January, 2001

An Overview of the Egyptian-Sudanese Jonglei Canal Project

Dr. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani Sa'oudi

The Jonglei Canal project, considered one of the most important integration projects between Egypt and Sudan, was halted in 1983 as a result of the Sudanese civil war. The project, work on which started in 1980, was a comprehensive engineering and environmental venture designed to make full use of the River Nile, promote human and economic development in semi-isolated regions and boost agricultural development in both countries. Up till the project's termination, 260 kilometers out of the total 360 kilometers were completed. Reports indicated that a missile launched by an unknown source destroyed the drill used for digging the canal.


The primary objective of the project was to ensure the flow of 4.7 billion cubic meters of water annually, to be equally distributed between Egypt and Sudan, and provide a model for similar water-conservation initiatives in other areas, such as the Mashar swamps and the swamps of the Bahr al-Ghazal area. The first stage of the project included the digging of a canal to provide approximately 3.8 billion cubic meters of water annually. A second canal was to double this amount, subject to agreement with the countries of the equatorial lakes.
The termination of work came as a blow to the residents of the region, to Sudan as a whole and to Egypt. According to the project's research team, the benefits would have been felt over a wide area, from Bor in the south of Sudan to Kosti in the north. The project was to have developed modern irrigation and drainage facilities that would have put an end to agriculture being tied to the annual patterns of flooding and drought. The termination of the project also led to a considerable loss of livestock. According to the estimates of a national conference on peace in 1989, nearly 6.6 million head of cattle perished.


The Jonglei Canal region is inhabited by around two million people; mainly the peoples and tribes of the Dinka, Nower and Shalak. The local economy is very much a seasonal one. In the rainy season, starting April or May and lasting till December, rivers flood and people move to higher-lying regions where they cultivate crops dependent on rain. In January, people move once more to the plains, staying for the duration of the dry period. The yearly flooding exposes livestock, as well as man, to disease and even death, as happened on a large scale in the 1960s. One of the most significant benefits of the project was that it would have curbed the annual flooding and changed the primary features of the region's economy by introducing mechanical agriculture and other means of modernization.


The project was to have diverted the course of 25 per cent of the water that flows annually to the low plains from the River Zaraf and the al-Jabal Sea estuary, via a canal to dams. A part of the land that has been under water for more than 20 years would have been reclaimed, providing ideal ground for breeding cattle, while the canal itself would have provided new opportunities for fishing. The finance and technical know-how that was to have come to the region would have benefited the south of Sudan as a whole, allowing the government to realize its plans for social and economic development in an area that is unable to fund such development by itself.


In return for providing technical and financial assistance to the region, both Egypt and the centralized government of Sudan would have benefited from a share of the water that was to have been stored in dams. The south needs this support to speed up the flow of water from Malakal to Jouba and to provide social services and drainage facilities in low-lying regions. The project would also have helped with the establishment of an irrigation project to produce crops over an area of 200,000 feddans -one feddan is approximately equal to one acre-.
If peace is restored in the south of Sudan, a number of the obstacles that had previously hindered the project would no longer exist. The energy problem has been solved by the discovery of oil in the Bentiu region, which would allow for the establishment of a refinery to meet the needs of the southern territory and provide a cheap source of energy for drilling machines. Furthermore, with a large number of the region's youth having gained experience in the construction industry in the north - having fled to escape the war and find work - there should be no shortage of suitable labor.