Officials as Tourists in Official Capacity!!

Al-Mubir Mahmoud
I recently came across a news report about a delegation from the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation visiting Morocco to explore cooperation in water resource management and the development of irrigation systems. Like dozens of similar reports, it concluded with the same predictable phrases: “exchange of expertise”, “strengthening cooperation”, “expressing readiness”, and “opening new avenues for partnership”. These expressions have become so repetitive that it is almost impossible to distinguish one visit from another or to identify any tangible benefit to Sudan beyond the customary photographs and diplomatic communiqués.
What is particularly surprising is that, in agriculture and irrigation, Sudan is hardly lacking in expertise. Historically, the country has possessed a wealth of agricultural and irrigation knowledge, placing it among the region’s most experienced nations in these fields. The problem has never been a shortage of technical know-how, requiring officials to travel thousands of kilometres in search of it. Rather, it has been a chronic inability to implement what is already well understood.
No foreign delegation is needed to discover that agriculture requires financing, that irrigation infrastructure needs maintenance, or that weak management undermines every opportunity to increase productivity. These are realities that every Sudanese farmer understands long before any consultant or expert arrives to explain them.
Moreover, with all due respect to Morocco’s achievements, its experience is not the closest match to Sudan’s current circumstances. Morocco operates within a politically, institutionally and economically stable environment, whereas Sudan continues to grapple with the consequences of a devastating war, a severe economic crisis and weakened state institutions. Discussing the transfer of expertise between two such fundamentally different contexts appears less like a serious search for solutions and more like administrative indulgence.
If Sudan must look abroad for inspiration, it would be far more logical to examine countries whose experiences more closely resemble its own. Nations such as India, Egypt, Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Philippines have each faced varying degrees of conflict, institutional weakness, economic hardship and developmental challenges, forcing them to devise practical solutions for improving agricultural productivity under difficult conditions. Seeking ready-made prescriptions from countries that developed under entirely different circumstances is unlikely to address Sudan’s complex realities.
Yet the issue extends well beyond the Agriculture Minister’s visit to Morocco. This trip is merely one example of a broader phenomenon that has become deeply embedded across state institutions: an apparent obsession among senior and junior officials alike with foreign travel.
Delegations depart, others return, meetings are held, photographs are published, and statements are issued, yet citizens rarely see any measurable outcome. It is as though travelling itself has become an achievement, regardless of whether it delivers any meaningful results.
The concern is not limited to public funds spent on these journeys, even though the country is enduring one of the most severe economic crises in its history and desperately needs to preserve every available dollar. There is also the cost of officials’ time, a resource no less valuable than money.
An official who spends days moving between airports, hotels and conference halls is absent from the field at precisely the moment when the nation needs leadership that confronts real problems rather than participates in ceremonial engagements.
For these reasons, the time has come for the state to adopt a fundamentally different approach to official travel. Every overseas visit should undergo a genuine cost-benefit assessment before approval. What concrete project will it secure? What financing will it attract? What measurable outcomes will it produce? What implementation timetable will follow?
Visits that conclude merely with vague “understandings”, “expressions of readiness” or “discussions on avenues of cooperation” do not justify being financed by a country facing extraordinary economic hardship. Nor do they justify consuming the valuable time of public officials who should be fully engaged with the urgent challenges confronting the nation at home.
Sudan today does not suffer from a lack of knowledge. It does not suffer from a shortage of memoranda of understanding or declarations of cooperation. It suffers from one thing alone: the inability to implement what it already knows.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=15170