Gezira

The Gezira model: one canal, a grid of laterals, and 880,000 hectares of irrigated farmland In 1925, a single canal changed the history of central Sudan. The Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile and the network of irrigation channels it fed transformed the Gezira Plain — a flat, semi-arid expanse between the Blue and White Niles — into one of Africa’s most productive agricultural zones. At its peak, the Gezira Scheme irrigated over 880,000 hectares of cotton, sorghum, and wheat, generating a third of Sudan’s export revenues and employing hundreds of thousands of families. The concept was simple: bring water to flat land that already had soil. ...

175 million cultivable acres — fewer than 20 million farmed — the world's greatest untapped agricultural frontier In 1946, the British colonial administration commissioned a study of Sudan’s agricultural potential. The findings were unambiguous: Sudan possessed more cultivable land than any country in Africa, fed by the Nile and its tributaries, with a climate capable of producing cotton, sorghum, sesame, groundnuts, gum arabic, fruits, and vegetables at commercial scale. The report concluded that Sudan could, with proper investment, feed not just its own population but much of the African continent and the Arab world. ...

World Bank · 2015 · 226 pages The most important economic document in the Kandaka library. Written at the moment Sudan hit rock bottom — 75% of fiscal revenue gone with South Sudan, the Gezira Scheme in collapse, gold and gum arabic the only remaining export earners — it is the most comprehensive and actionable analysis of Sudan’s economic predicament and potential. Core Finding A 2% annual increase in crop agriculture productivity would: ...