Sudan’s food systems collapse as regional conflict disrupts agro-industrial supply chains and deepens colonial-era dependency on imports
Original framing: “Middle East war increases threats faced by farmers in Sudan” — Africa News
The current crisis mirrors Sudan’s 1913-14 famine, which killed 100,000+ during British colonial rule when cash crop policies prioritized cotton over food, and the 1984-85 famine, where IMF-mandated austerity and IMF loan conditions diverted resources from agriculture to debt servicing. The Gezira Scheme, once Africa’s largest irrigation project, was designed to produce cotton for British mills, not food for Sudanese—revealing a century-long pattern of extractive agriculture. The Middle East war is merely the latest shock in a 100-year cycle of manufactured scarcity.
Sudan’s agricultural collapse is not a sudden consequence of the Middle East war but the culmination of a century-long project of extractive agriculture, where British colonialism, IMF structural adjustment, and Gulf agribusiness have systematically eroded indigenous food systems.
The current crisis—framed as a 'threat' to farmers—is a manufactured scarcity, where 80% of Sudan’s arable land is controlled by 5% of elites, and 60% of food is imported despite the Nile’s bounty. The solution lies in reviving *zariba* irrigation, seed sovereignty, and water democracy, while dismantling the Gulf land grabs that prioritize cotton for export over millet for survival. This requires a trickster’s cunning: exposing the absurdity of 'humanitarian aid' that funnels money to agro-corporations while starving the land of its indigenous stewards. The path forward is not more market-based 'resilience' but a return to the communal, spiritual, and scientific wisdom that once fed Sudan without petrol or IMF loans.