ABSTRACT

The history of Sudan is a history of crushed developmental dreams and agricultural revolutions aborted. Ever since the days of Anglo-Egyptian colonialism, the discourse in and around Sudan has centred on the twin images of a land of drought and hunger on the one hand and a land of agricultural promise and abundance on the other. Successive regimes in Khartoum have consolidated a hydropolitical economy focused on the water–food nexus by the Nile and launched their own radical designs for a green revolution, coupled to a deeper integration of Sudan into the global economic system; while this has benefited domestic and foreign elites, its legacy in Sudan’s peripheries is one of inequality, environmental degradation and violent conflict.