Debating Ideas aims to reflect the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books.

Sudan's civil war is senseless but was forseeable. The prospect of street fighting in the national capital, comparable to Mogadishu in 1991 or Tripoli in 2012, was too awful to contemplate, especially given the reputation of the metropolitan Sudanese for restraint within their heartland. But any frank analysis of the logic of Sudanese politics pointed to a confrontation such as this.

In this webinar; Making Sense of a Senseless War: Readings on Sudan (click on the link below), Willow Berridge, Justin Lynch, Raga Makawi and Alex de Waal, co-authors of Sudan's Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People's Revolution (Hurst and Oxford University Press 2022) expound on the conditions and factors that led to the outbreak of conflict that engulfed its capital Khartoum and spread subsequently throughout the country. Together they debate the pre and post 2018 revolutionary politics, the tectonic social and political transformations that could have shaped the transition to a democracy but ended up inciting civil conflict.

Webinar: Sudan, Making Sense of a Senseless War

This webinar is the first entry in a series on the developments in Sudan relating to the outbreak of war. The subsequent themes will explore political developments, civic politics, economic policies and the lot. Stay tuned.

Debating Ideas aims to reflect the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books.