Gezira is the Arabic word meaning ‘island* or ‘peninsula*. It crops up in place names throughout the Arab world, notably in the name Algeria which is an anglicized form of the Arabic al-guzayir, ‘the islands*. In the Sudan, Gezira means only one thing. It refers to that vast area of land which lies between the Blue and the White Nile. In particular, though, it refers to the part of that area which is irrigated and used for growing cotton, the staple export crop of the country.

This report is part of a series of case studies on the performance of irrigation systems in different countries. These studies focus on the extent to which the design of the irrigation system fosters effective water management and provides equitable, reliable, timely water distribution to farms (by analyzing water efficiencies, the effectiveness of maintenance, and cost recovery). The report recommends the design of the physical infrastructure, and states the impact on the management of these systems. Because of the comparative nature of this study, this report on the Gezira scheme in Sudan makes only passing references to some specific but critical aspects of this project, such as the capacity of the system to adapt to changing socio-economic conditions.

The Wellcome Trust is a charitable institution supporting medical and allied research throughout the world. This History of the Trust marks the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary in 1986. Professor A. Rupert Hall, a prominent science historian, long associated with the Trust, and B. A. Bembridge, a retired Trust scientist, have written this lucid and well informed account which charts the development of the organisation from its inception in 1936 to the present day. Within this framework, there is an underlying discussion of the 'philosophy' of the financial endowment of science and medicine. The Wellcome Trust has had an enormous impact on medical research over the years. This volume provides a unique insight into the development of a leading scientific research body, and its relevance to similar institutions the world over.

This book examines Nile water security through the morphology of the river: it uses the always changing form of the river as a theoretical and empirical device to map and understand how infrastructures and discourses dynamically interact with the Nile. By bringing a history of two centuries of dam development on the Nile in relation with the drainage of a hill slope in Ethiopia on the one hand and irrigation reform in Sudan on the other, the author shows how the scales, units and ‘populations’ figuring in projects to securitize the river emerge through the rearrangement of its water and sediments. The analysis of ‘Making water security’ is more than yet another story of how modern projects of water security have legitimized often violent dispossessions of Nile land and water. It shows how no water user is confined by the roles assigned by project engineers and planners. As ongoing modern ‘development’ of the river reduces the prospects for new large diversions of water, the targeted subjects of development and modernization make use of newly opened spaces to carve out their own projects. They creatively mobilize old irrigation and drainage infrastructures in ways that escape the universal logic of water security.

This book is the result of contributions, help and support from numerous people and several agencies. We are particularly grateful to the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, the Swedish Council for Building Research and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) for funding the work on which this volume is based - and doing so before the subject had come to be regarded as important and relevant. Within these agencies, special thanks is due to Olle Edqvist, Pietro Garau, Bruce Hyland, Bob and Ingrid Munro and Arcot Ramachandran. We are also grateful to our friends and colleagues in IIED's Human Settlements Programme who have worked with us on this subject - Jane Bicknell, Silvia Blitzer, Ana Maria Cabrera, Maria Graciela Caputo and Julio Davila. Julio Davila deserves special thanks for his help in refining and editing the final text; so too do Jane Bicknell and Ana Maria Cabrera for patiently putting up with endless last minute changes to the text.

Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan offers an alternative account of how water policy, violence, and economic modernisation are linked.

A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.