Sudan’s army chief and de facto head of state, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, has appointed diplomat Dafallah Al-Haj Ali as acting prime minister, the country’s transitional sovereign council announced on Wednesday. The move comes just weeks after the army reclaimed large parts of Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia.
In the same announcement, Burhan also approved the appointment of Ambassador Omar Seddik as Sudan’s new foreign minister, signalling a broader reshuffling of the transitional government amid a fragile and ongoing conflict.
The appointments follow the army’s military gains in March, when it pushed RSF fighters from most of the capital after nearly two years of war. Despite the army’s progress in Khartoum, the RSF remains entrenched in parts of western Sudan, and the broader conflict continues to divide the country into competing zones of control.
The war, which erupted in April 2023, was sparked by tensions over integrating the RSF into the regular military following their joint effort to remove a civilian-led transitional government. That uneasy alliance had governed after the fall of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
In February, Burhan signalled a shift away from power-sharing arrangements, promising constitutional changes that would centralise authority under the army. Military sources later confirmed the revised charter would eliminate any formal role for civilians or the RSF, granting the military full control over the appointment of a technocratic prime minister and cabinet.
