Khartoum reaps oil-fuelled boom

Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, is in the throes of a construction boom, partly fuelled by the burgeoning oil industry.

Under the Al-Mogran Development Project, two five-star hotels are being built, as well as two new bridges across the Niles, and a new airport building.
Malaysia’s Petronas and the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) are putting up their own buildings here, while dozens of new hotels are popping up.
The government maintains that 70 per cent of Darfur is secure, and says the Red Cross has stopped distributing food aid there because harvests have improved.

There are other signs of recovery. In the northern town of Al-Fashir, which the prime minister visited on Tuesday, billboards have popped up advertising mobile phone services.

Piles of Sudan’s signature ochre mud bricks lined the route of his tour, as the town’s inhabitants put up new buildings that will become homes and shops.

New Straits Times