Gezira irrigation scheme
Esquema de riego de Gezira
- Date
- 1925 · confidence high
- Place
- Sennar, Sennar State, Sudan
- Credited to
- Anglo-Egyptian administration and Sudanese tenants
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The Sennar dam on the Blue Nile (1925) and a canal network irrigating hundreds of thousands of hectares of cotton, worked by tenant farmers. It was one of the world's largest irrigation projects and the backbone of the Sudanese economy.
The Sennar dam opened in 1925; works began in 1913 (interrupted by the war) and cotton was planted from 1911 as a trial. The scheme declined with civil war and neglect.
What it led to
- Sudan's cotton export economy
- a tenancy model in Africa
- labour migration from Darfur and West Africa