Sudan Coup: Analysis from the Ground

This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the LSE. On 25 October 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared a state of emergency in Sudan, dissolving the government and detaining civilian leadership. Burhan is leader of the joint ruling council. The council's official goal is to hand over leadership to civilians ahead of elections in 2023 Since the beginning of the coup, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an independent union of medics, have estimated that more than 200 people have been wounded in anti-coup protests and at least 23 been killed (as of 15 November 2021). Civilians have been taking to the streets daily, promising to keep up the pressure on the transitional military-civilian authority. Speakers will discuss the historical and political context of the latest coup, the effects of the military crackdown on the ground and the international response. Muzan Alneel is a Nonresident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) focusing on people-centric approach to economy, industry, and environment in Sudan. She is a writer and public speaker with an interdisciplinary professional and academic background (engineering, socioeconomics, public policy). Muzan is the co-founder of The Innovation, Science and Technology Think-tank for People Centered Development (ISTiNAD) – Sudan. Nafisa Eltahir is a correspondent covering political and economic news in Sudan as well as Egypt for Reuters News. Before her current posting she reported on the Gulf out of Dubai, and was a fellow at The Intercept. Magdi el-Gizouli is a scholar of the Sudans and a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He writes mostly on Sudans' affairs, often on his blog StillSUDAN. Laura Mann is a sociologist and research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa, particularly Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda, where she has conducted collaborative research on ICTs and digitisation within global agriculture. Before joining the LSE as an assistant professor, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She is on the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy.