When bombs began to fall over Khartoum in April 2023, many fled with nothing but the hope of return. For Sudanese women displaced by war, that return hasn’t come but something else has taken shape in its place. In the narrow alleys of a foreign city, lined with the scent of Sudanese incense and the rhythm of a different language, a quiet economy has emerged. Here, business is more than survival, it is therapy, defiance and a blueprint for rebuilding what was lost.
These women are not waiting for aid handouts or easy exits, they are carving out futures with whatever means they can muster. For many, entrepreneurship became the thread holding their new lives together.
Entrepreneurship as a Form of Healing
For women like Maryam, who once lived comfortably in a middle-class neighbourhood in Khartoum, displacement brought unimaginable upheaval. But her story doesn’t end at loss. In a city she had only visited before the war, she now runs a community gallery, a space for Sudanese artisans, many of them women like herself, to sell homemade goods and handcrafted items. What began as a personal effort to cope with grief has become a collective refuge, where Sudanese culture is preserved, celebrated and sold.
Maryam’s gallery isn’t just a business; it’s a sanctuary. Women gather here not only to earn a living but to find moments of peace, laughter and community. Over shared cups of spiced tea, they exchange stories, comfort each other and remind themselves that they are more than their circumstances. These businesses are spaces of belonging in an unfamiliar landscape, anchoring women who have lost nearly everything.
For many, the emotional impact of war was overwhelming. One restaurant owner shared how running her family eatery became a lifeline, both financially and mentally. The routine of preparing food, serving customers and managing daily operations gave her a renewed sense of purpose. She no longer needed sleeping pills. Her business helped her focus not on what she had lost but on what she could still build.
Resilience Woven into Business Models
The businesses run by displaced Sudanese women are as diverse as they are personal. Some have launched beauty salons offering traditional hair and henna services. Others create and sell Sudanese cosmetics, art, clothing and perfumes through bazaars, pop-ups and social media platforms. A few have rented permanent gallery spaces or co-working areas to showcase handmade goods. One woman even started a Sudanese school to ensure that culture and language are not lost in exile.
Each of these ventures began with limited resources, often a small remittance from family abroad or savings brought from Sudan in a hurry. Yet, despite the barriers to formal employment and legal business registration in the host country, these women have found informal pathways to create income and community. Their entrepreneurial spirit is not driven by financial ambition alone but by the human need for continuity, connection and contribution.
Gender Roles Reimagined
Interestingly, it is often women, not men, who are more active in business creation among the displaced Sudanese population. Traditional gender roles that once cast men as primary breadwinners have been upended. In many cases, men struggled to find stable jobs due to higher expectations of capital investment or more rigid legal barriers. Some, disillusioned by the struggle, even returned to Sudan, hoping to regain their former lives.
Women, on the other hand, have leveraged their caregiving roles to start businesses from home, combining childcare and income generation. Sudanese family law allows working women to keep their earnings, freeing them from the obligation to support the household, this, ironically, gave them more flexibility to begin modest enterprises without the burden of providing for everyone.
Maintaining Identity Through Enterprise
These women were not new to ambition. Most came from middle- or upper-middle-class backgrounds and had professional experience or university education before the war. Their current ventures are not just economic strategies, they are also acts of identity preservation. Through their businesses, they continue to wear, cook and create Sudanese culture, even as war tries to erase it.
Their businesses allow them to retain aspects of their former lives, however fragmented. Whether it’s buying new clothes, hosting Sudanese fashion shows or investing in elegant tableware for family meals, these women assert that they have not been stripped of class or culture. These purchases, though small, become powerful acts of psychological resilience, ways of holding on to pride, dignity and a sense of normalcy.
Class, in this context, is not static. It is renegotiated daily, shaped by what they wear, how they decorate their homes and where they spend their time. In some cases, women have taken up work that would have been considered inappropriate for someone of their class back in Sudan. But far from shameful, this adaptability is a testament to their flexibility and grit. They are redefining what it means to be middle class in exile.
Quiet Entrepreneurs, Bold Impact
Behind each jar of bakhoor, each bowl of kisra, and each henna pattern is a woman navigating loss, displacement and uncertainty. But she is also creating, managing and leading. These women are entrepreneurs in every sense of the word, visionaries, strategists and community builders. They may not be pitching to investors or attending global conferences but their work sustains families, preserves culture and strengthens diasporic networks.
Some have even out-earned their husbands, leading to subtle shifts in household power dynamics. Others rely on the often-invisible labour of extended family or friends, usually other women, who assist with childcare or production. In doing so, they reveal the deeply gendered layers of business ownership in contexts of forced migration.
A Different Kind of Business Story
What emerges from their stories is not the glossy, high-growth narrative that dominates startup culture. Instead, this is entrepreneurship grounded in emotion, culture and care. It is business as a tool for survival, healing and resistance. These women are not chasing unicorns. they’re building something far more profound: the future.
For other entrepreneurs, especially those facing unstable markets or navigating hardship, there is a powerful lesson here. Resilience is not about having all the answers or resources; it’s about starting and holding on to who you are in the process.
In the words of Maryam, her gallery is a “small Sudan”, a space where the past and present merge and where hope quietly takes shape over cups of tea and whispers of home.
