fRom slaVEs to oil 133being traded from south to north. At the same time there was a move
to exploit a wider range of natural resources in the north, through the
establishment of commercial agricultural projects, notably the irrigated
cotton-growing scheme in the Gezira.
This scheme, which was intended to be the foundation of Sudan’s new
economy, came to demonstrate the dangers of national dependence on a
single commodity. When it was formulated in the 1920s, with the inten-
tion of sourcing raw cotton to feed the textile industry in Lancashire,
in the United Kingdom, international prices were high. They collapsed
in the Great Depression. And the effect of the Gezira scheme was to
further distort the country’s economic structure. An awareness of its
huge importance for the national economy meant that available resources
came to be even more closely concentrated in northern areas. Moreover,
servicing the massive debt owed by Sudan to British bond-holders
financing the scheme put a huge burden on government finances which
was particularly acute whenever cotton prices (and therefore government
revenues from the scheme) fell; service payments accounted for as much
as one third of government revenue in the 1930s.
Beyond cotton, Sudan under the Condominium also saw the develop-
ment of a number of other cash crops, including gum arabic, sesame,
groundnuts and sugar. Attempts to systematize the trade in livestock
and livestock products ran up against infrastructural constraints, such
as inadequate veterinary services. However, agricultural diversification
was hindered not only by the fact that the international prices of most
commodities fluctuated wildly during the interwar period, but also by
British colonial policy. In order to protect government revenue from taxes
on imports of products such as coffee and tobacco, there was an explicit
drive to discourage the development of processing industries or even
the planting of a greater range of cash crops, especially in the south of
the country. As a result, Sudan’s dependence on cotton increased, with
the Gezira project joined by a similar irrigated scheme at Tokar and the
development of rain-fed cotton-growing in Nuba and Equatoria.
As the international cotton market boomed after the Second WorldThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors War, Sudan saw an acceleration of economic growth and developed even
(www.riftvalley.net).