Strategic Partnership with SOS Sahel UK

In July 2009, Skillshare International agreed a new strategic partnership with SOS Sahel UK to enable them to continue their poverty reduction and peacebuilding programmes across Sudan, which build more secure futures for thousands of herders and farmers, and to support the process of SOS Sahel Sudan's registration as an independent indigenous NGO.

Salih Majid Eldouma, Country Director for SOS Sahel Sudan, said: “The situation for traditional herding and farming communities in Sudan is changing dramatically. The marriage between SOS Sahel’s credibility in Sudan and Skillshare’s world-wide experience makes us well-placed to help vulnerable communities to engage and cope with change by increasing their knowledge and capacity.”

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and has for decades been overwhelmed by internal and external conflict, drought, famine, unmanageable debt, and alternating governance by military dictatorships and corrupt, ineffective civilian governments. It also has the largest population of internally-displaced persons (IDPs)

in the world, who depend largely on external humanitarian aid. Longstanding local tensions over access to natural resources, together with religious and cultural tensions, have repeatedly intensified into armed conflict, fuelled by the desire for increased regional independence from a weak and self-serving Arab elite in Khartoum, and control of oil wealth in the south. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended 20 years of civil war between the north and south, via a series of power-sharing arrangements and the promise of elections, now scheduled for April 2010, followed by a referendum on the secession of South Sudan in January 2011.

Women collecting water from their new hafir, Kordofan
(Copyright SOS Sahel UK/Jessica Barry)

Skillshare International CEO, Dr Cliff Allum, comments: "Through our partnership with SOS Sahel we can support some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. SOS Sahel Sudan's work complements Skillshare's peacebuilding activities and our work with marginalised communities in other countries."

The success of Sudan’s future development requires a shift of emphasis from immediate humanitarian assistance to longer-term strengthening of Sudanese society and its institutions. Community-level strengthening of civil society, which is predominantly done through NGOs, is a prerequisite for deeper and more lasting development. This work is challenged by the Sudanese government which controls and restricts NGO activities, and in 2009 expelled 13 international NGOs from the country. SOS Sahel Sudan is now one of the few remaining international NGOs in Sudan and remains well respected by the Government.It has opportunities to expand its work and gain new funding, as donors find themselves with fewer active NGOs to implement their programmes.

In January 2010 an important milestone was reached when SOS Sahel Sudan successfully registered as an independent indigenous NGO in Sudan. Skillshare International and SOS Sahel UK continue to provide support to strengthen the governance, management and financial systems and capacity of SOS Sahel Sudan to deliver its programmes. A key part of this capacity-building process is the one-year placement of Skillshare International development worker Michael Green as a Programme Development Adviser. Michael, who is from the UK, began his placement in November 2009.

To find out more about SOS Sahel UK, please visit www.sahel.org.uk

Pastoralists arriving in N.Kordofan, Sudan
(Copyright SOS Sahel UK/Sue Cavanna)