Introduction

The New Haifa Scheme is the outcome of the resettlement of the Nubian Halfawyeen population (from Wadi Haifa), whose land was drowned by the High Dam, along with the partial settlement of the local nomadic groups (e.g. Shukriya, Lahawiyeen, Khawalda), the indigenous owners of the land, in return for their accommodation of the Halfawyeen coming from the north. The scheme was developed in five phases (Alam, 1971: 45) that involved land reclamation with the essential canalization network and development of settlements, spanning the period 1962–69. The first of these phases was devoted to the resettlement of the uprooted Nubian Halfawyeen communities (from Wadi Haifa), while the later ones were directed to beneficaries from the local nomadic groups.

The scheme was founded on the waters of the Khashm el-Girba dam on the River Atbara. Initially it was designed to conserve about 1.3 milliard cubic metres of water, but because of siltation it presently provides about 0.8 milliards. The area targeted for development is 500,000 feddans (one feddan = 1.038 acres), yet about 300,000 feddans are cropped annually. The drop in acreage is mainly due to shortage of irrigation water, inefficiency of the irrigation system, and lack of other basic agricultural inputs; which in totality induced the government to launch the present rehabilitation programme, financed by the World Bank.

The land is divided into tenancies of 15 feddans size, of which 5 are under cotton, 5 under groundnuts, and 5 under wheat in the Halfawyeen-settled part of the scheme, and under dura in the part settled by the nomads.