The Economist.
Hi there, this is Jason Palmer, co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs show.
This is Editor's Picks, where we take an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist
and get someone with better diction than mine to read it aloud.
Have a listen.
Maybe impossible to find a single place that sums up the devastation caused by Sudan's civil war,
now deep into its fourth year.
But as we report, after a rare trip to the country, its ruined capital comes close.
Before the war erupted in April 2023, Khartoum was a bustling city of around 7 million people.
Today, its centre is deserted.
Bare husks remain of government buildings.
Smart homes and luxury hotels are in ruins.
The streets, charred by fighting, are silent.
So many bodies have been dumped that human skulls spill out of makeshift mass graves.
And still, the killing continues.
Khartoum is the scarred heart of one of Africa's worst conflicts this century.
War has destroyed swathes of the continent's third largest country and driven 14 million people from their homes.
Hundreds of thousands have probably been killed by fighting, famine and bursts of genocidal violence.
The only recent African war, whose horrors are comparable, is the one in Congo,
which may have killed more than five million people in the early 2000s.