Sudan’s Challenges and Opportunities:A Renaissance Project for Sudan: From Poor Agriculture to Agro-Industrial Growth and Sustainable Development

The initial conditions of the Sudanese agricultural sector are quite dire. Despite more than half a century of several economic development plans and public policy initiatives all centered on transforming the sector, the country’s vast agricultural potential is far from realized. Notwithstanding sad past experiences, modernizing agriculture remains critical for promoting win-win solutions, and it must be the focal point of any serious transformational project for the Sudanese economy. The modern growth literature focusing on the process of catch-up growth contrasts between the growth processes of industry and agriculture. The overall evidence shows that poor countries with initially low productivity could grow faster and catch up with richer countries if they adopt growth-promoting policies and build the right institutions to allow them to absorb knowledge and learn from the technological frontier. Therefore, poorer economies can only grow faster than richer economies, conditional on their endowments, policies, and institutions (Rodrik, 2011). However, more recent evidence suggests that productivity in manufacturing tends to converge unconditionally regardless of the prevailing institutions or policy environment (Rodrik 2013). In the light of this evidence, it is natural to question whether the unconditional convergence property also extends to the agricultural sector (Ishac et al., 2013).