Discussion Papers

× The paper reviews the performance of the Sudanese agricultural sector over the last three decades (1990 through 2021) and examines the drivers of that performance. Key findings show that the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product was greater during the 1990–1999 period than during the other two decades; agricultural productivity as well was higher in that decade than in the subsequent two decades. The sector has remained a major source of employment and livelihood. During the last decade reviewed (2010–2021), the sector regained its leading position as a generator of foreign currency. Public investment in agriculture and government spending allocated to the sector were lower than in other countries in the region. Political elites have generally lacked commitment to development plans in the sector. Political developments in Sudan have disrupted more recent efforts to revitalize the sector. Climate change, as manifested in rising temperature, declining rainfall, and drought, is a substantial determinant currently affecting the sector. The paper discusses some broad recommendations for improving the performance of the Sudanese agricultural sector.

× The paper analyzes the determinants of long-term individual and community resilience for food and nutrition security in South Sudan using data from multiple sources including key informant interviews, household and community surveys, and georeferenced secondary data on climate, agricultural production, irrigation, and market access. Major agricultural development constraints as well as incidence of and responses to shocks and conflict are described. Climate-crop modeling and simulation methods are used to evaluate the constraints and to identify crop investment options. Then, a spatial typology of food and nutrition security is used to evaluate the constraints along the production-to-nutrition pathway to identify interventions that target different segments of the chain and options for improving agriculture and broader development outcomes. These are classified into production, access, and utilization efficiencies, and whether the underlying constraints are structural (i.e., level of efficiency remains the same over time) or stochastic (i.e., level of efficiency changes over time). The analysis is focused on about a dozen selected counties.
The results show that development challenges are being compounded by climate change, with significant increases in the mean annual rainfall and daily maximum temperature for the warmest month. Between 1975 and 2016 for example, the mean annual rainfall in the selected counties increased by 40-111 mm/year, with a rise in the intensity of 0.2-1.3 mm per event. The daily maximum temperature for the warmest month increased by 2.0-3.2°C. If these trends (especially for temperature) continue to 2050, crop yields are projected to decline in the selected counties on average by 12-23% for sorghum, 9-18% for maize, 19-30% for groundnuts, and 16-24% for cassava. In general, there is an inverse-U-shaped the relationship between temperature and yields. While the peak of the inverse U varies by crop, time of the growing season, and other factors, crops in South Sudan are typically on the downward sloping side of the inverse U implying that increases in temperature will decrease yields (and at an increasing rate).
Results of a spatial typology show that a majority (78%) of the selected counties are classified as having medium production efficiency and 22% as low production efficiency, none with high production efficiency. With respect to access to nutritious food, 55%, 29%, and 17% of the counties are classified as low, medium, and high access efficiency, respectively. And regarding the conversion of food access into nutritional status, 37%, 26%, and 37% are classified as low, medium, and high utilization efficiency, respectively. Whereas production efficiency mostly remains constant over time, (with only 24% of the counties recording substantial changes in efficiency level), access and utilization efficiency appear more volatile (with substantial changes observed in 52% of the counties). These results suggest that the access segment of the production-to-nutrition value chain is the most constraining, followed by the utilization segment.
The differences in the results across counties reflect differences in development constraints across the country, which are also described. Implications of the results for building long-term individual and community resilience are discussed, in addition to areas for further research. Given the complex nature of crises facing South Sudan, our findings call for a comprehensive policy approach to address not only the urgent humanitarian crisis but also to help restore agricultural production systems as well as support communities to cope, recover, and build their
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resilience to shocks and crises. This is in line with the Partnership for Recovery and Resilience (PfRR) integrated programme framework for resilience which comprises four pillars: i) re-establish access to basic services, ii) rebuild trust in people and institutions, iii) restore productive capacities, and iv) nurture effective partnerships.

× The Nile is the lifeblood of northeastern Africa, and its roles for and interdependency with the national economies it traverses and binds together grow as it moves from source to sea. With rapid economic development—population growth, irrigation development, rural electrification, and overall economic growth—pressures on the Nile’s water resources are growing to unprecedented levels. These drivers of change have already contributed to stark changes in the hydropolitical regime, and new forms of cooperation and cross-sectoral collaboration are needed, particularly in the Eastern Nile Basin countries of Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan. As direct sharing of water resources is hampered by unilateral developments, the need has increased for broader, cross-sectoral collaboration around the water, energy, and food sectors. This study is conducted to assess and understand the challenges of and opportunities for cooperation across the water-energy-food nexus nationally in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, as well as regionally across the Eastern Nile. To gather data, the paper uses an e-survey supplemented with key informant interviews geared toward national-level water, energy, and agriculture stakeholders, chiefly government staff and researchers. Findings from the survey tools suggest that most respondents strongly agree that collaboration across the water, energy, and agriculture sectors is essential to improve resource management in the region. At the same time, there is ample scope for improvement in collaboration across the water, energy, and food sectors nationally. Ministries of water, energy, and food were identified as the key nexus actors at national levels; these would also need to be engaged in regional cross-sectoral collaboration. Respondents also identified a wide range of desirable cross-sectoral actions and investments—both national and regional—chiefly, joint planning and operation of multipurpose infrastructure; investment in enhanced irrigation efficiency; joint rehabilitation of upstream catchments to reduce sedimentation and degradation; and investment in alternative renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar energy.

× Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan at different geographical and time scales between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict. In the future the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 21 to 30 percent under a median scenario, taking into account uncertainties in both the climate projection and the estimate of the response of violence to temperature variations. Extreme temperature shocks are found to strongly affect the likelihood of violence as well, but the predictive power is hindered by substantial uncertainty. Our paper also sheds light on the vulnerability of areas with particular biophysical characteristics or with vulnerable populations.

× "Despite the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which brought to an end 20 years of civil war in the Sudan, this country continues to experience smaller-scale conflicts, particularly around access to and control of natural resources. Some observers lay the blame for this on ethnopolitical or tribal divisions. However, this paper argues that there are a variety of factors at play behind these conflicts, notably the combination of resource scarcity with a crisis of governance that is particularly evident in transitional areas like the Kordofan region. To gain a sense of the range of conflicts around natural resources in Kordofan, the authors reviewed existing records such as government archives; conducted interviews with politicians, federal and state government officials, farmers, pastoralists, and Native Administration leaders; and investigated findings in the field. Interviews also served to examine people’s knowledge about government natural resource policies and their perceptions of the roles played by government and the Native Administration in conflict management and resolution. The paper presents 20 cases of stalemate competition or open conflict over natural resources in Kordofan. The cases center on (1) conflicts between farmers and herders over stock routes, gum arabic forests, gardens, watering points, and the use of dars (tribal homelands); (2) conflicts between herders and small farmers and government agents or large private investors over mechanized farming areas, oil infrastructure, and other private investments. In their analysis of natural resource governance in Sudan, the authors find that natural resources policies have often been weak foundations for sustainable resource use, and in some cases they have actually contributed to conflict. In addition, the volatile path of government devolution efforts concerning natural resources has undermined governance of these resources. While conflicts between farmers and herders were managed relatively successful in the past through customary land tenure systems, this is less and less the case today as a result of larger herds, reduced water and pasture, instability and prejudices stirred up by the war, and a proliferation of arms among herders. In addition, patron–client politics, weak natural resource management and development policies, and top-down government institutions have encouraged ethnic polarization and social divisions. The authors find that measures are needed to reform the process of natural resource management, making land use planning more comprehensive, building on local livelihood systems, and increasing public spending on infrastructure. In addition, sustainable property rights on farmland and on mobile resources should be redefined, and informal conflict management mechanisms restored to the extent that this is possible." -- Authors' Abstract

× "In this paper we present the findings of a qualitative investigation into some dimensions and implications of policy volatility in the realms of natural resource (NR) governance and devolution in contemporary Sudan, with particular reference to Greater Kordofan. Our goal is to map out some aspects of the interplay between volatility, disempowerment processes affecting both state agents and the rural population, and certain problems of governance that are characteristic but not unique to Sudan. In particular, we argue that volatility is a dimension of poor governance worthy of investigation in its own right, as it is a primary ingredient of what we may call a “self-disempowering state,” where adaptive learning in policy processes is impeded and successful devolution faces particularly complex obstacles. The policy domain that we consider for analysis includes laws, regulations and policies enacted under the label of “Decentralization, Land Allocation and Land Use,” as well as large development projects supporting the decentralization or devolution of NR management to local communities in the region." -- from Authors' Abstract

× Parallel to the growing attention being devoted to the relationship between empowerment and development, an increasing number of tools are being developed to measure empowerment and determine the link between these two phenomena. This paper details the methodological processes used to construct, test and possibly refine one such instrument, the Community Capability Index, an innovative tool to measure community capabilities in the domain of natural resource governance. Empirical reference is made to research conducted in 85 villages in North and South Kordofan, Sudan. Following this, the paper presents findings from analyses of the determinants of community capabilities, including geographic, economic, and institutional variables. The results suggest that in Kordofan a number of factors influence capabilities. Possessing a village market, proximity to the nearest town, and access to credit are economic variables that have a significant and highly positive effect on community capabilities. Regarding the environment, capabilities are found to be greater where there is more rainfall, but access to groundwater from lower-quality aquifers and cracking clay soils have negative impacts on capabilities. War shocks, as might be expected, have a negative and significant effect. Particularly interesting is the generally weak correlation found between capabilities and wealth, along with strong correlations between institutional and social dimensions of community capabilities and participation in donor-funded projects. This combination suggests that development interventions must take into account the non-identity of poverty reduction and empowerment processes, at least when the targeted agents are communities rather than individuals or households. The findings reveal areas for further investigation into the relationship between the determinants and dimensions of capabilities, and the potential significance of the relationship for some dimensions suggests context-specific interventions to strengthen the relevant capabilities." -- from Authors' Abstract

× People in developed countries consume about 3 to 4 times as much meat and fish, and 5 to 6 times as much milk products per capita as in developing Asia and Africa. Yet, meat, milk, and fish consumption per capita has barely grown in the developed countries as a whole over the past 20 years. Growth in per capita consumption and production has occurred in developing regions such as developing Asia, where income has increased from a low level and urbanization is rapid. By 2020, according to projections by IFPRI's IMPACT model, the share of the developing countries in total world meat consumption will rise from 47 percent currently to 64 percent. The net impact on food access for the poor of the world will depend on their role as producers of meat, milk, and fish, their role as consumers, and their need for protein. The amount of cereals per capita consumed directly by rural people will decline as they diversify their diets into animal proteins, but feed use will increase greatly. Available evidence suggests that on balance poor consumers in developing countries will probably be better off.