Sudan Family Support Programme (Thamarat), and its halt after the October 2021 coup
After Sudan cut fuel subsidies and unified its exchange rate in February 2021, the transitional government's Sudan Family Support Programme began paying cash in March 2021 and by 25 October 2021 had registered about 2.7 million families and paid about 30.6 billion Sudanese pounds to 1.4 million families, about 4.7 million people, before all activities, including cash delivery, were halted after the military takeover of that day.
1,395,295 families, families paid by the sfsp/thamarat before the halt (table e4 total, paid families), 2021-10-30. 2,637,632 families, families registered against a planned 6.5 million, 2021-10-30. World Bank, Sudan Transition and Recovery Support Trust Fund (STARS) Annual Report 2021, retrieved 2026-10-02.
The move, and what it needed
The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labour and Social Development built a near-universal cash transfer to offset fuel subsidy removal and exchange-rate unification, registering families through 352 centres linked to the national civil registry and paying through banks, mobile money and cash cards, with donor money held in a designated account; the coup stopped the money and the programme with it.
Preconditions
- Donor financing large enough to compensate most households for a subsidy cut
- A national ID registry to validate enrolment against duplicates
- A government that the financiers continue to recognise, which is the precondition that failed in October 2021
Where else it has been used: The same compensation logic as Iran's 2010 subsidy reform cash transfer and Egypt's Takaful and Karama, but financed almost entirely from outside, which made it end the day the financiers paused.
Limits: The World Bank and the STARS donors financed the programme, decided its pause and wrote this report, so the publisher is grading its own operation and also chose to end it. The numbers are in a PDF: the subsidy and exchange-rate reforms of February 2021 on PDF page 10, the halt of all activities 'including delivery of cash to beneficiaries' on PDF page 16, the 2.7 million families registered and 1.4 million families (about 4.7 million people) paid on PDF page 23, and the per-state table (Table E4, 2,637,632 enrolled and 1,395,295 paid) on PDF page 85, which notes that the first 80,000 families were paid in March 2021 (PDF page 77). The 1.39 million families paid include families in two states where the World Food Programme, not the ministry, implemented payments (PDF page 75), so not every paid family was reached by the government's own delivery. Table E4 has visible inconsistencies (East Darfur shows 391,900 families paid against 4,291 enrolled), so the state rows should not be quoted. The speed claim is about seven months from first payment to 1.4 million families, against a target of 6.5 million; the report says the programme started late because of exchange-rate problems, and paid families reached only 22 percent of the target population. What responded was a transitional government acting inside an IMF and World Bank reform package that conditioned arrears clearance, not on its own timetable. The halt was a decision by the financier after a coup, so the dismantling reflects a political break and donor policy (OP 7.30) as much as institutional capacity; later safety-net payments in Sudan were routed through the World Food Programme rather than the ministry.