General Information

Capital:

Khartoum city 924,505 (1993 est.)

Area:

2,503,890 sq km (966,757 sq mi)

Form of government

Transitional—previously ruled by military junta, Presidential and National Assembly elections were held in March 1996.

GDP per capita

Purchasing power parity - $940 (1999 est.)

Population

35,079,814 (July 2000 est.)

Ethnic composition

A multiethnic mix of over 500 Arab and African tribes with scores of languages and dialects

Black - 52%

Arab - 39%

Beja - 6%

Other - 3%

Official Language(s)

Arabic

Minority Language(s)

Three super stocks of spoken languages exist in Sudan:

Afro-Asiatic (e.g. Arabic, Cushitic, Chadic, Hausa employed by many other West Africans in Sudan as a lingua franca)

Niger-Kurdufanian (Niger-Congo language group and the Kurdufanian stock which comprises only thirty to forty languages spoken in a limited area of Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and their environs)

Nilo-Saharan (with 75 languages)

English also spoken

Note: A program of Arabization is currently in process

According to the Ethnologue (Summer Institute of Linguistic 1996) 132 living languages exist in Sudan.

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