The revival of ‘native administration’ in the Sudan: A pragmatic view

The basic theme of this paper is to trace the pragmatic attempts of different governments in the Sudan to revive the system of native administration. The need for this revival became clear shortly before the overthrow of Nimeiry's government in April 1985. The approaches to this revival followed two main lines. The first approach adopted piecemeal reforms initiated by individual regional governments before 1986. In the second approach the central government adopted a comprehensive strategy to revive native administration. The implications of these attempts and their expected influence on the new multi-party system in the Sudan are briefly analysed in this paper. The data for this article was collected by the author while touring the Eastern and Western regions with an ILO project identification team between March and June 1986 as a consultant on local government and popular participation.