Synopses & Reviews
The Kenana Sugar Company, the world's largest integrated sugar project, began in the middle of a desert. In less than four years, an international cooperative effort created what has been called the green gold of Sudan. However, the managing company withdrew in the middle of construction. The governments of Sudan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia moved in to complete the project. El Nazir and Desai reveal the bargaining and negotiations of this collaboration, and they explore the elements of its success.
Synopsis
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.