“Despite Expectations…” Abdel Moez Hussein Al-Makabrabi… Sudan’s_Renaissance… And the Crisis of Strategic Thinking…! ?
The rise of a state that lagged behind the march of progress and acquired the capability for renaissance was based on an executive engine: the existence of a strategic thinking circle that transcended the familiar, traditional past toward broader horizons of creativity, innovation, and positive change in patterns of concepts, visions, plans, and strategic paths. Everything is subject to development and renewal, and there is no sanctity for mistakes and failures. For wisdom is the lost property of the believer; wherever he finds it, he is most deserving of it and most entitled to it. Likewise, “repeating the experiment is destructive corruption.”
And in Sudan, we need scientific and cognitive insight and creativity to implement the real conditions of renaissance… especially in this pivotal, crisis-ridden period. While it possesses vast reservoirs of enormous resources, how can a country seeking renaissance and solutions to its political, economic, security, and societal crises export its agricultural, oil, and mineral raw materials through its export list and boast about the increase in tonnage of its raw products? This is an indicator of backward strategic thinking and the decline of the concept of manufacturing industries—i.e., transforming these raw materials into multiple, diversified commodities that take into account the global comparative advantages of exports and enhance product quality.
Sudan exports raw livestock “herds” despite the existence of a Ministry of Animal Resources, and exports peanuts, gum arabic, hibiscus, fruits, alfalfa, gold, and iron despite the existence of a Ministry of Industry and Minerals and the presence of capitalists and businessmen. The rest is left to smugglers across open borders. This is evidence of the low level of national will, levels of strategic thinking, and forms of creativity.
Had the state and government adopted an agricultural plan with a diversified production and manufacturing map, Sudan would have become like Canada or Australia in terms of agricultural and industrial renaissance levels. It seems we have become addicted to the idlen, paralysis of minds, wills, and strategic direction.
Sudan is a country rich in natural resources but poor in human resources—the owner of national power and creative thinking. Our way out is to establish major agricultural projects through partnerships between the government and the private sector and businessmen to bring about the greatest transformation in manufacturing raw materials into internationally standardized goods that compete in global markets. Then Sudan would become the greatest African state thanks to this strategic orientation, through a “Grand Smart Partnership Conference” between the public and private sectors.
Until we exit the “syndrome of failure,” which necessitates returning the reins of wisdom to Sudan’s state leadership by governing affairs backward from the standpoint of national conscience and ruling integrity against the excesses of authoritarian self-interest, I present this appeal—hoping it finds a listening ear and a conscious heart among people of understanding and possessors of reason.
I have examined the structuring model of the three great powers—United States, Russia, and China—in our contemporary world through deep epistemological analysis to closely understand the central circle for building their strong, victorious renaissance and their advancement on the map of international power across all fields of building strategic forces. I found that these countries operate from a methodological platform where the centrality of specialized, professional knowledge accumulates, and where exceptional, qualitative minds are available that encompass all intellectual forces for the paths of forming strategic thinking “a strategic sensing, forward-looking apparatus comprising elite experts and scientists in all specializations” that manages vast, dynamic information operations aimed at control, targeting, and direction toward achieving the state’s long-term strategy. They are supported by huge research centers concerned with providing cognitive backing for the state’s strategic decisions. Represented by a “Vital Institution for National Security Strategy,” it is considered the center of the state’s strategic mind, through which all decisions, policies, and projects at the tactical level—from ministries, states, and local systems—pass. This institution works on presidential approvals for implementing the state’s strategy and monitors the performance of governments and every action within the scope of governing authority.
Strategic management requires states to establish a sensing apparatus to read the future and manage operations that protect the rights of future generations from resource reserves and vital energy sources. These are modern states that have grasped the importance of building strategic thinking, which formulates vision, sets future paths and forward-looking plans, and enjoys sovereignty, national authority, and intellectual authority—just as the biological mind in humans works on balances, determines steps, and regulates systematic movement to shape and manufacture the future. This is not an elitist, intelligentsia idea but a realistic fact in our contemporary world. The absence of strategic thinking has deprived the Sudanese state of its true paths toward renaissance and progress in the convoy of nations, despite the existence of rich resources, human cadres, and scientific minds. Yet the defect lies in the national response to this existential requirement, which determines the existential goal: to be or not to be…!?
