AN Egyptian private equity firm is invest-ing in 500,000 feddans (210,000 hectares) of farmland in Sudan, an executive of the company said yesterday.
Gulf and other Arab countries have been investing in a range of farming projects in Sudan, Africa's biggest country by area and long viewed as having huge agricul-tural potential that has not been exploited."We are investing in 274,000 feddans in the north (of Sudan) and the rest in the south," Ahmed el-Houssieny, managing director at Citadel Capital, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Cairo.He said the firm operating the project was called Sabina, a company set up by Citadel, and said it had the right to farm the land for 99 years.Citadel's move follows an initiative announced in August by another Egyptian firm, Beltone Private Equity, to invest up to $1 billion in agricultural projects in a venture with Sudan's Kenana Sugar Company."There are few people who have exper-tise in widescale farming and we are cur-rently working with some Australian experts to grow 5,000 experimental fed- dans," Houssieny said.The farmland would mainly be used to grow sugar cane, corn and wheat, he said. Abdul Rahim Ali Hamad, state minister at Sudan's Agriculture Ministry, said in May investment in Sudan by Arab states seeking to guarantee supplies of staples would account for up to 50 per cent of all investment in the country from 2010.
