Sudan AI Job Risk 2026: Which Occupations Are Most at Risk?

The most AI-exposed occupations in Sudan

Sudan occupation data comes from ILO ILOSTAT and the Central Bureau of Statistics Sudan (CBS) Labour Force Survey 2023. Pre-conflict CBS Sudan used ISCO-08 aligned occupation categories for formal sector enumeration. The 2023 civil war that began in April between SAF and RSF destroyed significant statistical infrastructure in Khartoum, making post-conflict workforce data unavailable from primary Sudanese sources. All figures below are the best available pre-conflict estimates; the ILO cautions that these should be interpreted as indicative rather than precise given the data collection disruptions.

Clerical support workers at just 2% of the workforce score 8.0/10 - the economy's peak AI exposure. Sudan's clerical workforce was concentrated almost entirely in Khartoum's public sector: federal ministries, the Bank of Sudan, state-owned enterprises including Sudan Telecom (Sudatel), and the Khartoum-based operations of international organisations. Khartoum was the country's financial and administrative centre with an estimated 7 million residents before the conflict, housing virtually all the institutions that employ clerical and administrative workers in any formal capacity. The RSF's occupation of significant portions of Khartoum from April 2023 onward effectively suspended or displaced the functioning of most formal-sector administrative institutions.

Professionals at 5% score 6.3/10. Sudan's professional class was anchored in healthcare (the University of Khartoum Medical School trained doctors serving the entire Sudanese and East African patient base), engineering (Sudan's oil sector, Nile dam construction), education, and legal services. Sudan was historically among Africa's most educated nations per capita in the 1960s-1970s before decades of conflict and economic deterioration reduced that standing. The pre-2023 professional workforce included a nascent technology community: Khartoum hosted several fintech startups including Fawry Sudan (mobile payments), Aman (digital wallet), and an emerging developer community that had achieved recognition from regional accelerators. That tech community has been substantially dispersed by the conflict.

The 2023 conflict and the interrupted Khartoum tech hub

The April 15, 2023 outbreak of fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti) hit Khartoum with particular severity. The conflict transformed from a military power struggle into widespread urban warfare that destroyed infrastructure, displaced the civilian population, and effectively halted formal economic activity across the capital. The World Food Programme and UN OCHA estimate that over 8 million people have been internally displaced and approximately 2 million have crossed borders to Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, and Ethiopia - one of the largest displacement crises globally as of mid-2026.

The economic disruption is severe by any measure. The World Bank estimated Sudan's GDP contracted by over 10% in 2023, with formal sector employment in Khartoum collapsing to a fraction of pre-conflict levels. Gold mining - Sudan was the fourth largest gold producer globally prior to 2023 - has been significantly disrupted as RSF forces seized artisanal mining areas in Darfur and northern Sudan. Artisanal gold mining employed an estimated 200,000 people under various legal and illegal arrangements and represented a significant informal income source in areas now under RSF control. The Sudan Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) data collection from these areas has effectively ceased.

The interrupted Khartoum tech hub deserves specific mention because it represents the most direct AI-economy intersection that pre-conflict Sudan had developed. Between 2019 and 2023, Khartoum saw the emergence of a genuine startup ecosystem, partly enabled by the post-Omar al-Bashir transition government's opening to international investment and the partial lifting of US sanctions that had isolated Sudan's economy for two decades. Organisations including Flat6Labs Khartoum, the Sudanese Entrepreneurs Organisation (SEO), and university incubators at the University of Khartoum and Sudan University of Science and Technology were developing a pipeline of technology startups. That ecosystem has been physically dispersed - founders have relocated to Cairo, Nairobi, Dubai, and Western cities. The infrastructure and talent base required for post-conflict AI adoption in Sudan will need to be rebuilt largely from scratch when conditions allow.

The safest jobs from AI in Sudan

Sudan's physical economy - agriculture, elementary occupations, craft workers, and armed forces - employs approximately 76% of the formal workforce at below 2.8/10 AI exposure. This concentration in physical work is the primary driver of Sudan's low 3.18/10 weighted average.

Agricultural workers at 36% of the workforce - approximately 5.04 million people - score 2.7/10 and represent Sudan's dominant employment category. Sudan's agricultural base spans sorghum and millet cultivation across Darfur, Kordofan, and the Nile corridor; cotton and sesame in the Gezira irrigation scheme (one of the world's largest irrigation projects, covering 1 million acres of the Blue and White Nile confluence); gum arabic production (Sudan supplies approximately 80% of global gum arabic per USDA Foreign Agricultural Service data); and livestock across the pastoral zones of the Sahel. Current agricultural AI tools - precision irrigation systems, satellite crop monitoring, and market information platforms - are not cost-effective deployment targets for Sudan's predominantly smallholder and pastoral agricultural structure at current technology cost levels. Craft and trades workers at 14% are employed across construction, metalworking, food processing, and vehicle repair across Sudan's dispersed urban centres; these roles require physical in-situ presence that buffers AI displacement risk across the medium term.

What this means for post-conflict recovery

Sudan's 3.18/10 weighted average is the second lowest in this batch above Libya (3.42/10 is higher - Sudan is lower). The low score reflects genuine structural protection for the majority of Sudan's workforce from near-term AI displacement - but this protection is coincidental, a product of the large agricultural and elementary workforce rather than any strategic positioning. The workers most exposed to AI - Khartoum's clerical class, the professional community, and the fintech-adjacent technology workers - are precisely the workers most displaced by the 2023 conflict.

Recovery resilience at 2.9/10 is the lowest in this batch. This figure predates the 2023 conflict and even then reflected Sudan's extremely limited technological infrastructure, restricted international banking access (residual from US sanctions era), and under-resourced educational system. Post-conflict, the institutional infrastructure required for workforce adaptation - retraining centres, stable internet connectivity, functioning banking for technology purchases, and government capacity to run skills development programmes - has been further severely damaged. The Sudan Technical Education and Vocational Training Corporation (TEVT), which was the primary skills retraining authority pre-conflict, has had its Khartoum-based operations disrupted.

For Sudanese workers and the diaspora community engaged with Sudan's eventual reconstruction: the post-conflict period will create genuine demand for skills in construction and infrastructure repair, healthcare provision for displaced populations, agricultural rehabilitation (irrigation system repair in the Gezira scheme), and basic administrative and financial system reconstruction. These needs are not AI-automatable in the near term and will provide employment across multiple sectors. The professional diaspora - physicians, engineers, educators, and technology workers who relocated to Cairo, Nairobi, and Dubai - will be a critical resource for post-conflict reconstruction, particularly given the pre-conflict momentum of the Khartoum tech ecosystem. When conditions stabilise, that diaspora carries knowledge and networks that could restore Sudan's position as an East African technology hub faster than starting from zero would imply.