Food Insecurity in the Sub-Saharan Rainlands: Umm Sial, a Village in White Nile State, Sudan

Abstract

This paper is based upon a survey carried out in 1992 into food security in an environmentally fragile rainland area of the Sudan and reviews the findings relating to Umm Sial, a typical rainland village. It concludes that food insecurity here is the result not only of rainfall unreliability, but also of government neglect, that has resulted in an elderly farming population, with an overrepresentation of females, high levels of child dependency, and considerable poverty. The area is not without natural resources, having considerable grazing potential, but the seriously denuded due to the lack of any coherent policy linking the area with the neigbouring, more prosperous, irrigation lands along the White Nile river.