SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Financial Times – Sudan wants to ‘turn the desert green’ in agricultural modernisation push
FT’s feature piece explores issues facing Sudan’s “neglected” agriculture industry, whereby “poor infrastructure is holding back development”.
Although agriculture provides a living for two-thirds of Sudan’s working population, Agriculture Minister Abdelgadir Turkawi said: “we are only using just about one-third of our arable land. It requires a huge investment to put all land into agricultural production.” Turkawi expressed intentions to build a strong basic infrastructure for cultivating land, value added elements for the agricultural production, and reduce fuel, fertilizer and fodder imports while increasing agricultural exports.
Big projects by DAL group, Sudan’s biggest conglomerate and one of the country’s top private agricultural investors, face problems such as Sudan’s ageing export infrastructure, including its ports. DAL chairman Osama Daoud said agriculture should add value processing by manufacturing and be integrated with animal production.