ABSTRACT
Inward investment in the Nile Basin is not a new phenomenon and especially not in Sudan. What was described as ‘land grabbing’ in the global media was in fact the second attempt of Arab economies to utilize the perceived Sudanese ‘breadbasket’. While the first wave that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s quickly faded, the second wave began in the late 1990s when the Agricultural Revival (Al-Nahda Al-Zira’ayah) programme was launched to invite agricultural investment from Islamic countries around the world (Verhoeven, 2013). Most of the analysis focuses on how land investments – by either emerging Asian economies or private-sector investors from across the globe – impact upon land use, land rights, water use, human rights and livelihoods (Cotula, 2011; Deng, 2011; Woodhouse and Ganho, 2011; Cotula, 2012; Anseeuw et al., 2013; Woertz, 2013a, 2013b). Very few studies have taken an approach that analyses the role of international food politics and contentious domestic politics over investment (Paarlberg, 2010; Carmody, 2012; Brautigam, 2013; Woertz, 2013a, 2013b). This chapter will present a failed investment in Sudan by Qatar. Despite significant media attention and signed contracts, the agricultural investment in Abu Hamad has not been implemented until 2016 (Land Matrix, 2016).1 By discussing the political economic drivers of the State of Qatar behind the initial decision to invest in Sudanese agricultural land, the chapter will highlight the deeply political nature of agricultural investment – and its potential failure. The State of Qatar is the third richest country by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world due to its natural gas wealth (International Monetary Fund, 2015). However, Qatar has limited capacity to produce its own food, due to its arid geographical location. This leads to legitimate food security concerns in Qatar. The Gulf state heavily depends on ‘virtual water imports’2 to provide food security to its citizens. It has to ‘import’ virtual water from the world market making the Gulf economy vulnerable to food price spikes as in 2007/2008 and 2010/2011. Qatar also has complex domestic political economic structures defined by ‘shadow state’ actors and their interests. Framing these domestic political structures in the context of inward investment in land is the objective
of this chapter. In short, the chapter will discuss the role of food politics in Qatar and its crucial relation to inward investment in Sudan.
