More People, More Development

Pressures in Sudan

The Nile River system, with the confluence of the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers at Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, is a major source of water for the country.

It, as in Egypt, has also become a strained water resource, especially in light of the country’s growing human populations and migrations of younger generations from rural to urban areas.

Development policy has therefore called on increased exploitation of the NSAS as an alternative, in part fuelled by the country’s strong oil revenue base.

Economic activities in the NSAS are largely of a primary nature such as small-scale agriculture, animal husbandry and mining. The NSAS area in Sudan is predominantly desert in the north and central parts changing to semi-desert in the south. It has a population size of about 285,000 people with 77% living in North Darfur State and the rest in the Northern State. Groundwater is a major source of water. A recent drought severely affected some 100,000 people living away from the Nile.

To the north, life is confined to the narrow, low areas adjacent to the Nile. Government policy has called for increased wheat production in the two northern states which has further strained limited water resources there. Major switches in agricultural production from traditional staple foods such as sorghum to wheat are in part the result of changing consumer preferences in cities.

Khartoum is increasingly using groundwater from the ‘Khartoum aquifer’ which is separate from but directly linked to the NSAS. Recent studies have found significant pollution impacts in the Khartoum aquifer, especially through bacterial contamination of supply wells from home septic tank systems, forcing some wells to be closed. Some chemical contamination has also been reported including heavy metals from industrial waste disposal through deep injection wells.