The Sudan Handbook

274 thE sudan handbook

The Condominium

Created through conquest, the new Anglo-Egyptian Condominium regime
was imbued with a military character. The first soldier-administrators in
charge of governing the Condominium used force to establish and then
to maintain order. They were gradually superseded by the more profes-
sional, administrative elite of the Sudan Political Service (SPS), staffed
predominantly by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge universities and
driven by an imperialist blend of patriotism, desire for adventure, and
moral purpose founded on a profound belief in the superiority of their
own values. The way in which the SPS developed partly reflected broader
changes in employment during the Condominium: a salaried civil service
and more institutionalized opportunities for merchants. The social
composition of the international presence in Sudan also became more
diverse, and English became the main language of banking, commerce,
science, and government.
The Condominium’s economic policy was driven principally by the
desire to generate revenue to support the state. This simple principle led
to a focus on developing exports, most notably, the Gezira cotton scheme
in the area between the Blue and White Niles. Inaugurated in 1925, by 1950
more than 1.1 million feddans (1.15 million acres or 450,000 hectares) was
under irrigation in the Gezira. Cotton became the mainstay of Sudan’s
overseas trade. The possibility of wider economic development was only
belatedly addressed in the late Condominium, and involved the employ-
ment of many Europeans to manage the Gezira scheme and plan other
projects. In the face of the conservative paternalism of the SPS, there
were no attempts at major economic development in southern Sudan
until the Zande Scheme, which was planned and initiated in south-
west Equatoria during the Second World War. This experiment sought
to effect ‘the complete social emergence and the social and economic
stability’ of the Zande through a comprehensive development project
featuring education, cotton cultivation, light industrial development, and
transport infrastructure. It was intended to demonstrate a new model
of development that would not be reliant on exports, with cotton being
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors

(www.riftvalley.net).