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Sudan
Irrigated Agriculture
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 .
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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