402. Land & Water
Justin Willis, omeR egemi
& PhiliP WinteR
The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of Sudan was the largest of the
political units created by imperialism in Africa. It has grown and shrunk
a little over time, gaining Darfur in 1916 and losing a corner to Italian-
ruled Libya in 1934, taking its overall size to just below one million square
miles (2.4 million square kilometres). But the territory controlled, at
least nominally, by the Sudanese state remained – up until 2011 – larger
than that ruled by any other African government.
The Condominium was divided for most of its existence into nine
provinces. Six of these came to be considered as ‘northern’, and the
other three as ‘southern’. These provinces were subdivided in the 1970s,
restored briefly as states in a major administrative restructuring in 1991,
then divided again in 1994, in a further restructuring which produced
26 states. (One of these, West Kordofan, was subsequently merged
into two of the others). Although Sudan has had a state system for two
decades, it is not uncommon to hear people using the old system of nine
provinces.
The terrain covered by these states and provinces ranges from the
Nubian desert in the far north – the easternmost extension of the Sahara,
where there is virtually no rainfall – to the swamps and forests a thousand
miles (1600 kilometres) southward, where up to 200 centimetres of
seasonal rain a year swells rivers, brings floods and feeds a permanent
swamp in the central southern plains. In the far north, along the Twenty-
second Parallel, Sudan borders Egypt; in the south, around the Fourth
Parallel, just north of the equator, it marches with the countries of eastThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors and^ central^ Africa.
(www.riftvalley.net).