The new Sudanese government is making serious efforts to boost local tourism, which struggled under the leadership of the now deposed leader Omar al-Bashir.
Perennial conflicts and crises under the fallen long-time ruler coupled with a stringent visa requirement and poor infrastructure made Sudan unattractive to tourists.
However, Khartoum is now relaxing the visa regime, which includes the scrapping of a permit needed for travel outside the capital, Reuters quoted Graham Abdel-Qadir, undersecretary of the ministry of information, culture and tourism as saying.
“There has been already a rise of tourists in October and November thanks to the new system,” he said.
Sudan is said to have more pyramids than Egypt, although small.
Visitors will for first time enter the pyramids’ interior and are set to go into tombs underneath, part of Qatar’s $135 million aid.
Despite these pyramids, Sudan only attracted about 700,000 tourists in 2018 compared to 10 million in Egypt.
The country expects the number of tourist arrivals to go beyond 900,000 in 2020 and 1.2 million, the year after.
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