Kenana Kingdom of Green Gold: Grand Multinational Venture in the Desert of Sudan

First Published in 2001. The Kenana factory was officially inaugurated on 3 March 1981 by the President of Sudan amidst a blaze of publicity. The Kenana concept aimed to combine Western expertise, Arab financial resources and Sudan's natural resources of sun, fertile soil and plentiful water for irrigation purposes in the creation of a mega-agro-industrial project, bringing to the host country the advantages of large-scale job creation, transfer of advance technology and import substitution. The sheer size of the project, however, allied to Sudan's limited infrastructure and the remoteness of the chosen site from the country's only seaport, fuelled controversy, with negative comment the order of the day as far as the world's financial press was concerned.