Sudan is often associated with negative stories of conflict, natural disasters and poverty. However, in this article Nawal El-Gack describes innovative village survival strategies – achieved with little to no help from outside agencies – that have allowed people to survive and prosper.

Sudan’s North Kordofan state has suffered a 35 year drought. Three-quarters of rural people in the state live in poverty, a state they describe as a lack of land, livestock, commercial goods and other assets.

Opportunities for work are limited; access to public services such as education, health, water and transportation is poor; and there is a lack of effective partnerships between local communities, government authorities and development organisations.

Despite these challenges, some villages in North Kordofan have achieved internal development with little to no support from government and international organisations.

When people in North Kordofan need to achieve something for the common good, they have developed traditions and practices that involve the whole community. People band together to establish schools, water pumps, mosques, houses and farming operations, and they also participate in various activities to help individuals who serve the community.

They donate or allocate land and organise communal projects called Nafir, where people come together to carry out a project. An example would be communal farm labouring undertaken to support teachers or local midwives. During the rainy season, people also co-operate to achieve many farming chores such as planting, weeding and harvesting.

Participation in community affairs is organized and managed by local associations. These grassroots organisations discuss various community development issues, such as school construction or maintenance, provisions of equipment or activities related to drinking water. They also organise social events.

Survival strategies in Haj-Abdalla

Some villages in North Kordofan have managed to survive droughts and hardship through cooperation and solidarity between the members of the community. One such village is Haj-Abdalla.

During a massive famine in 1984, the people decided not to move outside the village and formed ‘an emergency committee’ that included the Sheikh (village headman), religious leaders and influential members of the community. This committee suggested that every household should declare what they had; grain, animals, fodder, money or gold.

The committee then divided the village into three areas headed by sub-committees, and the people in each area cooked and ate together. The members of the communities who now lived in the towns organised themselves and arranged to send continuous support to the village. This lasted for seven months until the crisis was over.

In 1998, a fire destroyed 65 houses in the village causing 40% of the families to lose their assets including grain, plants, animals and shops. Again, people worked together and donated whatever they had to rebuild the 65 houses and provide food and clothes for the sufferers.

Neither the government nor the relief agencies helped the village during these disasters: the survival strategies came from within the community.

Local people in Haj-Abdalla use highly complex strategies to survive in a harsh environment. They have adopted traditional methods for storage and food processing as well as social practices. Before development agencies propose new strategies for dealing with poverty, they should learn to recognise the worth of the strategies used by the villagers of Haj-Abdalla and others like them that have allowed these people and their communities to survive.

From top to bottom: People meeting together to identify the symptoms and causes of poverty; During the rainy season, young people come back from the cities to farm; Nafir - community mobilisation/farming; Green pastures are the outcome of a good rainy season; Sudari primary school - the larger picture shows the new school, while the old school is shown in the smaller picture beside it. (Photo credits: Nawal El-Gack)

Nawal El-Gack is a lecturer in the Institute of Development Studies at Massey University in New Zealand. Her article originally appeared in issue 15 of Just Change magazine "What is Poverty?" (June-Sept. 2009), and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and the magazine.

Just Change is a magazine about, by, and for those who are concerned with sustainable development, social justice, and human rights, with each issue is based on a different global concern. It is published three times each year. Dev-Zone, based in Wellington, capital city of Aotearoa New Zealand, works primarily to inform and educate New Zealanders about development and global issues.

Nawal El-Gaili El-Gack's PhD research focused on "Participatory approaches to development: An analysis of the experiences of development projects in Sudan". She concluded that improving the practice of development requires three factors: firstly, an in-depth understanding of prevailing social, economic, political and physical environments; secondly, adopting a moral-obligatory approach; and finally, providing local communities with resources, information and skills.