Naema Abdullah stands over a blackened pot of bubbling oil, her hands moving with practiced ease as she drops small rounds of dough into the heat. Around her, three women work in steady rhythm—one kneading, another packaging the golden luqaimat, the fried dough balls beloved across Sudan, and a third calling out orders from neighbors.
The air is thick with the smell of sugar and oil, a small economy sustained in the heart of a displacement camp in Wad Madani, about 85 kilometers southwest of Khartoum.
When civil war between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces erupted in Sudan in 2023, Naema fled Khartoum after her husband died from illness in the conflict’s early days. She arrived in Wad Madani with three children, no income, and the nightly terror of their hunger.
“Every night I would think about what I could do to provide for my children’s growing needs…food, drink, medicine,” she tells Shareable. “They’re children. They don’t understand that something isn’t available, and they suffer because of it almost daily.”
She tried domestic work, but the stigma associated with it in Sudan brought only rejection from her new neighbors. But desperation brought innovation. Abdullah gambled her last few Sudanese pounds on supplies, set up outside a mosque, and began frying. Within a month, she had hired three other displaced women.
That modest stall, cobbled together from scrap wood and plastic sheets, was the culmination of months of struggle—a lifeline to Abdullah, born from a single bag of flour, three kilograms of oil, and the oldest social contract in Sudan, “nafeer.”
Across Sudan, women are resurrecting nafeer, an ancient practice of communal solidarity, adapting it into a decentralized network of survival that functions where the state has collapsed.
The word nafeer describes collective mobilization during crises, such as floods, famines, and wars. Traditionally, communities would pool food, medicine, and labor, prioritizing the sick, elderly, children, and pregnant women.
In peacetime, nafeer meant neighbors repairing a family’s crumbling home or women organizing rotating savings funds, called “sanadig dawara,” to help someone in need pay for medical treatment, university fees, or a wedding.
For years, the concept had remained largely out of the spotlight. Abdullah’s stall has since grown into what her grandmother would recognize as a modern “nafeer cooperative,” sharing profits, providing microloans to other women, and distributing surplus flour and oil to families in need.
Today, the group earns between 5,000 and 10,000 Sudanese pounds (nearly $8–16) daily, a modest income in a country that saw inflation peak at 422% in July 2021 and stands at 81%
