Sudan

Sudan was engineered as a cotton colony—a single crop, a single buyer, a single piece of infrastructure so vast it became a template for colonial development across Africa. When that system fractured, so did the nation.

The Nile created the opportunity. Where the Blue and White Nile converge at Khartoum, a vast plain called the Gezira slopes gently away from the riverbanks—perfect for gravity-fed irrigation without pumping costs. The British recognized this in 1904 when they first grew cotton experimentally. By 1911, the colonial administration had partnered with the Sudan Plantations Syndicate to test large-scale cultivation. The Sennar Dam, completed in 1925, transformed the experiment into the largest irrigation project in the world.

The Gezira Scheme was designed with precision: water from the Blue Nile flowed through canals to tenant farms covering 300,000 feddans, later expanded to 2.1 million. Long-staple cotton fed the textile mills of Lancashire. Although Sudanese tenants nominally farmed the land, final authority over production, pricing, and marketing rested with British capital and colonial officials. By the 1930s, Gezira revenue frequently exceeded 20% of total government receipts. Cotton accounted for roughly 50% of all exports—a dependency that persisted for decades after independence.

Independence in 1956 transferred the Sudan Gezira Board from colonial to state control but didn't diversify the economy. Civil war between the north and south—driven by ethnic, religious, and resource competition—erupted almost immediately and continued intermittently until South Sudan's independence in 2011. That separation removed 75% of Sudan's oil reserves, collapsing the revenue base that had supplemented declining cotton.

The subsequent decade brought authoritarian rule under Omar al-Bashir, international sanctions, and economic stagnation. His overthrow in 2019 raised hopes for transition; instead, tensions between the military and the Rapid Support Forces exploded into full civil war in April 2023. The conflict reached the Gezira region itself, with fighting destroying infrastructure that had irrigated cotton for a century.

Today, Sudan's economy has effectively collapsed. The RSF controls much of the agricultural heartland, including areas around the Gezira Scheme. Gold mining—much of it artisanal and smuggled—has replaced cotton as the primary export earner, but revenues flow to armed factions rather than government coffers. The World Food Programme estimates that over half the population faces acute food insecurity. Displacement has reached millions; infrastructure damage will take decades to repair.

By 2026, Sudan's trajectory depends entirely on whether fighting can be stopped before the agricultural and irrigation systems sustain irreversible damage. The Gezira Scheme, which once demonstrated how colonial engineering could transform a landscape, now demonstrates how civil war can destroy a century of accumulated infrastructure. The Nile still flows. Whether anything remains to irrigate is the question.