Blue Nile State has a population of approximately 800,000 people (75% or whom reside in the rural areas and 25% in the four urban centres).
The region is host to around forty different ethnic groups. Its economic activity is based upon agriculture and livestock and increasing mineral exploitation. The state features, the Rosaries Dam, which is the main source of Sudan’s hydroelectric power generation capacity.
Largely due to its strategic and economic importance, Blue Nile has, since 1997, been the focus of a struggle for political control, which has been enacted between the Government of Sudan and the former Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Since the signing in 2005, of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), political power has been shared between the National Congress Party (NCP) and the SPLM (55% and 45% respectively). The construction of the region’s formal administration is based upon the existence of five localities: Ed Damazin, Rosaries, Bau, Geissan and Kurmuk. Kurmuk, remains identified by the SPLM as the capital city of the southern Blue Nile State and is, itself, divided into five counties.
With regard to its social indicators:
- The infant mortality rate is estimated to be 87: 1,000 live births, while the state has the lowest life expectancy rate for women (51.2 years) in Northern Sudan.
- The state is highly malaria endemic, and the escalating incidence of HIV/AIDS is of major concern.
- Only 40% of the population has access to safe drinking water in the north of the state, and only 10% in the south.
- 47% of school-age children were enrolled in the GoSS-controlled areas of the region in 2004; while in the south the enrolment rate is currently estimated to be less than 10%. It was estimated that in Blue Nile, Abyei and the Nuba Mountains in 2004, some 1,500 children were categorized as Children Associated with Armed Forces (CAAF).
- The majority of its roads become completely inaccessible during the six-month wet season, while an equally large majority remains contaminated year-round, by land mines and UXO’s.
Strengthening existing coordination activities could improve development programming, particularly in consolidating existing data and coordinating future returns-related data collection. Focus will be placed on the need to address those issues that surround land tenure and on the overall enhancement of local administration capacity. |
