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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
Control device for switching water flow to one of the many
canals used for irrigation in Al Jazirah, south of Khartoum
Courtesy Embassy of the Republic of Sudan, Washington
In 1991 Sudan had a large modern irrigated agriculture sector
totaling more than 2 million hectares out of about 84 million
hectares that are potentially arable. About 93 percent of the
irrigated area was in government projects; the remaining 7
percent belonged to private operations. The Nile and its
tributaries were the source of water for 93 percent of irrigated
agriculture, and of this the Blue Nile accounted for about 67
percent. Gravity flow was the main form of irrigation, but about
one-third of the irrigated area was served by pumps.
The waters of the Nile in Sudan have been used for centuries
for traditional irrigation, taking advantage of the annual Nile
flood. Some use of this method still continued in the early
1990s, and the traditional shaduf (a device to raise
water) and waterwheel were also used to lift water to fields in
local irrigation projects but were rapidly being replaced by more
efficient mechanized pump systems. Among the first efforts to
employ irrigation for modern commercial cropping was the use of
the floodwaters of the Qash River and the Baraka River (both of
which originate in Ethiopia) in eastern Sudan to grow cotton on
their deltas
(see
fig. 4). This project was started in the late
1860s by the Egyptian governor and continued until interrupted by
the turbulent period of the 1880s, leading to the reconquest of
the country by the British in 1899. Cultivation was resumed in
1896 in the Baraka Delta in the Tawkar area, but in the Qash
Delta it only resumed after World War I. Between 1924 and 1926,
canals were built in the latter delta to control the flood;
sandstorms made canals unfeasible in the Baraka. Between the
1940s and the 1970s, various projects were developed to irrigate
land. In 1982 both deltas yielded only one crop a year, watered
by the flood. Adequate groundwater, however, offered the eventual
possibility of using pump irrigation from local wells for
additional cropping or for supplementing any flood shortages.
The drought that affected Sudan in the 1980s was a natural
disaster that had a crushing effect on the country's irrigation
systems. In 1990-91, for instance, water was so scarce in the
Tawkar area that for the first time in 100 years the crops
failed.
As of 1990, the country's largest irrigation project had been
developed on land between the Blue and White Nile rivers south of
their confluence at Khartoum. This area is generally flat with a
gentle slope to the north and west, permitting natural gravity
irrigation, and its soils are fertile cracking clays well suited
to irrigation. The project originated in 1911, when a private
British enterprise, Sudan Plantations Syndicate, found cotton
suited to the area and embarked on what in the 1920s became the
Gezira Scheme, intended principally to furnish cotton to the
British textile industry. Backed by a loan from the British
government, the syndicate began a dam on the Blue Nile at Sannar
in 1913. Work was interrupted by World War I, and the dam was not
completed until 1925. The project was limited by a 1929 agreement
between Sudan and Egypt that restricted the amount of water
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan could use during the dry season. By 1931 the
project had expanded to 450,000 hectares, the maximum that then
could be irrigated by the available water, although 10,000 more
hectares were added in the 1950s. The project was nationalized in
1950, and was operated by the Sudan Gezira Board as a government
enterprise. In 1959 a new agreement with Egypt greatly increased
the allotment of water to Sudan, as did the completion in the
early 1960s of the Manaqil Extension on the western side of the
Gezira Scheme. By 1990 the Manaqil Extension had an irrigated
area of nearly 400,000 hectares, and with the 460,000 hectares
eventually attained by the original Gezira Scheme, the combined
projects accounted for half the country's total land under
irrigation.
In the early 1960s, the government set up a program to
resettle Nubians displaced by Lake Nubia (called Lake Nasser in
Egypt), which was formed by the construction of the Aswan High
Dam in Egypt. To provide farmland for the Nubians, the government
constructed the Khashm al Qirbah Dam on the Atbarah River and
established the Halfa al Jadidah (New Halfa) irrigation project.
Located west of Kassala, this project was originally designed to
irrigate about 164,000 hectares. In 1982 it was the only large
irrigation project in the country that did not use the waters of
the Blue Nile or White Nile. The resettlement was effected mainly
after completion of the Khashm al Qirbah Dam in 1964. Part of the
irrigated area was also assigned to local inhabitants. The main
commercial crops initially introduced included cotton, peanuts,
and wheat. In 1965 sugarcane was added, and a sugar factory
having a design capacity of 60,000 tons was built to process it.
The project enabled 200,000 hectares of land to be irrigated for
the first time. Heavy silting as well as serious problems of
drainage and salinity occurred. As a result, by the late 1970s
the reservoir had lost more than 40 percent of its original
storage capacity and was unable to meet the project water
requirements. These problems persisted in the early 1990s.
The multipurpose Roseires Dam was built in 1966 and power-
generating facilities were installed in 1971. Both the water and
the power were needed to implement the Rahad River irrigation
project located east of the Rahad River, a tributary of the Blue
Nile. The Rahad entered the Blue Nile downstream from the dam and
during the dry season had an insufficient flow for irrigation
purposes. Work on the initial 63,000 hectares of the project
began in the early 1970s, the first irrigation water was received
in 1977, and by 1981 about 80 percent of the prepared area was
reported to be irrigated. (In May 1988, the World Bank agreed to
provide additional funding for this and other irrigation
projects). Water for the project was pumped from the Blue Nile,
using electric power from the Roseires plant, and was transported
by an eighty-kilometer-long canal to the Rahad River (en route
underpassing the Dindar River, another Blue Nile tributary). The
canal then emptied into the Rahad above a new barrage that
diverted the combined flow from the two sources into the
project's main irrigation canal. Irrigation was by gravity flow,
but instead of flat field flooding, furrow irrigation was used,
because it permitted more effective use of machinery.
In the 1920s, private irrigation projects using diesel pumps
also had begun to appears in Al Khartum Province, mainly along
the White Nile, to provide vegetables, fruit, and other foods to
the capital area. In 1937 a dam was built by the Anglo-Egyptian
condominium upstream from Khartoum on the White Nile at Jabal al
Awliya to regulate the supply of water to Egypt during the August
to April period of declining flow. Grazing and cultivated land
along the river was flooded for almost 300 kilometers. The
government thereupon established seven pump irrigation projects,
partially financed by Egypt, to provide the area's inhabitants
with an alternative to transhumance.
This irrigation project eventually proved successful, making
possible large surpluses of cotton and sorghum and encouraging
private entrepreneurs to undertake new projects. High cotton
profits during the Korean War (1950-53) increased private
interest along the Blue Nile as well, and by 1958 almost half the
country's irrigated cotton was grown under pump irrigation.
During the 1960s, however, downward fluctuations in world cotton
prices and disputes between entrepreneurs and tenants led to
numerous failures of pump irrigation projects. In 1968 the
government assumed ownership and operation of the projects. The
government established the Agricultural Reform Corporation for
this purpose, and the takeover began that year with the larger
estates. Subsequently, as leases expired, the corporation
acquired smaller projects, until May 1970 when all outstanding
leases were revoked. A considerable number of small pump
operations that developed on privately owned land, chiefly along
the main Nile but also on the Blue Nile, continued to operate.
Since the 1950s, the government has constructed a number of
large pump projects, mostly on the Blue Nile. These have included
the Junayd project on the right bank of the Blue Nile east of the
Gezira Scheme. This project, with an irrigated area of about
36,000 hectares, went into operation in 1955 to provide an
alternative livelihood for nomadic pastoralists in the area. It
produced cotton until 1960, when about 8,400 hectares were
converted to sugarcane. A sugar factory built to process the crop
(with a potential capacity of 60,000 tons of sugar a year) opened
in 1962. In the early 1970s, the Japanese-assisted As Suki
project, also of 36,000 hectares, was established upstream from
Sannar to grow cotton, sorghum, and oilseeds. In the mid-1970s,
the government constructed a second project near Sannar of about
20,000 hectares. In addition to cotton and other crops such as
peanuts, about 8,400 hectares of the area were devoted to raising
sugarcane. The cane-processing factory, with a design capacity of
110,000 tons of sugar a year, opened in 1976. Several smaller
Blue Nile projects added more than 80,000 additional hectares to
Sudan's overall irrigated area during this time.
In the 1970s, when the consumption and import of sugar grew
rapidly, domestic production became a priority, and two major
pump-irrigated sugar plantations were established on the White
Nile in the Kusti area. The Hajar Asalaya Sugar Project, begun in
1975, had an irrigated area of about 7,600 hectares. The sugar
factory, completed in 1977, had a potential annual capacity of
110,000 tons. The Kinanah Sugar Project, which had almost 16,200
hectares under irrigation in 1981 and had a future potential of
over 33,000 hectares, was one of the world's largest sugar-
milling and refining operations. In 1985-86 production reached
more than 330,000 tons a year. This project, first proposed in
1971, was beset with funding problems and overruns that increased
overall costs from the equivalent of US$113 million estimated in
1973 to more than US$750 million when the plant opened officially
in early 1981.
The Kinanah Sugar Project, unlike the country's four other
government-owned sugar projects, was a joint venture--among the
governments of Sudan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and the Arab
Investment Company, the Sudan Development Corporation, Kinanah
Limited, and the AAAID, including local Sudanese banks. An
initial trial run in the 1979-80 cane season produced 20,000 tons
of sugar. Yield increased to an estimated 135,000 to 150,000 tons
the following season. Production at the Hajar Asalaya factory did
not get under way until the 1979-80 season because of cane and
sugar-processing difficulties. Problems have also affected the
other three state sugar factories, but as a result of proposed
World Bank management, the output total of these four government
operations for the 1984-85 season improved to nearly 200,000
tons. Output declined to 159,000 tons in 1985-86 because of the
drought. In 1989 sugarcane production reached 400,000 tons.
Data as of June 1991
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