{"id":55371,"date":"2025-10-06T23:43:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=55371"},"modified":"2025-10-06T23:43:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:43:35","slug":"a-new-kind-of-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/a-new-kind-of-management\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Kind of Management\u2026!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Altahir Satti<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister issued a decision to establish a special irrigation unit for the Gezira Scheme \u2014 one that would report to the project\u2019s administration technically, financially, and administratively.
\nBut there\u2019s another version of the story: reports say the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation has issued a counter-decision canceling the Prime Minister\u2019s order, forming a committee for the unit headed by the Undersecretary of Irrigation, with the Gezira Scheme Governor as his deputy, and restoring the unit\u2019s authority to the Ministry of Irrigation.<\/p>\n

The minister\u2019s move to overturn the Prime Minister\u2019s decision isn\u2019t, by itself, shocking or shameful \u2014 the issue runs deeper than comprehension.
\nThe late Hassan Mukhtar once attended a fierce Al-Hilal vs. Al-Merreikh football match, where the field was dusty and the players exchanged punches. Saddened, a friend sighed, \u201cImagine what Europeans would think if they saw this!\u201d
\nMukhtar calmly replied: \u201cThey\u2019d think it\u2019s a new sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

So yes \u2014 the minister\u2019s cancellation of his superior\u2019s order isn\u2019t strange at all; it only shows that the country is entering a new era of \u201cinnovative management\u201d \u2014 imported straight from Switzerland.
\nAnd yet, the irony remains: if the Prime Minister truly wants to create a separate irrigation unit for the Gezira Scheme, why did he abolish the Ministry of Irrigation in the first place by merging it with Agriculture?
\nPerhaps he did so just to establish an irrigation unit for every single agricultural project \u2014 all part of this new management model.<\/p>\n

Ask any irrigation expert and they\u2019ll tell you:
\nBack in 1991, when Prof. Ahmed Ali Qunif was Minister of Agriculture and Dr. Yaqoub Abu Shura was Minister of Irrigation, the country produced enough wheat in a single season to feed Sudan and export the surplus \u2014 to Egypt and Kenya, some 600,000 tons.
\nIt was the first and last time Sudan achieved self-sufficiency in wheat \u2014 through national will and effective coordination.<\/p>\n

After God, the Ministry of Irrigation played a decisive role in that success.
\nThe late Abu Shura crisscrossed the country, expanding irrigated farmland from 2 million to 2.8 million feddans within just three years \u2014 including an increase in Gezira\u2019s irrigated area from 1.3 million to 1.7 million feddans.
\nAll this was achieved under a unified Ministry of Irrigation, not through special project-based units.<\/p>\n

The abolition of the Ministry of Irrigation was a grave mistake.
\nHad the Prime Minister looked closely at the institutional structures of the other ten Nile Basin countries, he would have found that every single one maintains an independent Ministry of Irrigation \u2014 not a department buried under another ministry.
\nAll the prime ministers of the Nile Basin nations, except Kamal Idris, understand that irrigation ministries are no longer mere technical offices tasked with opening canals and watering crops, people, and livestock.<\/p>\n

Not anymore.
\nThis is the era of water wars \u2014 fought over rivers and seas alike.
\nThat\u2019s why the Ministry of Irrigation, across all Nile Basin states, has become a strategic body with security dimensions and foreign policy relevance.
\nBut Kamal\u2019s government doesn\u2019t seem to realize that \u2014 or perhaps it does, and has instead chosen to replace a national ministry with a separate irrigation unit for every farm plot, as part of its \u201cnew management\u201d vision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Altahir Satti A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister issued a decision to establish a special irrigation unit for the Gezira Scheme \u2014 one that would report to the project\u2019s administration technically, financially, and administratively. But there\u2019s another version of the story: reports say the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation has issued a counter-decision …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55372,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55371\/revisions\/55372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}