Gezira Scheme

It is centered on the Sudanese state of Gezira, just southeast of the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers at the city of Khartoum.

Reginald Wingate, the British governor-general of Sudan, originally envisaged the farmers growing wheat but this was abandoned as the colonial authorities thought that a better cash crop was needed.

When it was discovered that Egyptian-type long staple cotton could be grown, this was welcomed as a better choice as it would also provide a raw material for the British textile industry.

The Gezira Scheme was initially financed by the Sudan Plantations Syndicate in London and later the British government guaranteed capital to develop it.

This network of canals and ditches was 4,300 kilometres (2,700 mi) long, and with the completion in the early 1960s of the Manaqil Extension on the western side of the Gezira Scheme, by 2008 the irrigated area covered 8,800 square kilometres (3,400 sq mi), about half the country's total land under irrigation.