This study aims to explore the extent to which conventional methods used in the majority of relevant growth studies can successfully interpret the economic performance of a highly underdeveloped African country such as Sudan. Applying an ARDL boundstesting approach to cointegration proposed by Pesaran et al. (2001), we look into the short-run as well as long-run relationships between institutional and various other key economic variables and economic growth over the period 1972-2008. The empirical results obtained suggest that, for the Sudanese economy, the quality of the institutional environment is one of the most important factors in defining economic prosperity.