land & WateR 47unreliable, or contested, or both.
However many people there are in Sudan today, one thing is clear:
they rely heavily on an economy which is overwhelmingly agricultural
and pastoral. This assertion may seem surprising, given the apparent
economic importance of the oil industry; but few Sudanese live from
the profits of oil. They live from the crops they grow (mainly sorghum- dura in Arabic – and millet) and the herds they tend (camels, cattle,
sheep and goats). Farming and stock-raising are important activities all
over Sudan. Even the extreme north-west, towards the Libyan border,
an arid and effectively desert land, plays a part in livelihood strategies:
camel keepers who spend much of the year in Kordofan will drive their
herds to these remote lands to catch the gizzu, the brief grazing offered
by the tiny amount of rain which falls there, which feeds the camels
in the breeding season. In Kordofan itself, and in Darfur, even in areas
where the annual rainfall seems small, there is cultivation; people farm
seasonally along the edge of water courses; they plant to take advantage
of rain when it falls. And they move their livestock where the grazing
is: seasonally, following established patterns, but also opportunistically.
Thus, even in areas where the annual rainfall seems pitifully low, people
can live from the land and from their herds. To do so successfully over a
long period requires a degree of flexibility; being able to move the herds,
or plant where the rain is falling.
The ability to move and to make use of different types of land has
also been important for those who live on and around mountains. For
the people who live in the Nuba hills of South Kordofan – not a single
group, linguistically or culturally, but rather many different, small groups - the most successful livelihood strategies have involved a combination
of farming garden plots around their homes on the hills, and planting
grain seasonally on larger fields down in the plains. For pastoralists,
here and elsewhere, who need to move their herds seasonally for them
to survive, this transhumant grazing strategy has encouraged collec-
tive, kin-based notions of land tenure which emphasize the rights of
occasional use rather than outright ownership of land by individuals. A
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors consistent^ theme^ of^ the^ modern^ history^ of^ Sudan^ has^ been^ the^ tension^
(www.riftvalley.net).