In April this year, fighting started to break out in Khartoum between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The humanitarian impact was instantly felt. More than four million people have already been displaced, with almost a million crossing into neighbouring countries. It is unclear how many people have died, with official statistics proving unreliable, but the number is widely thought to be in the thousands.
The outbreak of violence in Sudan also created major turbulence for the country’s financial services space. Rania Zakaria, Data Centre Engineer and System Administrator at the Farmer’s Commercial Bank (FCB), tells African Banker that the most serious impact was that the bank’s access to the global Swift payments network became heavily restricted. The FCB is one of the largest banks in Sudan, providing the full range of banking services to corporate and retail clients, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), through its thirty-seven branches across the country. The FCB was one of the banks affected by the disruption of Swift services.
Restricted access to Swift meant that more often, it was impossible for the FCB to transfer funds successfully or fulfil client requests. The result in turn was that the bank’s clients were unable to access their money or transfer funds as desired. Connections, when they did appear, were intermittent at best.
“When the conflict started in Khartoum, all Swift services in Sudanese banks stopped completely,” Zakaria explains.
Mrs Salma Haroun Eliewah, Assistant General Manager at FCB, notes that this had devastating practical impacts for the bank’s clients. “When the war started in Khartoum, the Swift connections of all banks were down completely at times,” she tells African Banker.
“At the FCB, we were unable to receive humanitarian fund transfers, transfers sent from Sudanese people living abroad to help with their families’ living expenses, the salaries of both international and national NGO staff members, and those working for foreign companies and diplomatic missions,” Mrs Eliewah adds.
She also says that “export proceeds” were stuck, with the bank unable to repatriate funds from abroad, while as a country, “we were also unable to import medication or food” because of the instability in the banking system.
Rapid resolution
However, in just under a month, FCB had restored a secure connection to the Swift network and was conducting business broadly as normal – despite the violence and tension that continued to engulf the country. Central to this achievement was the assistance of StoneX, a global financial services company that offers institutional-grade digital platforms and technological solutions to clients around the world.
Prior to the outbreak of civil unrest in April, StoneX’s Senior Relationship Manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Sandrine Marionvalle-Jaines, visited Sudan to explore how StoneX could help local banks secure easier and stronger access to Swift. Then, the focus was on how banks could best manage the transition from Swift to ISO 20022, a new global payments messaging standard. StoneX was able to assist in this through its XMH ISO 20022 Convertor solution – which the company describes as “StoneX’s flexible solution to support institutions with their ISO migrations.”
Later, Marionvalle-Jaines and her counterparts at FCB explored how best to implement StoneX’s Payment Technology Service Bureau. But when Sudan became enveloped in unrest, the project suddenly shot to the top of FCB’s priorities. The two companies quickly commenced a project to migrate the bank’s Service Bureau to StoneX and thereby restore its Swift connection.
Marionvalle-Jaines recalls that “there were challenges on the way, often because of issues with internet access in Sudan which sometimes have slowed down the communication between our technical teams, but overall, given the circumstances, we can say that the project ran incredibly smoothly.”
She adds: “In less than a month, Farmer’s Commercial Bank had migrated to StoneX Payments Technology Service Bureau and thus benefited from dependable, secure, and consistent access to Swift.
“Even in ‘normal conditions’, to be able to migrate to a service bureau in one month is remarkable. To do so in times of unrest, while key team members were just settling down in their new lives in Cairo and others had to work in difficult conditions on site, is incredible.”
Zakaria is similarly impressed by the speed with which StoneX’s solution was implemented in extremely challenging conditions. She notes that “only a few weeks after the conflict started, FCB operations had been transferred to our Disaster Recovery Site in another city.
“StoneX advised that we consider using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) as the connectivity method – the VPN configuration took under two days,” she says. Mrs Eliewah adds that StoneX demonstrated considerable flexibility in how they grappled with the challenge of establishing a secure connection at the Disaster Recovery Site.
“Although we had to use our Disaster Recovery Site, located in another city hundreds of miles away and which is not as strong as the principal site, StoneX still managed to secure connectivity through using a VPN,” she tells African Banker. “This was all done in just a couple of days despite the fact we encountered problems at the Disaster Recovery Site.”
Karthik IG, Team Lead for Swift Operations at StoneX, recalls that the firms had to overcome numerous other challenges, too. “When we started with the onboarding process, for example, we could not get the Security Officer’s credentials from the existing service provider. We had our fair share of problems as a result of this.”
However, the team’s deep experience in the industry and flexibility amidst a volatile environment ensured they still managed to do the job. “We connected with Swift to create a new security officer to continue with our implementation […] we resolved all these issues under tight deadlines, we completed the testing successfully, we went live within two days after receiving the testing signoff. But the team’s determination and problem-solving abilities shone through. We adapted, learned, and grew stronger,” he says.
“The project’s success was a testament to our team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and support each other. Despite many challenges, we delivered the project on time, showcasing our commitment to our promises. I would like to thank the team: Avinash MG, Prashant Mandla, and Vishakha Sharma for their hard work, and also, of course, the FCB Team with whom it has been a pleasure and honour to collaborate,” Karthik adds.
Commitment is essential
How were StoneX and FCB able to work at such pace? Marionvalle-Jaines believes that motivation was an essential element.
“The whole team was particularly committed to this project as we realised early on the impact that it could have. With a restored and consistent access to Swift, Farmer’s Commercial Bank would have the potential to become a key player to help convey much-needed humanitarian funding to Sudan,” she tells African Banker. “In order to facilitate this extraordinary project, our dedicated technical teams had to be even more flexible and adaptable than usual – StoneX was available 24/7.
“The FCB team have also done a great job, they have been working day and night and over the weekends to complete the mission,” she adds. “Thanks to Magdi and Mohamed Ali for their dedication and the hard work.
“The team on-site in Sudan also worked incredibly hard in extremely difficult conditions. Their efforts, dedication, and commitment were exceptional. We could not have done it without them – the excellent collaboration between our two teams, and the commitment both shared, were key to our success.
“I am very proud to have been part of this project, making sure we did everything we could to deliver the best possible solution in record time.”
Mrs Eliewah concurs, highlighting the dedication demonstrated by StoneX personnel, who recognised the seriousness of the situation and therefore worked towards a speedy resolution. “StoneX provided us with an offer to use their platform to operate our Swift activities,” she says. “Their responses were always very fast, the team dedicated to do the mission was available 24/7 and were very helpful. They managed to extend their help to our team and remove all the obstacles.”
Results on the ground
The collaboration between StoneX and the FCB clearly yielded impressive results during a period of extreme turmoil in Sudan. That said, the two firms’ most impressive achievement may not have come
simply from their technological feat, notable though that was, but the difference they made to lives on the ground as a result.
Mrs Eliewah is particularly proud of how StoneX and the FCB were able to provide much-needed assistance to Sudan’s medical sector and to FCB’s traditional client base, farmers and agricultural workers, during a traumatic time.
“Once our Swift operations were up and running again, the first transaction we executed was to import medication used for patients suffering from kidney failure,” Mrs Eliewah says. “This medicine had been out of stock for almost three months, and many patients with this condition had already died in two big hospitals because of this shortage.
“We also managed to catch the agricultural season – the required fertilisers and equipment were both imported in time. In addition to this, we started receiving transfers from our customers again and could generally resume business as usual,” she adds.
Future collaborations are unlikely to be quite as dramatic as this one, but both parties are convinced that this shared experience stands them in good stead to work closely together again.
Marionvalle-Jaines says that “this is just the beginning of what we hope will be a long-term collaboration between StoneX Payments Technology and Farmer’s Commercial Bank.”
Mrs Eliewah is also hopeful that this partnership will yield results again soon. “Everybody in the StoneX team was very supportive and dedicated in their work,” she says.
“I believe this is the ideal start for a very long-lasting relationship.”
Salma and Rania asked us to also acknowledge the vital contributions of Magdi Elsheikh, Database Administrator at FCB, and Mohamed Ali Awad, Trade Finance Officer at FCB, for their work under the most challenging conditions.
