If you had headed to Ramses Train Station in Downtown Cairo on Monday morning, you would have found it packed with Sudanese citizens heading back to Sudan. Families, men and women, children and the elderly — all were waiting to board a train as the first leg of a trip that would take them back to Sudan.
The train, which has made two trips since mid-July, is part of an initiative by the Sudanese and Egyptian governments to facilitate the voluntary return of Sudanese citizens to their country. Thousands of Sudanese nationals fled to Egypt following the eruption of armed clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023.
The first phase of the Voluntary Return initiative took place in April, and the trip is free of charge. Passengers must register through a WhatsApp number ((+2) 01557213251) with the Sudanese Defence Industries System (DIS), a government institution affiliated with the SAF, and then their trip is scheduled.
Omayma Abdullah, head of Corporate Social Responsibility at DIS and head of the Voluntary Return Committee for Sudanese in Egypt, told Al-Ahram Weekly that they had been receiving lots of pleas from Sudanese nationals needing help with repatriation, so they decided to establish a service that would benefit all citizens wishing to return.
Since April this year, around 13,000 Sudanese nationals have benefited from the initiative and 2,500 in the past two weeks, Abdullah said, adding that so far they have 3,000 pending requests.
“As long as there is demand, the trains will continue to run,” she told the Weekly. This week, several buses were also used to transport returnees. It is estimated that over one million Sudanese nationals entered Egypt after the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan.
The cost of the trip is fully covered by DIS, Abdullah said, adding that the success of the initiative would not have been possible without political will at the highest level and immense cooperation from the Egyptian authorities at every stage to help facilitate the smooth movement of the returnees.
Even those who did not have legal residency in Egypt were allowed through easily, multiple sources said.
The train takes Sudanese nationals to the Aswan High Dam station in Aswan in Upper Egypt, where they can board buses that will take them to a boat that will carry them across Lake Nasser to the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa. Once they arrive there, they can board buses that will take them to different parts of Sudan.
According to a 25 July statement by the International Organisation for Migration, pockets of relative safety have now emerged across Sudan, and to date over a million internally displaced Sudanese have been making their way home. Some 320,000 people have also crossed back to Sudan since last year, mainly from Egypt and South Sudan, to assess the situation before deciding to return to their country for good, the UN organisation said.
Not everyone is returning by train, however, as others are returning by bus at their own expense, with tickets ranging between around LE2,000 to LE5,000 depending on the destination.
Haitham Gomaa had been living in Egypt for one year before he decided to leave for Sudan. He returned to the country alone, leaving his family behind, in order to assess the situation before having his family join him.
According to Gomaa, the situation in Sudan has started to improve, and in the area where he lives in the capital Khartoum electricity has returned and the security forces are maintaining order.
Upon his return, he discovered that he had lost his two cars and some furniture, but other than that his house only needed some maintenance and cleaning. He is also looking forward to returning to his job at a food factory in Khartoum. This is being rehabilitated to enable it to restart production after having stopped during the war period.
Mohamed Hajj, another Sudanese national, also returned together with his family after a year and half in Egypt. He decided to go back because he could not find work in Cairo, and he also returned by bus.
“Despite the travel fatigue, the road home was safe, but the ride was expensive,” he said. Although everything was taken from his home and basic services are still lacking, he is glad to have returned to Sudan. At least he does not have to pay rent now, and he will do a little farming to sustain his family, he said.
Afrah Taj, a Sudanese journalist, is also looking forward to going back to Sudan, even if not immediately. She said that returning needs financial preparation, as her house has been stripped of everything she owned.
The number of Sudanese nationals leaving Egypt is noticeable, she said, pointing to areas such as Faisal Road where thousands of Sudanese had resided. Some shops which were specifically serving Sudanese clients have now begun to downsize or shut down.
Aboud Mohamed is also delaying his return to Sudan despite knowing that his home is intact. He wishes he could go back to test the water, and his family could join him later, however he is reluctant to do so.
Mohamed is worried that there are still a lot of weapons circulating in the country that the government is trying to collect. He is also apprehensive about what could happen if he wanted to return to Egypt, since visas are not readily available.
Several factors are driving the desire to return, said Abdelnasser Solum, senior researcher and director of the East Africa and Sudan Programme at Fox Research AB in Sweden, in an interview with the Weekly.
They include the soaring costs of living in host countries like Egypt and Chad, the lack of legal residency or work opportunities abroad, and the longing for home, property protection, or family reunification.
Solum said Sudan is now experiencing relative political stability in areas under Government control, especially in the east and north of the country. No further coup has occurred, and a temporary government continues to operate out of Port Sudan with backing from the SAF.
Nonetheless, some areas are safer than others. According to Solum, Khartoum is militarily secure following the withdrawal of the RSF, though services are still lacking. The northern states of Dongola, Merowe, and Shendi are also unaffected by the fighting and relatively well administered.
The East Sudan cities of Port Sudan, Kassala, and Gedaref are the administrative hub of the interim government and home to thousands of internally displaced persons. Blue Nile and Sennar, are quiet, but fragile, Solum added.
In contrast, Darfur and South Kordofan remain volatile, with continued armed activity and widespread lawlessness.
According to Solum, acquaintances who returned to Shendi and Port Sudan said the army was in control, but basic services are lacking. Nonetheless, he said “they prefer being at home, even in hardship, over surviving in exile.”
He explained that the returnees generally belong to specific socioeconomic and demographic segments, and their decisions to return are often driven by necessity rather than genuine choice.
He categorised them as low-income families who could no longer afford the high cost of living in neighbouring countries, especially those without legal residency or sustainable support networks.
The returnees also include residents of Khartoum and Gezira, some of whom have returned to inspect abandoned properties or reunite with family members. A third group are middle-class civil servants and government employees, many of whom have returned to cities such as Port Sudan to avoid job loss or preserve their employment status, especially after some government institutions resumed partial operations.
In some cases, their return has been semi-mandatory, due to directives from supervisors, he pointed out. Another returning segment is made up of youth and university students, who were unable to continue their education abroad because of financial or legal constraints and chose to return to enrol in institutions in relatively safe areas like Shendi or Kassala.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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