Land and Climate

Sudan is mostly a land of flat plains. In the northwest the basement rock is overlain by the Nubian sandstone formation. Wind erosion caused by the northeast trade winds has created a vast sand plain, the Qoz, which stretches from the White Nile to the Chad border. East of the Qoz vast clay plains stretch to the Ethiopian Highlands. In the south the basin of the Lower Nile forms another lowland region.

Plateaus and mountains are located mainly near the borders. The Red Sea Hills, the most extensive highlands in Sudan, rise in the northeast. In the west near the border with Chad an extinct volcano, Jebel Marra, reaches to 10,073 feet (3,070 meters). In central Sudan the Nuba Mountains rise to 4,500 feet (1,370 meters) from the surrounding plains. The country's highest peak, Kinyeti (10,456 feet, or 3,187 meters), is located in the south near the Uganda border. Other upland areas occur in the south adjacent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia frontiers.

Most of Sudan is characterized by a hot, dry climate. The Libyan and Nubian deserts, subdivisions of the Sahara, cover the northern third of the country. Here it is dry year-round. The southern two thirds of the country is characterized by a steppe and tropical savanna climate. In these lands there are two seasons: wet and dry. The summer rainy season lasts the longest in the extreme southwest, beginning in April and lasting until November. Here precipitation exceeds 57 inches (144 centimeters) annually. To the north and northeast the rainy season gradually shortens, and precipitation diminishes. Khartoum, at the edge of the desert, has significant rains only during July and August. They average between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). At the desert's edge precipitation is extremely variable, with droughts common.

Temperatures in Sudan are some of the hottest in the world. The highest temperatures occur just before the summer rains and the coolest temperatures during the winter months of December and January. At Khartoum the average temperatures are 74° F (23° C) in January and 89° F (32° C) in July.

Plant and Animal Life

With the exception of the Red Sea Hills, the northern third of Sudan is covered by a vast desert with little vegetation. As precipitation increases toward the south, vegetation gradually increases from a tropical wooded steppe, with short grasses and a variety of acacia trees, to a tropical savanna in the southwest. Areas of mountain forest occur in isolated areas on some of the higher peaks.

Big-game animals are common in the southern region. The lion, leopard, crocodile, elephant, antelope, gazelle, and other animals exist in large numbers. Periodic droughts and desertification have largely eliminated these animals from the central part of the country.

People

Sudan's population is mostly rural, with less than two fifths living in urban areas. The livelihood of the rural people is based primarily on agriculture and pastoral activities. Thus their way of life depends on the availability of vegetation and water resources.

In the north nomadic Arab tribes such as the Kababish wander the desert with their herds in search of the vegetation that grows after the rare desert thunderstorms. More than a tenth of the nation's population lead such a nomadic existence.

In the Nile Valley and in the irrigated El Gezira (Al-Jazirah) region, the people lead a sedentary agricultural existence. The abundant sunshine, year-round growing season, and water from the Nile allow the farmers to reap multiple harvests from the land each year. Major crops include cotton, sorghum, sugarcane, sesame, peanuts, dates, and vegetables.

Away from the irrigated areas people depend on the annual rainy season for crop production. The low amounts and the variability of precipitation force people to grow more drought-resistant plants, principally millet and sorghum. In Kordofan many farmers earn a cash income by collecting gum arabic, the sap of the hashab tree.

In the southern Nile Basin the Dinka and Nuer practice a seminomadic economy based on cattle raising. They follow the seasonal patterns of precipitation. As the floodwaters of the rainy season reach the central Al-Sudd, the Nilotic people move away from the area and take advantage of the pasturage that has developed with the rains. As the savanna pasture gradually disappears during the dry season the people follow the retreating waters and graze their animals on the newly exposed lands.

The Khartoum metropolitan area is the largest urban center (see Khartoum). Other cities are Port Sudan, the major port; Wad Madani, the economic center of the El Gezira region; and Al-Ubayyid, the capital of Kordofan. Juba is the largest city of the southern region.

When Sudan became independent from Great Britain in 1956, it inherited a limited educational system. In the 1970s major changes in education emphasized basic literacy. The number of primary schools was expanded and the language of instruction changed from English to Arabic. As a result, the number of adults who could read and write increased from roughly 20 percent in the 1970s to more than 50 percent by the late 1990s. There is still a major shortage of schools and teachers, however, especially in the south. Sudan has a number of institutions for higher education; among these, the University of Khartoum is the most prestigious.

Broadcast media are owned and controlled by the government, though some cable TV services have private investors. Print media has slightly more freedom and may be privately owned, though the government exerts considerable control over content.

Economy

More than three fifths of the labor force is engaged in agriculture. The major subsistence crops are millet and sorghum, grown in the rainy region of central Sudan. The economic heart of Sudan is the irrigated region between the Blue and the White Niles, known as the Gezira Scheme. One of the largest irrigation projects in the world, the scheme covers roughly 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares), providing water for more than 100 million farmers. It was begun by the British in 1925 with a dam at Sannar on the Blue Nile to supply their textile industry with high-quality cotton. Cotton is still the principal crop.

Sudan's irrigated agricultural acreage is dependent on water from the two main branches of the Nile. Water rights, allocated under a 1959 treaty with Egypt, divide the annual flow between the two countries. To increase the flow of the White Nile, a joint Sudanese-Egyptian project, the Jonglei Canal, was begun in the 1970s. The canal was designed to divert part of the Nile waters around Al-Sudd and thereby conserve more than 10 percent of the water lost annually. In 1984, when the canal was about half completed, work was suspended after the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), a southern rebel movement, attacked the construction team.

Manufacturing activities are not well developed. The principal activities are cotton ginning and spinning, sugar refining, leather tanning, and the production of such basic consumer goods as soap, soft drinks, and vegetable oils.

The majority of the private capital invested in the country is in the export-import business. Sudan's principal exports in the early 21st century were crude petroleum, cotton, gum arabic, livestock, gold, and sesame seed. Among the principal purchasers of these goods were Italy, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. Imports consisted of machinery, food, transportation equipment, and other manufactured products. Sudan purchases these goods primarily from Saudi Arabia, France, and Italy.

Petroleum was discovered in southern Sudan in 1981. Proven reserves are estimated at more than 500 million barrels, though the actual number may be higher. Exploitation and development was slowed by the civil war that began in the 1980s. However, in 1999 a 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) pipeline—the longest in Africa—was completed, allowing substantial reserves to be exported daily. Within a month, rebel fighters sabotaged large sections of the pipeline, though later repairs allowed the continued pumping and export of crude petroleum, which accounts for more than one third of the country's export earnings.

Gold is mined in the Red Sea Hills. In the west near the borders of Chad and the Central African Republic are uranium reserves. Commercially valuable chromite deposits exist in the Ingessana Hills near the Ethiopian border. However, most of these resources have not been extensively developed.

Transportation in Sudan is not well developed. Most of the country's all-weather roads and railroads are in the northeast, linking Khartoum and the Gezira with Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Kusti on the White Nile is a transportation hub. From here steamers ply the Nile as far south as Juba. A single rail line links Kusti with Nyala, and there is a branch line extending to Wau. Kusti is linked to Port Sudan by both rail and all-weather roads. An all-weather road links Juba with Kenya. Sudan is linked to Egypt by a railroad from Khartoum to Wadi Halfa on Lake Nasser, the artificial lake created by the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. Steamers then connect passengers and freight to the Egyptian railway system at Aswan. Sudan Air, the national airline, furnishes domestic and international service from the major airport at Khartoum.

Government and History

Sudan was a parliamentary democracy until a military coup overthrew the country's civilian government in 1989. A transitional constitution adopted in 1986 was abolished following a 1989 coup by the newly formed Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). The council was dissolved in 1993 after appointing a president, Umar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir was formally elected to the office in 1996. A new constitution adopted in 1998 provides for a National Assembly.

The earliest civilization that developed in Sudan was the Cushite. This kingdom reached its height in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Cushite culture was strongly influenced by Egypt, especially in the use of hieroglyphs and pyramidal architecture. Major Cush ruins are found at Merowe near the Nile, 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Khartoum.

After the destruction of Merowe in AD 350 by an Axumite army, there eventually arose a number of Christian kingdoms along the Nile north of Khartoum. Christianity was brought into the region by Coptic missionaries from Egypt. These Christian Nubian kingdoms reached their height in the 9th and 10th centuries. Beginning in the 14th century Arab tribes conquered the Christian kingdoms. Two sultanates eventually consolidated their control over most of northern Sudan by the 16th century. The Arab sultanates fell under the control of the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1884. The slave trade was greatly expanded and pushed into what is now the southern Sudan, where the various Nilotic peoples were enslaved by the Arabs. The hatred engendered by the slave trade still persists.

Opposition to Turkish rule through the Egyptian khedive developed in the 1880s. Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi and organized a resistance movement. His followers laid siege to Khartoum and overwhelmed Anglo-Egyptian forces on Jan. 28, 1885, but Mahdist rule was short lived. The Mahdi died of typhus five months after the fall of Khartoum.

Sudan had been under the rule of the Khalifah for about 12 years when the British invaded to protect the Nile from French forces. A decisive battle occurred at Omdurman on Sept. 2, 1898, when the British—using machine guns—killed 11,000 Mahdist fighters and lost only 48 of their own men.

From 1899 through 1955 Sudan was ruled jointly by the British and the Egyptians as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Sudanese nationalism gradually redeveloped, and on Jan. 1, 1956, Sudan became independent.

Upon independence, civil war broke out between the black southerners and the Arab northerners who now ruled the country. The war lasted until 1972 and caused the deaths of more than half a million people—primarily from malnutrition and disease.

After a series of civilian and military governments, power was seized in 1969 by Gaafar el-Nimeiry, who ruled the country for 16 years. Initially Nimeiry had popular support, his major accomplishment being the 1972 Addis Ababa accords that ended the civil war.

The civil war began again in 1983. A combination of the war, desperate economic conditions brought on by drought, and a crippling foreign debt resulted in Nimeiry's dictatorship being overthrown in 1985. A democratic civilian government emerged after elections in 1986. The dominant political movement was the Umma party, and the prime minister elected in 1986 was Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of the Mahdi and a former prime minister (1966–67). A peace pact was rejected by the National Assembly in December 1988. A new coalition government was formed in March 1989 as a step toward ending the civil war. In June Mahdi was overthrown in a military coup led by Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, and the civil war raged on. In April 1990 a failed coup attempt resulted in the execution of 28 army officers said to have been responsible.

Following the 1989 coup the country was run by the RCC, which was headed by Bashir. He survived a failed coup attempt in 1990 and was appointed as president by the RCC in 1993. A new constitution approved by referendum in 1998 allowed the president to choose a cabinet and called for establishment of a National Assembly. A power struggle in 1998 between Bashir and then-assembly speaker Hassan al-Turabi led the president to dissolve the legislature and declare a state of emergency.

Following his reelection in 2000 Bashir faced grave problems ranging from the civil war to widespread famine. Drought and flooding left hundreds of thousands without food or shelter in 2001. Experts estimated that by late 2002 as many as 4.5 million people had been displaced by the civil war and by attacks perpetrated by Ugandan rebel groups. Population (2002), 37,090,000.