 1 GB / 7 days, 3 GB / 15 days, 5 GB / 30 days. No unlimited Sudan plan exists in our catalogue
- Service continuity: assume interruption. Sudan has had more internet shutdown events than any other African country since 2019, and at least four major ones in 2025 alone
- Air access: Khartoum International (KRT) received its first scheduled commercial flight in nearly three years on 1 February 2026. Port Sudan New International (PZU) carried most traffic through the war
An eSIM Cannot Survive a Network Shutdown
This is the single most important thing on the page, so it comes before the pricing. An eSIM is a roaming profile that registers on a Sudanese operator's network. If that operator is switched off by order, cut off by an armed group, or has its equipment destroyed, there is nothing for the profile to register on. No provider — not us, not anyone — can route around a national blackout.
February 2024: near-total national blackout
Connectivity collapsed from 2 February 2024 after the RSF took control of ISP data centres in Khartoum. MTN Sudan and Sudani went down first; by 7 February NetBlocks reported Zain, the largest operator, also largely offline. Reporting at the time described RSF forces shutting down the MTN and Sudani switchboards in Khartoum and sabotaging Zain equipment. Sudani announced a gradual restoration on 12 February, but service returned unevenly and some areas were dark for far longer.
Sources: NetBlocks; Al Jazeera, 7 February 2024; Amnesty International, March 2024; Access Now #KeepItOn.
2025: at least four major shutdowns
- • January 2025: a year-long blackout in Wad Madani was partially lifted when the SAF retook the city, with intermittent service after that.
- • 25 July 2025: the telecommunications regulator suspended WhatsApp voice and video calls nationwide, citing security concerns. Access Now recorded the effect on civilians, health information and reporting of gender-based violence.
- • 7–10 September 2025: four mobile internet shutdowns during university exams, each around three hours.
- • 8–9 November 2025: a two-day nationwide Starlink blackout amid intensified fighting, restored on 9 November.
Sources: Access Now KeepItOn 2025 annual report; contemporaneous NetBlocks reporting.
Exam season: a scheduled, annual shutdown
Separately from the war, Sudan switches mobile internet off during the Sudanese Certificate Examinations. MTN Sudan suspended service under government directive in 2026, the sixth consecutive year this has happened. If your trip overlaps the national exam period, plan for scheduled hours with no mobile data at all.
Source: Internet Society Pulse, April 2026.
What to do about it
- • Treat connectivity as intermittent by default, not as a service you have bought.
- • Agree a check-in schedule with people at home that tolerates several days of silence, so a blackout is not read as an emergency.
- • Carry a non-cellular fallback if your organisation provides one and it is lawful where you are going. Satellite equipment is regulated and can attract scrutiny; that is a decision for your security lead, not for a connectivity page.
- • Keep anything you actually need offline: maps, documents, contact numbers, your eSIM activation code.
- • Before blaming your device, check whether the country is down. NetBlocks publishes outage reports, and a second device or a message to someone outside Sudan will usually tell you within minutes.
What an eSIM Can and Cannot Do Here
What it genuinely helps with
- • You arrive already connected, with no need to find an operator shop
- • No local registration queue, no handing over documents at a counter
- • Your home number stays live on your other line for banking codes and for your organisation
- • You install and test it at home, where you can still fix a problem
- • One profile covers you across Sudan wherever that operator has service, with no per-region purchase
What it does not do
- • It does not survive a shutdown, an order to cut service, or destroyed infrastructure
- • It is data only: no Sudanese number, no local voice, no local SMS
- • It depends on a single roaming partner, so if that operator is down where you are, you have no second network to fall back on
- • It does not create coverage where there are no working towers or no power
- • It does not change your government's travel advice, your insurance position, or your security risk
Against a local SIM card
A local Sudanese SIM gives you a local number and, in principle, cheaper data. Getting one means presenting identity documents at an operator shop and completing registration — which assumes an open shop, a working network and freedom of movement, none of which is guaranteed. If you need a Sudanese number and you have colleagues in-country who can arrange it, do that as well. The eSIM is not a replacement for it; it is the thing that works on day one, before anything else is arranged.
Sudan eSIM Plans & Pricing
Loading current Sudan eSIM prices…
What the catalogue actually contains
Three Sudan country plans: 1 GB for 7 days, 3 GB for 15 days and 5 GB for 30 days, all on Zain at 4G. There is no unlimited Sudan plan and nothing larger than 5 GB at country level. Sudan is also listed in the Africa regional and Africa global plans, which run up to 10 GB and are worth considering only if your trip covers several African countries — per gigabyte they are considerably more expensive than the Sudan plan.
Prices shown above are live and in your currency. We do not print fixed prices in the text of this page, because they change and a stale number in a guide is worse than no number.
Installing It Before You Go
Before departure
- 1
Check your phone supports eSIM and is not carrier-locked
- 2
Buy the plan and scan the QR code on your own Wi-Fi. Installing an eSIM profile needs a working internet connection, which is exactly what Sudan may not give you
- 3
Screenshot the QR code and write down the manual activation details somewhere offline, in case you lose access to your email
On arrival
- 4
Turn the eSIM line on and enable data roaming for that line specifically
- 5
If it does not register within a few minutes, select the network by hand rather than waiting
- 6
Send one small message home immediately, so the people expecting you know the line works
Do not leave installation to the airport. Downloading an eSIM profile needs connectivity. If you land during an outage, or into an airport with no usable Wi-Fi, an uninstalled eSIM is just an email you cannot open.
Network Coverage: What We Can Honestly Say
We are not going to give you a coverage percentage for each city, because there is no current, trustworthy source for one. Sudan's mobile infrastructure has been damaged, destroyed, switched off and switched back on repeatedly since April 2023, and control of areas has changed hands more than once. Any tidy number would be invented. Other guides print them anyway; ours used to. It was wrong.
What generally holds
- • Coverage follows whatever an operator can still power and backhaul. Where diesel, fibre and staff reach, there is service; where they do not, there is none, regardless of what any coverage map shows.
- • Port Sudan functioned as the de-facto administrative centre for much of the war and has had the most continuous service of the major cities.
- • Khartoum and Omdurman had the heaviest infrastructure damage and the most disrupted service. Restoration has been uneven and partial rather than a single switch-on.
- • Darfur and Kordofan have had the longest and deepest outages, in some places measured in months.
- • Outside towns, along desert roads and in rural areas, assume no service at all and plan around it.
What our own data says about the technology
The Sudan plans in our catalogue are declared as 4G on Zain, and the Africa regional plan is declared as 4G on MTN. That is the ceiling, not a promise: in practice you should expect to spend time on slower technologies, and to see throughput that is far below what 4G implies when a cell is carrying more traffic than its backhaul can move.
Operators in Sudan, and Which One You Get
Zain Sudan
Our country plans- The largest operator in the country by subscribers
- Part of the Kuwait-based Zain Group; formerly Mobitel
- This is the network every Sudan country plan we sell declares, at 4G
- Public MCC/MNC registries list it under Sudan's country code 634
MTN Sudan
Africa regional- The smallest of Sudan's three mobile operators by subscribers
- Part of the South Africa-based MTN Group
- This is the Sudanese network our Africa regional plan declares, at 4G
- Also the operator that suspends service during national exam periods on government directive
Sudani (Sudatel)
Not available to us- The state-linked operator, part of the Sudatel Group
- One of the three networks taken down in the February 2024 blackout, and the one that announced restoration on 12 February
- No plan we sell declares Sudani. Do not buy an eSIM from us expecting to use it. The same applies to Canar, which is a fixed and fixed-wireless provider
If you have to pick a network by hand: choose the entry named Zain on a Sudan country plan, or MTN on the Africa regional plan. Sudan's mobile country code is 634 and every Sudanese network appears under it. We deliberately do not print operator network codes here: the values in our own provider feeds do not match public registries for Sudan, and a wrong code is worse than no code. Go by the operator name your phone shows.
To be exact about which product declares what, because it differs by supplier: the three Sudan country plans declare Zain; the Africa regional package declares MTN for Sudan; and the Africa-wide package from our other supplier declares Zain again, listed as “Zain SD”. None of the three declares Sudani.
What Roaming Actually Costs, and Why It Is the Wrong Question
Sudan sits in the most expensive roaming band for essentially every operator. It is outside the EU roam-like-at-home area, outside every North American included-destination bundle we are aware of, and outside the Latin American regional bundles. In that band data is typically billed per megabyte, which is how people come home to four-figure bills. We are not going to quote you a per-megabyte rate for a specific operator, because those tariffs change and differ per plan — check your own operator's zone list for Sudan before you fly, and check whether they offer data roaming there at all, because some do not.
Home operator roaming
Highest zone, usually per-megabyte billing, sometimes not offered at all. The one advantage is that it keeps your own number reachable for voice and SMS, which a data-only eSIM does not.
Travel eSIM
A fixed, known amount of data for a fixed price, with no possibility of a surprise bill. Data only, one network, and worth exactly nothing during an outage.
Local SIM
Cheapest per gigabyte and gives you a Sudanese number, but requires a working shop, documents and registration. Realistic mainly if colleagues in-country arrange it for you.
The real comparison for Sudan is not price per gigabyte. It is whether the network is up, and what you have arranged for the days when it is not. Almost everyone reading this page is travelling for work, and the cost of a data plan is a rounding error against that. Spend the planning effort on the outage plan, not on saving a few pounds on the data.
How Much Data to Buy
Plan for low-bandwidth working. On a congested or degraded network, small and repeated transfers succeed and large ones simply fail, so your effective usage tends to be lower than at home — not because you need less, but because the link will not carry it.
1 GB / 7 days — a short trip that runs on messaging
Enough for text messaging, email without large attachments, occasional voice notes and offline maps you downloaded before you left. This is the smallest Sudan plan we carry.
3 GB / 15 days — a working fortnight
Adds room for regular email with attachments, occasional data calls, cloud documents and sending a modest number of photos. Realistic for most short deployments and reporting trips.
5 GB / 30 days — the largest Sudan country plan
The ceiling at country level. If you need more than this over a month — regular video calls, filing media, remote work — you will need to top up, use an Africa regional plan, or arrange a local line or satellite service through your organisation. There is no unlimited Sudan option.
Download before you go: offline maps for every area you expect to be in, any documents you will need, your contact list as a file rather than a synced account, and translation data. A download that fails in Khartoum is a download you will not retry successfully.
Who This Is For: Connectivity by Type of Trip
These are the kinds of trip people actually make to Sudan right now. Pick the one closest to yours for the connectivity implications — none of this is a recommendation to travel.
Humanitarian and aid staff
Deployed with an NGO, a UN agency or a medical organisation, usually through Port Sudan and often working outside the main cities
Data needs
3-5GB for a month in-country
What matters most
Your organisation's communications policy comes first. Treat a commercial eSIM as a personal backup layer, not as the mission's connectivity.
Practical notes:
- •Check with your security lead before buying anything, including this
- •Install and test the profile before departure, never on arrival
- •Keep the QR code and activation details offline as well as in email
- •Expect no coverage outside towns and plan the route on that basis
- •Agree a check-in schedule that survives several days of national blackout
Journalists and researchers
Reporting trips, documentation work and fact-finding visits, where the ability to file at all matters more than speed
Data needs
3-5GB, plus a plan for filing large files
What matters most
Filing video or large photo sets over a Sudanese mobile network during the war is unreliable at best. Plan to file from outside the country if the material is time-critical.
Practical notes:
- •Compress hard before you try to send anything
- •Small repeated transfers get through where a single large upload will not
- •Turn off automatic cloud backup so your allowance is not spent on failed syncs
- •Mobile internet is switched off nationally during exam periods, so check the calendar
- •Assume traffic may be observed; use whatever your outlet mandates for secure communication
Sudanese travellers and returning diaspora
Travelling to see family, to check on property, or returning to areas where service has been partly restored
Data needs
1-3GB if family already have a local line, 5GB if not
What matters most
If relatives in-country already have a working local SIM, a small eSIM plan is enough to cover you until you can arrange a local line yourself.
Practical notes:
- •A local SIM is cheaper per gigabyte and gives you a Sudanese number
- •An eSIM covers the gap between landing and arranging that
- •Our country plans use Zain; if your family are on a different operator, that does not affect your eSIM
- •Sudan runs on cash, so do not rely on being able to top anything up by card
- •Sudan is UTC+2 with no daylight saving, not UTC+3 as older apps sometimes show
Logistics, supply and contractors
Moving goods, fuel or equipment, typically with Port Sudan as the entry point and long road movements inland
Data needs
5GB for a month, more if you coordinate constantly
What matters most
Coverage follows the towns. Long road legs will be offline, so build the coordination plan around checkpoints where you know there is service rather than continuous contact.
Practical notes:
- •Download offline maps for the whole route before leaving a covered area
- •Share the route and expected arrival before you go dark
- •Port Sudan has had the most continuous service of the major cities
- •5GB over 30 days is the largest single Sudan country plan available
- •Consider an Africa regional plan if the same trip crosses other countries
Short institutional visits
A few days for meetings, assessments or handovers, now that Khartoum International has resumed scheduled flights
Data needs
1GB for a week
What matters most
For a short visit that runs on messaging and email, the smallest plan is usually enough. The risk is not running out of data, it is the network not being there.
Practical notes:
- •Khartoum International took its first scheduled commercial flight in nearly three years on 1 February 2026
- •Port Sudan New International carried most air traffic through the war
- •Install the eSIM at home; airport Wi-Fi is not something to depend on
- •Send one message on landing so people know the line works
- •Carry a voice-capable line too: a data-only eSIM cannot dial 999
Anyone planning around an outage
Applies to every category above. Sudan has had more internet shutdown events than any other African country since 2019
Data needs
Not a data question
What matters most
The most useful preparation for Sudan is not choosing a plan size. It is deciding in advance what happens when there is no network for several days.
Practical notes:
- •Write down the numbers you would need if your phone had no internet
- •Keep documents, maps and contacts as files on the device, not in a synced account
- •Have someone outside Sudan who can check outage reports and relay information
- •Satellite equipment is regulated and can attract scrutiny; that is a decision for your security lead
- •Do not interpret silence from someone in Sudan as bad news by default
The one thing worth repeating
Every plan on this page is a roaming profile on a Sudanese operator's network. It is useful on the days that network is running and worth nothing on the days it is not, and Sudan has had at least four major shutdowns in 2025 alone on top of the near-total national blackout in February 2024. Buy the data if it helps. Spend the real preparation time on what you do when it stops.
Troubleshooting
No service after landing
- • Turn data roaming ON for the eSIM line. It is off by default on most phones and it is the single most common cause
- • Set the eSIM as the line used for mobile data
- • Cycle airplane mode, then restart the phone
- • Select the network manually: choose Zain on a Sudan country plan, or MTN on the Africa regional plan. Do not select Sudani, it is not on any plan we sell
- • Check that your phone is not carrier-locked, which blocks the profile silently
Is it my phone, or is the country offline?
- • Check a second device on a different network. If both are dead, it is not your eSIM
- • Ask someone outside Sudan to check the NetBlocks outage reports for you
- • Wi-Fi at a hotel or office runs on the same national backbone, so Wi-Fi failing too is a strong signal that the problem is national
- • During a national shutdown, there is nothing to fix on your device. Resetting network settings will not help and can cost you a working configuration
Connected, but unusably slow
- • Check whether you have used your allowance; a throttled plan looks like a bad network
- • Congestion is normal on a damaged network. Small, repeated transfers get through where a large upload will not
- • Turn off automatic photo backup, app updates and cloud sync. They will consume the allowance and still not complete
- • Try again at a different hour. Load patterns on a reduced network are severe and predictable
No coverage outside the towns
- • This is expected, not a fault. Rural and desert areas have little or no service
- • Offline maps and offline documents are the answer; there is no plan you can buy that fixes it
- • Tell someone your route and expected return before you leave a covered area
Emergency and Official Contacts
In Sudan
- Police / general emergency999
- Traffic police777 777
These are the numbers listed in public emergency-number references for Sudan. Expect Arabic only. We have deliberately not printed separate ambulance and fire numbers: the figures circulating online do not agree with each other and we could not verify them. In a war, do not assume any of these services will answer or arrive — your organisation's own security contact is the number that matters.
Consular, from outside Sudan
- UK, FCDO 24/7 helpline+44 1908 516 666The British Embassy in Khartoum is closed; no in-person support inside Sudan
- Spain, Unidad de Emergencia Consular+34 910 001 249unidaddecrisis@maec.es — the Spanish Embassy in Khartoum has suspended its activity
- Everyone elseFind your own foreign ministry's emergency line and register your travel with them before you go. Most countries have no consular presence in Sudan
Airports
- • Khartoum International (KRT) — received its first scheduled commercial flight in nearly three years on 1 February 2026, after being closed since the start of the war
- • Port Sudan New International (PZU) — carried most of the country's air traffic through the war
Your eSIM is data only. It cannot dial 999. Emergency calls need a line with voice service, which means your home SIM in roaming, a local SIM, or a satellite phone. Do not travel to Sudan with a data-only eSIM as your only means of communication.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it safe to travel to Sudan?
Governments advise against it. The FCDO advises against all travel to Sudan because of the ongoing military conflict, with a narrower “all but essential travel” advice for the Hala'ib Triangle and Bir Tawil Trapezoid. Spain's MAEC advises against travel to Sudan under any circumstances. Both embassies in Khartoum are closed. Read your own government's current advisory first. Buying an eSIM changes none of this.
Which Sudanese network does the eSIM actually use?
Every Sudan country plan in our catalogue declares Zain, at 4G. The Africa regional plan declares MTN for Sudan instead. Nothing we sell declares Sudani (Sudatel) or Canar. Sudan's mobile country code is 634.
Will an eSIM work during an internet shutdown?
No. It is a roaming profile on a Sudanese network. If that network is off, there is nothing to register on. In February 2024 all three main operators went down and Sudan had a near-total communications blackout; there were at least four more major shutdowns in 2025. No provider can route around that.
What Sudan plans are actually available?
Three country plans: 1 GB for 7 days, 3 GB for 15 days and 5 GB for 30 days. No unlimited plan, and nothing larger than 5 GB at country level. Sudan is also included in our Africa regional and Africa global plans, which go up to 10 GB but cost considerably more per gigabyte.
Does the eSIM give me a Sudanese number?
No. It is data only, with no Sudanese number and no local voice or SMS. Calls go over data, which means they fail exactly when the network is degraded. If you need to be reachable on a local number, you need a local line as well.
What time zone is Sudan in?
UTC+2, Central Africa Time, with no daylight saving. Sudan moved back from UTC+3 on 1 November 2017, so older guides and some software still show the wrong offset.
Can I pay for things with a card in Sudan?
Assume not. Sudan runs on cash, foreign cards are effectively unusable, and the gap between the official and parallel exchange rates for the Sudanese pound is large and reported inconsistently. Do not budget from any rate you find printed in a guide, including this one — which is why we have not printed one.
If you are going, go prepared
A data plan solves one problem: arriving connected on a day when the network is up. It does not solve the others. Install it before you leave, test it, keep your activation code offline, download what you need, agree a check-in schedule that tolerates silence, and read your own government's advisory before anything else.