On Tuesday, August 25, the curtain fell on one of Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Scheme’s longest-running rivalries, as the general assembly of Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Producers’ Organization convened, drawing 147 delegates, with two absent, chosen from the farming community across the scheme’s 118 inspectorates to represent them on the board. The assembly also elected its new executive office in what observers described as a process marked by broad participation. The scheme has 133,000 farmers working across 21 agricultural sections.
The “Harmony and Dignity” list won the contest decisively, taking more than 90 per cent of the vote. Engineer Abdel-Baqi Nour al-Daim became chairman of the scheme-wide board, while Sadiq al-Amin Ahmed al-Fiki, son of a former Farmers’ Union leader from the National Congress Party era, became secretary-general. Ahmed Ibrahim Badr was named treasurer, alongside 17 other board members.
Shadows of the Past
This is only the second board elected to represent Al-Jazirah farmers’ associations. The first was formed in 2018, after Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Farmers’ Union was dissolved under the 2011 Law of Associations for Agricultural and Livestock Production Professions, as amended in 2014. Article 19 of the law transferred the union’s assets to the new agricultural associations. But that first board never completed its legal term. The winds of change unleashed by the December 2019 revolution swept it aside and replaced it with a “Committee to Run Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Farmers’ Union”. That committee was in turn toppled by the October 25, 2021 coup, paving the way for the old board’s informal return. It remained in place until this week’s general assembly.
The fallout from the April 15 war cast a heavy shadow over the formation of the producers’ associations. Farmer representatives were selected according to specific criteria, chiefly their support for the popular resistance and their involvement in fighting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)during their occupation of Al-Jazirah state and the campaign to recapture it. The clearest evidence was the selection of figures active in the popular resistance in Al-Managil town, which remained under the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control throughout the RSF’s occupation of much of Al-Jazirah state. Foremost among them was board chairman Abdel-Baqi Nour al-Daim. He came to the post with a professional and administrative background, having served as director of Al-Jazirah State Water Corporation and secretary-general of the state’s Ministry of Urban Planning under governor al-Zubair Bashir Taha during National Congress Party rule. During the war, he joined the popular resistance forces backing the SAF against the RSF in Al-Jazirah state.
How Was He Chosen?
Abdel-Baqi Nour al-Daim, a geological engineer, hails from the village of Zunqaha, located within the South Al-Jazirah locality’s Wad Ra’iya administrative unit. Within the scheme’s own divisions, the village falls under Wad al-Barr section, one of the scheme’s southern sections.
Nour al-Daim is widely seen by his critics as a front for political and security actors seeking to control one of Africa’s largest agricultural schemes. Critics of the man elevated by the “popular resistance” to the chairmanship allege that he secured the position through arrangements overseen by state security bodies, running on a list called “Harmony and Dignity”. The farmer and engineer, who is often linked to the former National Congress Party, rose to prominence with the backing of popular resistance leader Azhari Khalaf Allah, the state’s agriculture minister during National Congress Party rule and, according to his critics, the architect of Nour al-Daim’s appointment or election.
A general assembly member and former executive-office leader told Atar: “There was no real way to compete in the general assembly. Abdel-Baqi’s name was put forward from the very start of the process, and several parties kept working to secure it. Two days before the assembly met, we were caught off guard by meetings held at popular resistance offices and security agency headquarters to arrange for him to take the board chairmanship.”
The former board leader told Atar that the way the association’s board was chosen at the recent meeting “harms the farmers’ movement and runs counter to the long legacy and experience of elevating or electing farmer representatives to the scheme’s higher bodies”.
He accused certain parties of “blatant” interference in determining the farmers’ will, pointing to behind-the-scenes meetings that steered attendees towards a particular faction in the general assembly.
“Underhanded methods were used,” he said, “including enticing some delegates from various agricultural sections.”
He added: “Inside the meeting, voices objecting to the stitch-up were suppressed under the banner of consensus and conciliation,” and criticized the assembly for focusing on secondary matters while neglecting fundamentals such as rescuing the current agricultural season.
Objections Within the Assembly
This article gives big farmers the power to decide the fate of small farmers.
Zain al-Abidin Abdullah Barqawi, farmers' representative
Sources inside the meeting told Atar that members approved by majority vote a new bylaw for Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Producers’ Organization, superseding the 2018 bylaw.
The vote came over the objection of assembly member Zain al-Abidin Abdullah Barqawi, representative of the “Istarahna” office in the Wad Habouba agricultural section. He challenged Article 6(a) of the bylaw, which states: “A member’s contribution, rights and obligations within the organization shall correspond to that member’s ownership of production units registered and certified by the registrar general.”
Barqawi told Atar that the article undermines farmers’ unity and erodes their equal standing, giving greater weight to large farmers with extensive landholdings.
“This article gives big farmers the power to decide the fate of small farmers,” he said, adding: “It has always been the case in Al-Jazirah Scheme that farmers are equal in rights and duties.”
He said his objection was noted for the record but no action was taken on it.
Women’s circumstances within Al-Jazirah Scheme had been overlooked, particularly as the war had left them shouldering much of the farm work.
Siham Salih al-Hajj, farmer
The list of 149 delegates included no women. Farmer Siham Salih al-Hajj, from the Fawar office in the Wadi Sha’ir section, objected that women remained excluded from senior leadership positions in the farmers’ organization.
Siham told Atar that women’s circumstances within Al-Jazirah Scheme had been overlooked, particularly as the war had left them shouldering much of the farm work on the plots after many men left because of fighting, gold mining or rising production costs.
Senior leadership positions within Al-Jazirah farmers’ organizations have remained largely closed to women. In March 2021, during the December Revolution, farmer Zainab al-Amin Mohamed al-Amin joined Al-Jazirah Scheme’s board of directors, becoming its first woman member in a century. Her appointment came during the December Revolution, but the board was dissolved following the October 25 coup.
Settling the Rivalry
The assembly’s outcome settled a long-running dispute among farmers, pitting the newly elected group against another aligned with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which supports the SAF in the war that began in April 2023.
The latter camp was represented by former board chairman Abdel-Salam al-Shami Omar and Sufian al-Basha, a delegate from al-Munsi section. Al-Shami failed to win a seat on the organization’s board, while al-Basha secured one only after a colleague from his agricultural section ceded his place to him.
A board member who asked not to be named told Atar that their list ran under the name “Dignity and Harmony”, and that talk of harmony was impossible while Sufian al-Basha’s group remained excluded.
“So, we asked one of our members to step aside for him, in keeping with the spirit of harmony,” the member said.
Al-Basha, who had aspired to one of the board’s three top “officer” posts, settled instead for an ordinary board seat. His name appeared at the bottom of the winning list, while his JEM colleague, Abdel-Salam al-Shami, failed to secure a place.
A source familiar with the board disclosed that the assembly was timed ahead of the Sudan Cotton Company’s own general assembly, set for December 3, a matter of significance for farmers holding shares in the company.
“There had to be a strong board that defends the farmers and reclaims their rights from this company, and their share in the Farmers’ Commercial Bank,” the source said, adding: “These are squandered rights that we will work to recover for the farmers.”
The Farmers' Alliance's Objections
It is reproducing the outcome before the electoral process even begins.
Salah Abdullah al-Mahal, lawyer, farmer and member of Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Farmers' Alliance.
Salah Abdullah al-Mahal, a lawyer, farmer and member of Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Farmers’ Alliance from al-Huda section, told Atar that the alliance opposes the productive and agricultural professions law in its current form.
In his view, the law offers no genuine foundation for a new professional framework, but rather represents an attempt to reproduce the same old faces and structures in new clothing and under different names.
“We are not against organizing the productive and agricultural professions, nor against developing legislation that protects farmers’ rights and regulates their work,” he said. “On the contrary, we support a genuine, independent institutional legal framework that draws its legitimacy from the stakeholders themselves. But we reject making the alternative to an elected Farmers’ Union a new body that recycles the very same people, or imposing ready-made lists on farmers who have no idea how they were drawn up or who chose the names on them” – a reference to the controversy surrounding the general assembly meeting.
Al-Mahal underscored the alliance’s position, calling for a genuinely elected Farmers’ Union that is free, fair and transparent, in which stakeholders themselves have the first and last word.
“Real elections don’t begin on polling day; they begin long before,” he said. “They begin with publishing the rolls of farmers and voters, allowing them to be reviewed and challenged, announcing the election date clearly and well in advance, opening nomination and candidacy to everyone who meets the legal requirements, and providing equal guarantees to all candidates.
“But drawing up lists in advance and then asking farmers to treat them as the electoral will, that is not a complete democratic practice. It is reproducing the outcome before the electoral process even begins.
“We also reject turning agricultural representation into an arena for recycling the same tired party faces, or figures who have kept dominating the scene without any genuine renewal in leadership and representation.”
Al-Mahal summed up the alliance’s objection to what took place in the elections: “Our objection isn’t to the name of a law or an institutional label. It’s an objection to the philosophy of reproducing the old, instead of building a new institution grounded in electoral legitimacy, transparency, accountability and renewed leadership.”
Thirst as the Elections Unfolded
The thirst gripping the crops and farmers’ dwindling options received little attention at the assembly.
While the assembly convened at the former Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Farmers’ Union headquarters, now renamed the “Al-Jazirah and Al-Managil Producers’ House”, at plot one, block four, on Wad Madani’s historic Nile Street overlooking the Blue Nile, dozens of farmers were flooding social media with photos and videos of crops withering from thirst and canals choked with weeds and silt but empty of the water meant to reach farmers’ plots.
Those chosen to represent farmers in the assembly – 149 of them, from whose ranks the executive office was elected – appeared indifferent to the mounting problems facing agriculture in Al-Jazirah Scheme.
The thirst gripping the crops and farmers’ dwindling options received little attention at the assembly. Instead, officials promised easy financing in coming seasons and machinery to shift farmers from traditional to modern agriculture, as Al-Jazirah governor’s representative put it, without addressing the water crisis now battering a wide swath of the scheme.
The whole affair proceeded as though it were merely a meeting to elect new farmer leadership.
