View of part of the Aweil Rice Scheme in Northern Bahr El Ghazal State. |31st May 2022. |Credit: Emmanuel J. Akile/Eye Radio.

Northern Bahr el Ghazal government said on Wednesday it intends to boost the current production at the Aweil Rice Scheme and cultivate a record 1,250,000 feddans (525,000 hectares).

Addressing the state parliament, Governor Tong Akeen Ngor, said the government will engage development partners to boost production at about 47 times the previous level.

Akeen commended the partners for their “continuous support” in reviving the scheme and encouraged communities to avail land.

“The Governor encouraged the community to avail the land for farming and stressed that the state government is targeting 1,250,000 feddans to be cultivated in order to increase agricultural production and reduce hunger across the state,” reads a statement from the governor’s office.

The scheme is a national project of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security established by the then Sudanese government in 1944.

It is the biggest rice farm in the country so far, stretching over about 11,000 hectares.

But since the South Sudan government inherited the scheme upon independence, production had been crippled until August 2023, when the Ministry of Agriculture, UN’s food agencies and the World Bank revived the scheme on a minimum capacity.