Khalid Idris · Academic study · Available in the Kandaka Library
The most rigorous empirical study of Sudan’s industrial geography available in the Kandaka library. Idris traces the location decisions of Sudan’s manufacturing sector from the colonial period through 1980, using systematic data to show that the geographical concentration of industry in Khartoum was not a natural market outcome — it was produced by deliberate colonial infrastructure investment and perpetuated by post-independence policy failure.
Core Finding
Manufacturing in Sudan followed infrastructure, and infrastructure followed the colonial export logic: railways, ports, and administrative investment were concentrated in Khartoum and along the Nile-to-Port Sudan corridor, because that was the route cotton took to British mills. Manufacturing that did develop located where infrastructure existed — which meant Khartoum. The periphery supplied raw materials and received manufactured imports. This spatial pattern, established under colonialism, was not corrected by post-independence governments and has deepened over time into the regional inequalities that define Sudan’s political geography.
The Prime Base Theory
Idris develops a theory of industrial location specific to developing countries — what he calls the Prime Base model — arguing that standard Western location theories (Weber’s least-cost model, market area approaches) do not account for the role of colonial infrastructure legacy in determining where manufacturing concentrates. In Sudan, Khartoum is the Prime Base: the location where infrastructure, skilled labour, administrative services, and market access all concentrate, making it the rational choice for manufacturers even when factor costs would suggest other locations. Breaking this concentration requires deliberate counter-investment — not just market signals.
What It Means for Reconstruction
Post-war reconstruction will face the same Prime Base dynamic. If reconstruction investment flows to Khartoum because that is where institutional capacity, infrastructure, and markets are concentrated, the regional concentration of manufacturing will deepen rather than correct. Deliberate decentralisation of industrial investment — to the agricultural processing zones of Kordofan, the Red Sea coastal economy, the Blue Nile agricultural belt — requires an active industrial location policy, not just market-led recovery.
This paper should be read alongside the Ten Year Economic Plan analysis and the Ideas essay The Ladder Sudan Was Never Allowed to Climb.