Sudan says China has waived $50m loan: What’s in it for Khartoum, Beijing?
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- China waived four interest-free loans totaling 344 million yuan (~$50m) to Sudan in a signed protocol in Port Sudan, with immediate effect, per Sudan's official news agency SUNA.
- Sudan's Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim welcomed the move, contrasting China's wartime investment with Western sanctions and aid holds; Ibrahim himself was added to the US Treasury sanctions list in September 2025 over alleged involvement in the civil war and ties to Iran.
- Sudan's external debt exceeded $56bn before the war, and an IMF/World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries track that could have forgiven more than $50bn was derailed by Sudan's October 2021 military coup.
- The civil war has killed more than 1.5 million people, displaced about 14 million — roughly a quarter of Sudan's population — and left fewer than 14% of health facilities functioning, according to the UN and WHO.
- The Sudanese pound collapsed from roughly 600 to the dollar pre-war to more than 5,000 to the dollar by June 2026, underscoring the depth of the economic crisis behind the loan waiver.
- China has been Africa's largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years and has forgiven at least $3.4bn in similar interest-free loans across the continent between 2000 and 2019, per Johns Hopkins China Africa Research Initiative data.
- China-Sudan ties were built on oil, with CNPC investing billions in Sudanese oil fields from the mid-1990s onward; CNPC requested a formal exit from Sudan in December 2025, and Sudan still owes Beijing more than $5bn.
Why it matters: The $50m waiver amounts to less than 0.1% of Sudan's $56bn pre-war external debt, but its political weight is far larger: it gives Beijing outsized diplomatic leverage in a country straddling the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa at a moment when Western governments are sanctioning Khartoum's leadership, and Sudan still owes China more than $5bn.
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