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Sectoral Structure and Political Economy in Sudan Osman Suliman Millersville University Introduction Sudan, the largest country in Africa, has an area of one million square miles, of which more than two hundred million acres are arable. However, less than 10 percent of the total cultivable land has been cultivated . Further, it has been reported that less than 50 percent of the three Nile's water resources are utilized.1 Moreover, Sudan has been found to possess considerable oil deposits. In fact, Chevron's Unity Fields are estimated to contain as much as 400 million barrels.2 These resources would provide the impetus for higher domestic investments and the necessary foreign exchange that complements it. This abundance of resource endowments attracted foreign investments (especially Arab capital) in the early seventies in an attempt to turn Sudan into a "breadbasket." However, foreign capital inflow has been thwarted by the instability of the political system and the concomitant investment risk. Meanwhile, agriculture has continued to be the mainstay of the economy, despite the rising worldwide tendency among developed countries toward economic integration and the consequent An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Sudan Studies Association meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, May 1996. I wish to thank Jay Spaudling for helpful comments. I am also indebted to A. L. Ijaimi of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Statistics, Sudan, for providing me with the necessary data surveys. The usual disclaimer applies. ^Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 4, No. 1 (New Series) 1997, pp. 7-20 8 Osman Suliman protectionist policies against agricultural producers in developing countries .3 As such, production in Sudan mayhave to depend more on domestic resources to defray the high cost of foreign inputs.4 This paper examines the sectoral structure and political economy of Sudan. In the process, the hotly debated issue of traditional versus modern agriculture will be explored.5 The main sectors of the economy are agriculture and industry on the production side, and foreign trade on the expenditure side. However, agriculture sets the basis for the two other sectors. Whereas industry may onlybe important by virtue ofits promising potential, foreign trade has for long been die largest component of national income (ranging from 35 percent to 40 percent of GDP in the lastforty years), showing a very thin domestic market for cash crops. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a critical discussion of die structural set-up of the agricultural sector; Section 3 examines the cross-sectoral linkages of agriculture to industry; Section 4 gives a brief account of foreign trade and financial structure, and how they impinge on the economy; Section 5 offers some concluding remarks. Agriculture: Traditional versus Modern Subsectors The agricultural sector is dominant in the Sudanese economy. Agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of the total gross domestic product (GDP) at factor cost, 75 percent of the GDP in the production sector, and 90 percent of the labor force.6 Over 80 percent of the population are farmers (mostìy peasants), farm workers, or nomadic herdsman. Agriculture also provides inputs for most of die industrial sector comprising mainly agro-industry. Added to this, agriculture is the source of virtually all exports. The main exportable cash crops are cotton, sesame, groundnuts, gum-arabic, and livestock. Crops grown mainly for domestic consumption are sugarcane, wheat, sorghum, and millet. Cotton contributes , on average, to about 50 percent of total exports, while oil-seeds (including cotton-seeds) comprise about 20 percent. Cotton exports' instability impinges significantly on total exports' instability. Using a five-year moving average, the percentage deviation from trend for cotton is about 20 percent as compared to about 13 percent for total exports. The agricultural sector is subdivided into three subsectors: (1) Irrigated public schemes, (2) Mechanized rainfed schemes, and (3) Sectoral Structure and Political Economy in Sudan 9 Traditional rainfed schemes. The irrigated and mechanized rainfed schemes are referred to as modern subsectors. Irrigated public schemes specialize in the production of cotton, groundnut, sorghum, wheat, and sugarcane. However, sorghum together with sesame is largely produced in the mechanized rainfed schemes. Traditional rainfed agriculture comprises the largest subsector and produces gum-arabic, groundnuts, sesame...

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