Conversion of communal grazing land to private large-scale farming in Sudan

_{By Hussein Sulieman, University of Gadarif, Sudan}

Governments, international investors and private citizens are increasingly keen to acquire pastoral rangelands for commercial crop farming, in Sudan and elsewhere. In a process frequently referred to as “land grabbing”, the Sudanese geographer Hussein Sulieman notes that “scant empirical evidence exists on the spatial allocation and temporal evolution of the process [in Sudan]." His long-term research provides evidence on the geographical allocation and the temporal evolution of land grabbing from 2000 to 2014 in one region of eastern Sudan, the communal land used by pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in Butana area of Gadarif state. His study relies on multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery (2000, 2005, 2009, and 2014), ground surveys, and key informant interviews. The results show that large-scale mechanized agriculture in Butana communal rangeland increased incrementally from 2.5% in 2000 to 17.6% in 2014. Large-scale farmers involved in the process included local wealthy pastoralists who own large numbers of livestock, government officials and military officers, and absentee farmers from neighbouring states of Sudan.

^{Image left: Spatial distribution of large-scale mechanised agriculture in 2000, 2005, 2009, and 2014 in Butana rangeland (Sulieman, 2018)}