National Forests Corporation
The National Forests Corporation is the national body responsible for protecting, developing and managing Sudan's forests and for providing technical supervision over them. Its roots go back to the Forest Department, which was established in 1902, following the 1901 report by the Indian expert G. A. Morrell, who recommended establishing a forest department and reserving and protecting the forests of the Blue and White Niles. The department was the first agricultural administration in the country, and in its early days it undertook supplying fuelwood for Nile steamers, inventorying the forests and drawing their maps, and the Lakadawiya Forest in White Nile was reserved in 1926 as the first reserved forest in Sudan.
In 1932, the first national forest policy was issued, along with the Central Forests Act and the Provincial Forests Act, and they remained in force for more than half a century, with the policy amended in 1986. In 1989, the National Forests Corporation Act was issued, establishing a national corporation with an independent legal personality, under the supervision of the Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, tasked with setting national policy and proposing laws for the conservation, development and management of forests. The Forests and Renewable Natural Resources Act of 2002 then combined the two previous legislations into a single law, re-established the corporation under its expanded name, and made its main headquarters in Khartoum, with permission to establish branches inside and outside Sudan.
The corporation undertakes intensifying afforestation for protection and production purposes, encouraging community forests and rangelands, providing seedlings and improved seeds and technical extension, and developing the production of gums, foremost among them gum arabic, and non-timber forest products. It also carries out forest inventory studies and surveys, coordinates policies for combating desertification and land uses, trains technical cadres and spreads environmental awareness, and it is managed by a board of directors and a director general in accordance with the 2002 Act.
(Sources: Forests and Renewable Natural Resources Act of 2002; the InforMEA portal of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — National Forests Corporation Act No. 13 of 1989; The Citizen newspaper — an overview of the Forest Department in Sudan by its former Director General Dr. Abdel Azim Mirghani Ibrahim, 2024; draft Forest Policy of 2015)
— Editorial Team
