Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources
The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources is the federal ministry responsible for managing water resources in Sudan and regulating their use. It originated as an irrigation service in the second decade of the twentieth century, to supervise irrigation operations and monitor the Nile's flows, and it took responsibility for irrigation in the Gezira Scheme. After Sudan's independence in 1956, its tasks gradually expanded: the Managil Scheme was established in 1958 and the New Halfa Agricultural Scheme in 1965, then the Suki Scheme in 1971 and the Rahad Scheme in 1978, and its competencies expanded to include surveying, planning, design and implementation of major infrastructure projects, water research and cooperation with the Nile Basin countries, until by the 1990s it had become responsible for water resources across the whole country.
The Ministry prepares the national water resources plan and develops and updates it, monitors these resources and collects, analyses and evaluates information and data on them, and sets policies for the use of surface and groundwater, their conservation and their optimal exploitation. It also plans new projects, evaluates them and implements them, evaluates the engineering designs for projects submitted by other entities and supervises their implementation, and supervises the construction of dams and reservoirs and their operation, management, maintenance and preservation. Its tasks include operating the existing irrigation schemes and maintaining them and providing the water needs of crops, especially in the national schemes, providing technical assistance to state schemes, monitoring the hydrological data of the Nile and its tributaries and the movement of silt, and accounting for Sudan's consumption and calculating its withdrawals from Nile waters, which makes it the central government technical body for water planning and management.
(Sources: Official website of the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources; Sudanese Digital Encyclopedia; UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal of the United Nations)
— Editorial Team
