Khartoum’s Tuti is fruity for investors
March 23, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — An idyllic island carpeted in lush mango groves at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles is about to vanish forever as developers rush to connect this rural backwater to Sudan’s booming capital.
Pristine Tuti Island lies at the heart of Khartoum’s most famous beauty spot where Mahas tribesmen have lived for centuries, isolated from the cacophony of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, only a short boat ride away.
Its eight square kilometres (three square miles) of fertile land are covered in citrus orchards, vegetable farms, gorse hedgerows and narrow muddy lanes where donkeys and rickshaws are largely the only source of transport.
But times are changing. Ever since Sudan became an oil exporter in 1999, ambitious investors have gobbled up slice after slice of Khartoum, looking to transform a sleepy colonial outpost into a dynamic, wealthy regional hub.
Now government planners and private businessmen want to build bridges between Tuti and the three cities to solve crippling traffic bottlenecks and transform the island into an exclusive hotel resort and business district.
What Khartoum state hails as the only suspension bridge in the Arab world and Africa, is scheduled to open in June, linking the island to the mainland.
Most of the 15,000 islanders are pleased, but some, particularly the elderly, have their doubts at the prospect of a flyover and three more bridges — one connecting Tuti with Omdurman and two others with Bahri.
News of the bridges has meant agricultural land which was once traded for around three dollars an acre (0.75 euros a hectare) can now be sold to investors for around 200 dollars an acre (50 euros a hectare), particularly for plots bordering the two Niles.
“It’s very tempting. People’s incomes are very low, so how can you resist this? You would be a millionaire in dollars overnight,” said student Mahir Ahmed said as he walked through the fields of his childhood on holiday from studies in Britain.
Basic is the only word to describe life on Tuti, which has no proper sewage system or rubbish collection. Residents fling bags of garbage towards the Nile, which every year floods the lowest lying land.
Tuti has only one clinic. Patients needing specialist medical care must be eased into rickshaws or one of the island’s few cars before they are taken to the mainland on one of the tiny boats which cross the water. Boats have capsized. Islanders have drowned.
“Tuti can’t be like this forever,” says Husam Abouda, the 25-year-old general manager of Tuti Island Investment, a private firm owned by his father, whose website has already turned the island into a dotcom (tuti-island.com).
Abouda debated the merits of an Egyptian and two Chinese masterplans for the 300,000 square metres (30 hectares) the company already owns from an overstuffed sofa in a giant office reminiscent of an English gentleman’s club.
Theirs is a lifestyle vision of luxury and entertainment: Dubai-style hotels lining the coast, Beverly Hills-style villas, parks, malls, business district, a lush golf course, and Tuti islanders resettled into apartment blocs.
“This is an island. It’s a prime location,” says Abouda dreaming of one day selling back a square metre on Tuti for more than 1,600 dollars (1,000 euros).
The infrastructure alone could cost around 500 million dollars and the whole development project five billion dollars, he says.
Apart from the Chinese, his company is in touch with an engineering firm from Kuwait and a Malaysian subsidiary behind Kuala Lumpar’s twin towers.
Some islanders themselves are dreaming of a share in the bonanza, such as businessman Abdel Rahim Hamed Ahmed al-Haj, who is quite happy to lose a few fields in exchange for an African centre of commerce.
“If you sell the land, you won’t get it back. I’m a businessman. I don’t sell my ideas. I want to do it myself,” he said, as he sat back in traditional white robes in the reception room of his sprawling villa.
“People can still live on the island with their shares. If we do that, in 35 to 40 years, according to business law, it will belong to the people.”
Certified accountant Zein Ahmed, 72, wants schools, hospitals and roads and his worst nightmare is luxury hotels and tourists with loose morals.
“We don’t want to solve the traffic jam of the government. We don’t want it to have two other bridges. For religious purposes, we don’t want to see investors come to build five-star hotels.
“We are just going to cry,” he said in his impeccable English.
But Abdul Wahid Aziz, the executive manager of the 14.2-million-dollar (9.2-million-euro) suspension bridge from the Khartoum state planning ministry is just getting started when it comes to restructuring the dire road network.
The plan is “to faciliate the traffic, replan the area and upgrade the land” by creating a series of landmarks to beautify the Khartoum cityscape.
It can take an hour to drive from south Khartoum to Bahri, an insufferable journey in the scorching heat. When all four bridges are completed, Aziz says the time will be slashed to 20 minutes.
His next meeting is with a German company in talks to overhaul the Khartoum road network, offering to create a mass of triple flyovers and tunnels with an inner ring road of 21 intersections, and Tuti caught in the middle.
(AFP)