The Dynamics of Rural Change in Dry Agriculture in Sudan: Case study from Southern Kordofan

The general processes of rural transformation in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa often emerged as sources of tension between various household endogenous systems and the agro-industrial system which represents the exogenous influence upon them. From the discussion of the theoretical and the underlying linkages involved in this transition in the Sudanese context, it emerges that not much attention has been paid to what is working at the micro-level of the development problems facing he subsistence households. This study attempts to fill this gap in research; it briefly reviews previous studies to establish the general terms of reference and to suggest a simple household model, base on household theory, for tracing the production-- consumption nexus at the subsistence household level. The study bring into focus the agrarian household's links to the wage economy and to the subsistence production. It uses these two dimensions firstly, to question current assumptions about the eviction of subsistence peasants, their proletarianisation, and the agrarian development that dominated the discussion on the peasant economy in Sudan, and, secondly to develop an alternative for understanding the factors that govern the agricultural behaviours of the smallholders as well as the dynamics of change in rural Sudan. These two points are explored in a case study of three types of hierarchy of places drawn from Southern Kordofan region.