When Water Becomes a Matter of State: A Sudanese Reading in Light of Egypt’s Institutional Experience in Water Security and Decision-Making

Dr Ammar Abkar Abdallah
On 30 June 2026, Policy Paper No. 72 was published in Egypt as part of the IDSC Policy Perspective series under the title, “The Water Situation in Egypt, the Challenges of Climate Change, and Efforts to Enhance Water Security and Sustainability.” The paper was prepared by the Nile Water Affairs Sector of the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, in coordination with the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC), as part of an effort to support decision-making and strengthen reliance on scientifically grounded insights and policies.
The paper reviews Egypt’s water situation, the challenges posed by climate change and transboundary water resources, as well as national efforts and strategic projects aimed at strengthening water security and ensuring the sustainability of water resources to support sustainable development and safeguard the rights of future generations.
From my perspective, however, the significance of this paper lies not only in its technical content, but perhaps also in the institutional process through which it was produced. Here we have a specialised technical sector responsible for Nile water affairs within a sovereign ministry charged with managing water resources and irrigation. This sector produces analytical knowledge concerning the national water situation, climate change, transboundary resources, water security and sustainability. That knowledge is then connected to an institution situated at the heart of the government’s decision-support system: the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Centre.
The issue therefore extends beyond the boundaries of a research paper or technical report. It raises a much larger question: how does technical expertise within state institutions become institutional knowledge, then a policy paper, and ultimately an input into the decision-making process?
The Egyptian Report and What Lies Behind It
The comparison here is not between the number of experts in Egypt and the number of experts in Sudan. Nor is it a political comparison between two sister countries united by the Nile, history, interests and common challenges. Neither is it an invitation to replicate the Egyptian experience literally, for every country has its own institutional, legal, geographical and political context.
The Egyptian policy paper does, however, provide an important opportunity to reflect on a profoundly significant institutional question: what kind of structure accommodates, preserves, accumulates, and connects expertise to decision-making?
In Egypt, the water sector has maintained a relatively clear ministerial identity under the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. Around it, a specialised research infrastructure has developed, with the National Water Research Centre at the forefront of its institutions. According to publicly available information — and recognising the importance of consulting the latest official organisational structure when preparing final documentation — its institutional framework comprises approximately 12 specialised research institutes that cover a broad spectrum of water-related issues.
The significance here does not lie in the number alone. A purely numerical comparison between institutes and research centres can be misleading when legal and organisational structures differ. The real value lies in the philosophy of institutional development: specialisation, continuity, the accumulation of knowledge, and the connection between scientific research, planning, implementation and decision support. Policy Paper No. 72 provides a practical example of this institutional integration.
Sudan: More Than a Century of Institutional History
When turning to Sudan, the starting point should not be an assumption that institutions or expertise are absent. Sudan possesses a long and distinguished history in irrigation and water resources management. It also has a considerable reservoir of expertise in engineering, hydrology, groundwater, dams, flood and drought management, international water law, negotiation, transboundary cooperation and water diplomacy.
According to the historical trajectory documented in the writings of Professor Yasir Abbas, the development of Sudan’s water institutions can be traced through successive stages. It began with the Irrigation Department, which later became the Ministry of Irrigation and subsequently the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources. In later years, the sector underwent a series of changes in name, institutional affiliation, mandates and organisational structures.
Against the backdrop of current discussions concerning the proposed organisational structure of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, an important institutional question has once again emerged regarding the appropriate place of water resources within the structure of the state and the nature of the relationship between managing the water resource itself, on the one hand, and the principal sectors that use it, foremost among them agriculture, on the other.
This is not merely an administrative matter or a question of ministerial nomenclature. Rather, it opens the door to a broader discussion about the stability of water institutions, clarity of mandates, and the balance between managing the resource and regulating its uses in ways that protect national interests and strengthen the effectiveness of water governance.
Looking at a trajectory extending over more than a century, the need for calm and profound institutional reflection becomes clear. The question is not whether Sudan possesses an institutional history in water management. The answer is obvious: it does. The more difficult question is this: to what extent have we succeeded in protecting this accumulated institutional experience from the consequences of repeated changes in structures, names, affiliations and mandates?
Water Is Not the Same as Irrigation
This point lies at the heart of the current debate.
Irrigation is one of the most important uses of water, particularly in a country where agriculture is closely connected to food security, development, the economy and livelihoods. Yet water resources encompass far more than irrigation.
Water is connected to drinking water, industry, hydropower, the environment, mining, navigation and river transport, public health, cities, climate-change adaptation, flood and drought management, food security, national security, foreign relations and cooperation over shared resources.
The institution responsible for water resources therefore performs — or should perform — functions extending far beyond the operational task of delivering water to agriculture. Its responsibilities include planning, regulation, allocation, protection, monitoring, forecasting, risk management, data production, negotiation and coordination among different water users.
This raises a legitimate institutional question:
Is it preferable for the institution responsible for regulating, planning and allocating water resources to be part of a ministry that includes one of the largest users of that resource, or does the sovereign and multi-purpose nature of water require a more independent institutional framework capable of maintaining balance among sectors?
This question does not diminish the importance of agriculture. On the contrary, agriculture itself requires strong, stable, and scientifically grounded water management capable of long-term planning and of responding effectively to climate change, hydrological variability, and increasing competition among different water uses.
Diverse Sudanese Writings, a Shared Institutional Concern
This question does not arise in a vacuum, nor does it represent an isolated individual opinion.
In the work of Professor Saifeldin Hamad, former Minister of Water Resources, we find extensive analysis of Sudanese water security and Nile Basin issues, bringing together engineering, legal, strategic, geopolitical, security and diplomatic dimensions. His writings also highlight the complexity of Sudan’s water situation, given that its resources are interconnected with neighbouring countries through the Nile, shared groundwater aquifers and non-Nilotic wadis. This reality requires highly competent, specialised management grounded in scientific and institutional principles.
In a paper by Professor Yasir Abbas, former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, we find a direct analysis of the historical and institutional development of the irrigation and water resources sector. He emphasises that water resources management is an interconnected technical process, that water is a sovereign resource, that water security is an integral component of national security, and that institutional stability is essential for preserving technical and engineering personnel and accumulated expertise.
In the writings of Dr Ahmed Mohamed Adam Saad, a former Undersecretary of the Ministry, we find documentation of the historical role played by the irrigation institution in national development and its connection to major projects such as the Gezira Scheme, New Halfa, Rahad and Suki schemes, sugar and energy projects, and support for Sudan’s states.
His analysis also presents the institution responsible for water as a regulatory authority governing different water uses, thereby raising the question of whether it is appropriate for such an institution to fall under a sector that is itself one of the principal users of water.
The technical observations presented by Dr Khalid Al-Nour concerning the proposed organisational structure of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation add a practical and contemporary dimension to the debate. Among the issues he raised were questions concerning organisational hierarchy, the institutional position of technical units and bodies, the danger of reducing the concept of water resources to irrigation activities, the omission of the Ministry’s institutional identity from its organisational structure, and the incorporation of the General Directorate of Projects into the General Directorate of Irrigation Operations.
The latter issue, in particular, is not merely procedural. The functions of studies, design, surveying, supervision of implementation and project development are fundamentally different from the functions of operation, maintenance and water distribution management. Combining them raises questions about the independence of the engineering function, the separation between infrastructure development and infrastructure operation, and the preservation of centres of technical expertise within the Ministry.
Despite differences in perspective and formulation, these writings and memoranda converge, to varying degrees, around a single question:
How can Sudan protect its water institutions from losing their identity, institutional memory and national function?
Sudan Is Not Without Research Institutions
It is important to avoid oversimplification.
Sudan is not without research institutions. It is not without expertise. Nor is it without a history of producing knowledge in the field of water resources.
Sudan’s institutional structures have included important research and technical institutions and units, among them the National Water Research Centre, the Hydraulics Research Centre, the Water Harvesting Research Centre and the Technical Organ for Water Resources, alongside other institutions and units with research, technical and executive responsibilities.
The real question, however, is not simply whether these names appear within an organisational structure, but whether they possess genuine institutional capacity.
How large are these institutions? How stable are they? How are they funded? How many full-time researchers do they employ? How do they preserve their data? How capable are they of attracting new generations of specialists? How many regular policy papers do they produce? And to what extent are their outputs directly connected to decision-making?
It is here that comparison with the Egyptian experience becomes more useful. The important point is not to say that one country has approximately twelve research institutes while another has fewer research centres. A numerical comparison alone is insufficient.
It is, however, professionally legitimate to ask why some countries have succeeded in building broad and relatively stable water research systems while our institutions have remained vulnerable to restructuring, mergers, and repeated changes in affiliations and mandates.
The problem is not a shortage of expertise.
This, in my view, is the great Sudanese paradox.
We have experts. We have university professors. We have engineers, hydrologists, geologists, lawyers, diplomats and specialists in transboundary waters. We possess accumulated experience within state institutions, universities, the Nile Basin, and regional and international organisations.
The question is whether we have adequate institutional mechanisms to transform this individual expertise into the state’s memory.
What happens when an expert who has spent thirty years working on a particular portfolio retires? Where does that knowledge go? What happens when an undersecretary, director or engineer leaves office? Are the files, knowledge and methodologies transferred to the next generation?
Do we have an integrated national technical archive? Do we have secure and accessible databases governed by clear systems? Do we have regular programmes for transferring knowledge between generations? Do our institutions produce policy papers regularly? Is there a clear institutional pathway that carries knowledge from monitoring stations, laboratories, research centres and technical departments to the decision-maker’s table?
These questions lie at the heart of a state built on institutions.
From an Egyptian Policy Paper to a Larger Sudanese Question
For this reason, Egypt’s Policy Paper No. 72 deserves to be read in Sudan beyond its immediate subject matter.
Yes, it is important to examine what the paper says about the water situation, climate change, transboundary resources, strategic projects, water security and sustainability.
But it is equally important to ask: how was this paper produced?
A specialised technical sector.
A ministry with a clearly defined mandate.
Coordination with a Cabinet-level decision-support centre.
A regular policy-paper series.
A clearly identified publication number: 72.
And content directed towards the policy sphere and the decision-making process.
It is this institutional chain that deserves careful consideration.
By contrast, when we examine the writings of Professor Saifeldin Hamad, Professor Yasir Abbas, Dr Ahmed Mohamed Adam Saad and Dr Khalid Al-Nour, we find that Sudan possesses deep national knowledge, important analyses and extensive historical expertise.
The problem, therefore, is not the absence of ideas.
The question is: how can this knowledge be transformed into a permanent institutional process within the state?
Rebuilding Sudan Also Begins with Institutional Memory
As Sudan confronts the challenges of war, reconstruction, and the restoration of state institutions, the concept of rebuilding must not be confined to physical infrastructure alone.
Rebuilding the water sector does not mean merely repairing a dam, clearing a canal, restarting a station or constructing a government office.
It also means protecting the national technical archive, securing hydrological databases, restoring monitoring and measurement networks, strengthening research centres, establishing permanent policy units, connecting universities and research centres with the Ministry, building programmes to prepare new generations of specialists, and preserving the accumulated knowledge of experts before they retire or emigrate.
It also means reconsidering the role of water resources within the state’s structure, not from the perspective of short-term administrative arrangements but from the standpoint of national security and long-term development.
Sudan is a country whose water interests are connected to a broad and complex regional environment. Its resources intersect with the Nile and its tributaries, shared groundwater, transboundary wadis, floods and droughts, climate change, food security, energy, the environment and regional relations.
These complexities cannot be managed through the logic of a single water-using sector, however important that sector may be.
Conclusion
From the Irrigation Department to the Ministry of Irrigation, and later the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources; through the repeated changes in names, institutional affiliations and organisational structures witnessed in subsequent decades; and up to the present debates surrounding institutional reorganisation, the history of Sudan’s water institutions does not tell a story of a shortage of experts or an absence of professional competence.
Rather, it raises a deeper question about the state’s ability to transform accumulated individual expertise into stable institutions that preserve institutional memory, safeguard national knowledge, and ensure policy continuity beyond changes in structures and officeholders.
Sudan has never been poor in intellect, expertise or professional competence. The real challenge lies in building institutions capable of retaining this expertise, organising it, passing it on to future generations, and transforming it from an individual-attached resource into sustainable national capacity.
Herein lies the most important conclusion: states are not built through the competence of individuals alone, however exceptional those individuals may be. They are built through institutions that transform individual expertise into the memory of the state, accumulated knowledge into public policy, and continuity into a foundation for protecting resources and shaping the future.
The lesson to be drawn from Egypt’s Policy Paper No. 72 is not that Egypt possesses experts while Sudan does not. Sudan is rich in expertise, professional competence and institutional history.
The deeper lesson is that individual expertise, however extensive, requires institutions that preserve it, fund it, organise it, review it, transfer it to the next generation and transform it into sustainable public policy.
This is the real challenge facing the Sudan of the future: a state that depends on individuals starts again whenever an individual leaves, while a state built on institutions always begins where the previous generation ended.
I can also produce a tighter international policy-journal version of this translation, with more concise prose and terminology aligned with water governance, institutional resilience, and transboundary water policy literature.

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