ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the primary features of the rural economy in land-scarce Egypt and land-abundant Sudan. It explores, in an historical context, the past factors that have shaped their current agrarian systems, and recent policies influencing food insecurity and levels of living in rural areas. Out of the North African countries, Sudan is endowed with vast amounts of water resources and potentially cultivable land. Yet Sudan cannot feed its own people, without food aid and concessional imports of wheat and dairy products. Sudan is also the only country in North Africa whose leadership did not give prominance to land tenure issues at the time of independence in January 1956. Since then, there has been a lively debate and conflicting views among Sudanese scholars on how to restructure the agrarian system for alleviating food insecurity and persisting rural poverty.
