Sudan arable land luring Arab, Asian investors

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A drop in crude oil prices last year deprived Sudan — which exports more than 300,000 barrels a day — of precious revenues, drawing the country back to agriculture, the traditional driver of its economy.

Poor despite being located next to the oil-rich Gulf, Sudan is endowed with vast amounts of tillable land and has turned to foreign investors to breathe life into its unstable "agro-economy".

And with American economic sanctions in place, the door was left wide open for Asian and Middle Eastern investors who have been flocking over to Africa‘s biggest country.

"The investment for last year is not by any means less than five billion US dollars in preparing the projects for production and also for facilitation of the work in the various investments," Sudan‘s Minister of State for Agriculture Abdulrahim Ali Hamad said.

Private and public investors from Qatar, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia as well as China and Korea hold long term rights to a total of two million feddans (8,400 square kilometres, 3,243 square miles) of arable land, according to ministry figures.

"We are expecting that by 2012, Sudan would be the bread basket for the whole region," Hamad said.

Foreign investors are multiplying contracts to obtain long-term rights to arable land, but less than 15 percent of the surface is currently cultivated, according to official figures.

Source: African commission