From farmland to housing: How war-driven displacement is transforming Kassala

As large numbers of people displaced by Sudan’s war seek safety in Kassala, the city is undergoing rapid and largely unplanned transformation. Growing demand for housing is driving the conversion of agricultural land into residential plots, creating new economic opportunities while placing increasing pressure on local food production. Kassala’s experience illustrates a key challenge facing communities affected by displacement: how to meet urgent housing needs without undermining the agricultural resources and livelihoods that are needed for long-term stability.

The hidden effects of displacement
War-driven displacement extends the consequences of conflict far beyond areas directly affected by violence. The arrival of displaced populations can rapidly alter the demographic, spatial, economic, and social structure of receiving communities. Sudden increases in population create additional demand for housing, basic services, employment, infrastructure, and land, often in contexts where local institutions already have limited capacity. The result is frequently an accelerated expansion of informal and peri-urban settlements, with housing developing faster than planning and public infrastructure can respond. These processes can reshape relations between displaced and host populations, influence access to services and economic opportunities, and place new pressures on local governance and resource allocation. In this sense, places of refuge are not passive recipients of displacement; they are themselves transformed by the pressures and opportunities generated by population movement.

One of the less visible but potentially long-term transformations concerns the changing economic value and use of land. Rising demand for housing can increase the attractiveness of land on the urban periphery, including areas previously used for agriculture. For landowners and households facing economic uncertainty, selling agricultural plots or converting them into residential land may provide a faster and more predictable return than continued farming, particularly where agriculture is constrained by high production costs, insecurity, weak markets, limited water access, or inadequate infrastructure. At the same time, displaced and host households may view land and housing investment as a means of securing shelter and preserving or building household assets. This can create a gradual shift in land-use incentives—from agricultural production toward residential and real-estate investment. Where planning and land governance are weak, this process may contribute to informal urban expansion, the loss of productive agricultural land, and longer-term changes in the economic foundations and spatial organization of receiving communities.

Competing pressures on the land
Displacement has introduced two urgent, competing pressures on Kassala's land: the immediate demand for housing and the critical need to safeguard local food production. As the residential land market booms, farm owners near the city are increasingly converting agricultural fields into housing plots, driven by the higher, more predictable returns and lower labor requirements of real estate compared to the escalating risks of farming. While this conversion provides a swift response to the shelter crisis, it may offer only a temporary solution. The continuous erosion of productive farmland could ultimately undermine local livelihoods, intensify food security challenges, and sow the seeds for future land-use conflicts and environmental strain in the region.

War and displacement dynamics
Since the onset of the Sudanese conflict, Kassala has transformed into a critical hub for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from various war-torn regions. Its perceived safety and pre-existing community ties have facilitated this influx, fundamentally altering the city's demographic composition. This population boom has intensified pressure on housing, public services, and local resources, simultaneously catalyzing profound social and economic changes, particularly in land use.

Key factors driving land-use transformation
Several interconnected factors are driving the conversion of agricultural land into residential areas in Kassala. The most immediate catalysts have been:

• Displacement as a catalyst: The arrival of large numbers of IDPs has created an acute and immediate need for shelter, food, and basic services, directly fueling demand for residential land.
• Attraction factors: Kassala's appeal as a destination stems from several "pull" factors: existing familial and social networks for newcomers, its strategic border location with Eritrea offering a potential secondary refuge if conflict escalates, and the widespread recognition that return to places of origin is neither imminent nor straightforward given the war's uncertainty and the scale of post-conflict reconstruction required.
• The economic recalculation by landowners: Faced with this new demand, agricultural landowners near the city have responded by pivoting from farming to real estate and rentals, which now present more lucrative and secure income streams.
• Compounding agricultural fragility: The shift away from farming is accelerated by pre-existing vulnerabilities in the cultivation sector, including climate change impacts such as rainfall variability, delayed agricultural seasons, and falling groundwater tables. These factors have increased the risk of crop failure, making farming an increasingly uncertain livelihood.
• War as a multiplier: The conflict has intensified these pressures by concentrating stressed populations in Kassala, dramatically inflating rental prices and fostering a prosperous real estate market. These conditions have forged "win-win" agreements between displaced families seeking housing and landowners seeking profit, effectively driving the conversion of agricultural land to residential and commercial use.
• A double-edged sword: While this transformation offers a rapid solution to the housing crisis and boosts the economic value of land, it simultaneously opens the door to new land disputes and environmental degradation. This is a process with profound short-term benefits and potentially unsustainable long-term consequences, threatening to create a "shadow economy" dependent on a resource that may not be renewable once the war ends.

Lessons from Kassala
Kassala’s experience offers important insights into how conflict-induced displacement can reshape urban development, livelihoods, and land use in areas far away from active fighting:

• Integrating housing and food security: The case of Kassala demonstrates that shelter and food security are inextricably linked and must be addressed in tandem. Responding to one (housing) by diminishing the other (agricultural land) risks creating a precarious balance that may undermine long-term stability.
• Economic reshaping by displacement: Large-scale displacement can fundamentally reshape local economies. The influx of IDPs increases demand for housing, goods, and services, stimulating investment, expanding rental markets, and creating new income opportunities for landowners and entrepreneurs.
• Opportunities for return and resettlement: The new residential areas being developed may facilitate the return of former residents with ties to Kassala, particularly if the regions they migrated to are now conflict-affected, potentially diversifying the city's population and economy.
• Weighing short-term gains against long-term risks: While real estate offers immediate, stable returns compared to the high-risk agricultural sector, the cumulative loss of farmland could irreversibly weaken food security, intensify reliance on external food sources, and fuel future land disputes, leaving the region more vulnerable in the post-war period.

From crisis response to strategic land management
Kassala's evolving landscape vividly illustrates how war and displacement can catalyze land-use change far from active conflict zones. The transformation from farmland to housing has generated new economic opportunities and provided essential shelter to displaced families, offering a pragmatic, albeit reactive, solution to an urgent crisis. However, this shift carries significant long-term risks. If this unplanned conversion proceeds without strategic oversight, Kassala risks depleting its agricultural base, compromising local food production, and inviting increased land conflicts and environmental degradation. The central challenge, therefore, is not to choose between housing and agriculture, but to manage their coexistence sustainably. This requires local authorities, landowners, and communities to collaborate on guiding urban expansion onto suitable non-agricultural lands, protecting high-value farmland, and ensuring that development equitably benefits both displaced populations and their host communities.

This Sudanese Perspectives blog post is written Magbola Abdo Aljabar Hissin, Mohamed Talib, Eman Ahmed Mohammed, and Magda Kamal Zakrea Abdullah. Hissin is an associate professor at the University of Nyala. Talib is an associate professor at the Red Sea University and the university's SNAC focal point.  Mohammed is head of the Department of Economics and Lectures at the University of Kassala, and Abdullah is a teaching assistant at the Department of Economics and Administrative Sciences at the University of Gadarif.

The views expressed in this post are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the SNAC project or CMI.