Water safety from the Government of Hope – the face of truth – ✍️ Ibrahim Shaqlawi
Following the announcement of the Prime Minister of Transition, Dr. Kamel Al -Tayyib Idris on the characteristics of the “Government of Hope” and the promises of reform of the decision on the basis of national competence far from quotas, the proposal to integrate the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation was presented within the Ministry of Agriculture, within the framework of the reintegration of inscriptions, the activities of reducing the objective.
This proposal, according to experts, affects a very important strategic essence which is directly linked to Sudanese national security and raises fundamental questions about the understanding of the nature of the management of resources in a very sensitive regional and international context.
Water in the case of Sudan is no longer a technical file which can be included in the priorities of the Ministry of Agriculture, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, but rather transformed into an existential question which affects the survival of the State itself. Sudan, as a central country in the Nile basin system, deals with a network of increasing geopolitical complications, starting with the challenges of the Renaissance dam, through the management of groundwater and with regional influence struggles that have started to crystallize on rivers and crossed basins. In this context, it is no longer acceptable – neither politically nor technically – that water is managed within a single entity. Rather, the scene requires the creation of an independent and effective ministry for water resources, which has technical sovereignty, institutional authority and scientific efficiency which allows the management of this strategic dossier.
It is time for irrigation descends from water resources. The truth that some people ignore that irrigation – as a sector – represents in its essence the “water disposition”, while water resources are “income” to this vital resource. Between income and behavior, there is a series of integrated operations: electricity production, water storage in dams, exploitation of land resources and even future developments in the use of water to produce green hydrogen. All these tracks require a complete and dominant institutional institution, which establishes a complete water policy in accordance with national security priorities, not just a tool for regulating irrigation in agriculture.
Although the Ministry of Water Resources is absent from the financing interface in recent decades, because state budgets have remained mainly to finance irrigation projects only, this deficiency is not only due to the domination of the sectoral vision, but to a collective incapacity to increase the level of consciousness of the importance of water as a sovereign resource that goes beyond daily productive accounts. The exacerbation of the severity of this trend is the absence of central governance on the water system, which today includes several units such as dams, tanks, groundwater, valleys and Nile water, in addition to the secretariat of the joint technical organization, which all need a unified authority with a decision, and not an entity belonging to another ministry.
Talking About the Risks of Integrating the Minister of Irrigation and Agriculture Cannot be Separated from the Deteriorating Internal Reality in the Minister of Irrigation ITSELF, Which Suffers, According to the Avaible Indicators, from the absence of a long -term strategic plan, the lack of police regulating water use Readiness to Deal with the Worsening Challenges, Especially the Dangerous Scenarios Associated With the Renaissance Dam, Whether in Seasons of Abundance or the possibilities of sudden collapse, God does not please. In this sense, the refusal of integration – according to his face – should not be absent from the demand for a global reform of the ministry itself in terms of planning, governance, capacity building, capacity for negotiation and technical vision to counter climate change and rain or its floods, in addition to the management of groundwater that has really started neighboring countries to withdraw and avoid it.
These considerations cannot be separated from the previous integration experiments which have proven to be structurally not only administratively, because the combination of the ministries of agriculture and irrigation has led to a clear conflict between those who consume the supplier and those which are supposed to be organized, and the result was the collapse of coordination, the deterioration of the networks of irrigation, the waste of water, and the decline of the representation of Sudan. Agriculture, although it is a major beneficiary of water, but it cannot be the regulator in power, because it violates the balance of interests and strikes the principle of institutional neutrality.
In the light of the absence of this neutrality, it becomes necessary for the State to tend to establish a sovereign center of water resources, which represents information and an executive water bank, which has the power to determine the quantities, times and quality of the water used for each sector according to national priority, and not according to user pressure. Consequently, it becomes clear that the question of independence of the ministry is not only a bureaucratic request, but rather the heart of the Souudanese sovereign project, if the State wants to build a development model which responds to climate transformations, the challenges of food security and emerging regional conflicts.
The severity of the situation seems clearer if we know that Sudan does not yet have an integrated national water policy, in which the resources available for industrial development, climate, agriculture, energy and town planning are linked. The independent ministry is the only institutional ship capable of producing this national vision, creating effective partnerships with universities and research centers, negotiate the name of Sudan in international forums and to deal with international financial institutions from a force site, not the technical or political site.
This file, with all its complexity, cannot be resolved with an internal discussion limited in professional groups, but it must rather be presented at a broader level which includes, decision -makers and specialists, through specialized workshops and eyelashes, leading to the development of an integrated strategic vision of water management in Sudan. This vision is an urgent necessity in the shadow of a fragile and political reality, in which environmental challenges and regional pressures overlap, with undeniable interior institutional weakness.
The defense of the independence of the Ministry of Water Resources, according to what we see from the face of the truth, should not be reduced in its administrative form, but it must rather be built on a deep conscience that water is the first sovereign resource in Sudan and the first line of the State Battle to survive. Each indulgence in this file is negligence in the future of Sudan, in particular in a world that is struggling with each drop of water, and reformulates the card of political influence in the light of those who have water, who directs and plans it.
You are fine and well.
Wednesday June 25, 2025 ad shglawi55@gmail.com
