If Sudan starts to crumble, the shock waves will spread.

Sudan cannot afford to be on the wrong side of history. The north and south will have to work together, but will they?

I left Sudan when I was 25 or 26 years old. If I had stayed, I would never have ended up being an entrepreneur. You can have the qualities, but if you don't have the environment, you just wither away. It's like a fish: take it out of water, it will not survive.

Sudan has been an experiment that resonated across Africa: if we, the largest country on the continent, reaching from the Sahara to the Congo, bridging religions, cultures and a multitude of ethnicities, were able to construct a prosperous and peaceful state from our diverse citizenry, so too could the rest of Africa.

Africa's success stories are delivering the whole range of the public goods and services that citizens have a right to expect and are forging a path that we hope more will follow.

If economic progress is not translated into better quality of life and respect for citizens' rights, we will witness more Tahrir Squares in Africa.