Format: Hybrid Forum
Date: Wednesday, 10 December 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM EAT
Venue: BIEA, Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa
Background
The steep decline in international aid has created severe challenges for the humanitarian and development sectors in Sudan and South Sudan. While the full impact is still unfolding, emerging evidence paints a dire picture marked by soaring needs amid dwindling support. More than 20 million people in Sudan and 9 million in South Sudan now require humanitarian assistance, with famine-like conditions already reported in parts of Darfur, Khartoum and Upper Nile. Despite these escalating crises, international funding has collapsed—Sudan’s 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan is less than 25 per cent funded, and South Sudan faces similar gaps. As international access and resources shrink, local actors have become the primary responders. Civic networks, women’s associations, faith-based groups and emergency response rooms (in the case of Sudan) are now sustaining communities, stepping in where international institutions have faltered, and forming the backbone of survival across both countries.
Against this backdrop, the Norwegian People’s Aid in Sudan, Detcro, the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), and ODI Global convened a two-day, participant-led workshop on 4–5 November in Kampala. The event brought together local aid responders, civil society actors, women’s networks, researchers and private sector representatives from Sudan and South Sudan to rethink aid systems in both countries.
The workshop fostered rich and genuine dialogues, and emphasized the need to advance localization and strengthen solidarity and collaboration among local actors. The meeting concluded with the adoption of the Kampala Resolution on Rethinking Aid in Sudan and South Sudan, a strong call to shift from charity to solidarity and to elevate local agency as the engine of sustainable change. The resolution affirms that localization is not a donor-driven agenda but a moral, political and practical imperative.
These outcomes have been consolidated into a policy briefing paper that amplifies the messages from the convening and call for action toward supporting sustainable aid transition in both countries.
To further disseminate these outcomes and engage a wider audience of policy makers, International NGOs and partners, the organizers will host a joint dissemination forum in Nairobi on 10 December 2025 at 2:00pm – 4:30pm.
The main aim of the forum will be to chart policy and practice pathways that enhance support for local aid responders and affected communities.
Objectives
The Forum seeks to:
- Share and disseminate policy outcomes and resolutions from the Kampala workshop on Rethinking Aid in the Sudans.
- Engage key policy interlocutors, including representatives from government, embassies, diplomatic missions, international humanitarian organizations and donor agencies; and
- Strengthen aid advocacy for Sudan and South Sudan, promoting greater support for local actors to improve aid delivery and community resilience.
Please note that this is a hybrid forum. Please sign up for the event using the ‘Register’ button at the bottom of this page.
Presentation
Awak Bior, Independent researcher and consultant
Panel
Peter Hailey, Centre for Humanitarian Change
James Keah, UNIDOR, South Sudan
Haidah Ahmed, Norwegian Peoples Aid-Sudan
Ed Barney, FDCO
Moderator
Luka Biong Deng, The Sudd Institute
