Territori dello zucchero: le dinamiche di prossimità nella Sugar Belt sudanese

SUGAR TERRITORIES: PROXIMITY DYNAMICS IN THE SUDANESE SUGAR BELT. – The sugar sector is of great importance in the Sudan national economy. Sugar schemes and related factories have primarily settled in a geographic area along Blue and White Nile that is called the Sugar Belt. This industrial concentration, which occurs in a central region of the country, creates proximity between companies and in relation to the socio-economic regional context. At the local level, irrigation schemes and sugar factories are anchored to a space which has been traditionally consecrated to transhumant breeding and rainfed agriculture. Factories’ geographical proximity drastically changes the paths of territorial development. The paper analyses difficulties which are inherent to the activation of proximity potential, or rather the establishment of positive interactions between enterprises and between these latter and the territory, at the regional and the local scale.