Even by 1986, it had become apparent that than Sudan was badly in need of a demonstration and that the key to alleviate its immediate problems with food security and eventually to improve its dismal economic performance lay to a large extent in greater support of agriculture, particularly of food production.

The Global 2000 Sudan project, headed by Ignacio Narvaez, began in May 1986 with an initial emphasis on the improvement of sorghum and millet production during the summer season in both irrigated and rainfed zones. During the 1987/88 cropping season, wheat was added to the field demonstrations programme.

From 1986 to 1991, nearly 2,000 Sudanese farmers in the Khartoum region participated in the programme. The results have been outstandingly successful. The Ministry of Agriculture was about to discontinue the wheat production among tenant farmers in the irrigated districts, until SG 2000’s project.

Government leaders now directly credited the Global 2000 programme for the reversal in national wheat policy. The SG 2000 wheat PTPs grown during 1987/88 provided the evidence that average wheat yields in the irrigated areas could be increased two to three fold through the application of improved production packages. The cost of inputs to produce these higher yields increased by less than 50%, yet farmers’ net income rose from $87 per ha to $292.

With the 1989 harvest, enough seed of two high yielding wheat varieties were available to plant around 64,800 ha in 1990.

The SG 2000 Programme succeeded overwhelmingly in demonstrating the potential of extension officers for serving as agents of change in food production. It did it primarly by training and supporting them in the use of an effective tool for technology demonstration (PTPs). Once the extension officers had something tangible to offer as well as the means of delivering it, they were able to perform that function quite well and, as a result, they began to acquire greater credibility among farmers.

The success of the programme have generated greater confidence in the efficience of research, and now the extension agents and researchers are in a better position to find improved varieties and usefull innovations, and to adress the constraints of rainfed sorghum and millet production in the other Sudan regions, which are more difficult environments. By following SG 2000’s recommendations, Sudan could become self-sufficient in wheat production.

The achievement of this potential will require some changes in the Sudanese Government’s policies, with regards to fertiliser imports and seed production. But some changes could bring a « green revolution » to Africa’s largest nation.

The programme ended in 1992.