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Khidir Omar Khawadh, a fresh graduate along with his colleagues are motivated by a desire to be productive and work hard to make a success their animal fattening farm near Omdurman Islamic university building West of the peripheries of down town Khartoum.

They are eager to do their job in Omdurman fattening farm but are afraid that their zeal would fade away and their hopes and dreams would be dispelled if the Family Bank failed to heed their complaints, leading to mistrust between the graduates and the Bank and the project would thus be a failure and the high hopes would crumble. That was the type of situations that spurred despair, protest and riots and ultimately uprising in many an Arab countries in recent days.

The Graduates' Animal Fattening Farm near Omdurman Islamic University, Omdurman, will thus be a failure if it is not accorded proper administration which this pilot project deserves particularly as it is run by active and qualified graduates.

Many of the graduates working on the fattening farm are not happy with the ill-defined relationship with the Family Bank with regards to the selling and buying transactions and the change in the prices of the inputs of fattening calves which rose by three-fold in two-weeks' time, a situation which made one of the graduates opt for halting the sale of more than 50 fattened calves.

Khidir Omar Khawadh owns, along with nine colleagues, 65 fattened calves that were made ready for sale but the process was hindered by the poor relationship with the Family Bank. He complained that the Bank's representative would not consult with the graduates about the purchase of fodder and calves and, for this reason, they would not be informed on the cost and would not be able to estimate the profits and losses.

Khawadh said he was among the first graduates given calves more than a month ago and raised them on a given fodder but, he went on, they could not open an account at the Bank and could not sell the animals they had fattened because they did not know the cost.

Another graduate, Mohamed Khalil, said they have begun work 45 days ago and in two weeks the prices have changed several times; during that period they were told the price of calf kilo rose from SDG 3.600 to 3.700 then to 4.100; and the concentrated fodder kilo from SDG500 to SDG750.

Comparing their situation with that of the graduates in Hillat Kuku farm, Khalil said the graduates in Kuku are represented in the Bank's inputs purchasing committee. Khawadh suggests that the financiers (the Family Bank) pay a visit to the fattening farm to listen to their comments.

He said the graduates do not trust the Bank's representative, who, he said, is inexperienced and does not know how to deal with them. Khawadh therefore suggests the appointment of a new representative who should be well-experienced in animal breeding and well qualified to run such a farm.

Khawadh said he had visited a number of similar farms and found that the chances of success for Omdurman fattening farm are wider. He called for the funds offered to an individual graduate be increased to SDG15, 000 with the profit duration extended from three moths to one year.

He and his colleagues underlined the need for supplying the farm with modern big mixers with a daily output of 30 tons of concentrated fodder, indicating that the proper capacity and serviceability of the fodder processing machine prevent fodder decomposition and bacteria growth.

He also pointed out to the importance of establishing a clinic within the farm for local treatment, instead of taking animals to distant hospitals. Khawadh also called for establishing quarantine in addition to transport trucks. He said the graduates would follow up with the Governor of Khartoum State the issue of giving land plots in West Omdurman in addition to drilling water well for growing fodder in the farm.

Graduate Suad Babeau, a graduate of the Sudan University, has called for providing the farm with the necessary services, noting that the graduates had to stay nine hours before returning home at five o'clock in the afternoon, serving the animals with the four daily meals.

"They cannot stay in the farm during the evening due to lack of electricity, unlike other farms which have lighting facilities", she said.

Graduate complain of delay in fodder delivery to the farm and that the fodder is of low quality concentration and, because it is produced manually, is not cohesive.

Khawadh says the graduates are physically and scientifically competent and are capable of high quality performance in the project which he says can significantly cut down the prices of beef, but he fears that the high cost of fodder may undermine the idea of the project.

According to the manager of the fodder processing factory, stabilization of the fodder price makes up 75% of the success of the fattening farm. Mohamed Khalil says the delay in selling the fattened calves constitutes a burden on both the barns and the graduates and undermines the idea of renewing the animals every 40 days.

Khalil throws some remarks on the barns, meals, water pools and the relationship between the management and the graduates, stressing on the need for cooperation and esprit de corps. He quoted one graduates as saying he was ignorant of the nature of this relationship and of his rights and as adding that one manager once threatened to sack and replace him with an alien, a Bengal.

Muhannad Adam, who is specialized in arid areas cultivation, called upon the management for more flexibility in dealing with the graduates, noting that the project has helped them in securing jobs he wished would be beneficial to all people and would be expanded to other parts of the country, making use of the wide experience possessed by the graduates.

Mujahid Babikir al-Amin, who is specialized in animal production, expressed the hope that the project would be successful in implementing the ideas behind it. He called upon the Bank to raise the finance ceiling for expansion in the projects so as to be beneficial a profitable to the graduate.

The 2010 Khartoum University graduate Mohamed Adam said he was optimistic when he first heard about the project because he believed that the a team work would be fruitful and profitable. Like any other project, they were met with some difficulties in the beginning but n the process, those difficulties began to be overcome gradually, he said.

Fadwa al-Tayeb, animal product, Nilein University, wished the Bank would provide the funds needed for the individual projects. She called for provision of the means of transport, rest-houses and big capacity mixers for producing concentrated fodder in addition to the provision of scales and barn infrastructures.

The Board Director of Omdurman Fattening farm, Muhannad Jaafer, said the farm is incomplete yet as by mid-March they would commence implementation of such projects as lighting, internal roads, veterinary clinic, sales-points, slaughter and fodder processing plant.

He in two weeks' time, the fodder processing factory would set in motion by producing 30 tons of fodder a day at a cost of SDG57, 000. The barns have been manufactured in accordance with international specifications with sheds covering one-third of the area. There will be mobile workshops to fix breakdowns, he said. The Board Director attributed the high prices to using three kinds of forage and to the fluctuation of the prices in the local market.

As regards the selling, he said it is being carried out in conjunction with the Bank in connection with opening the bank account. He said the relationship is one of mutual profiting. With regards to the administrative decisions related to the prices, the Director said the graduate is informed about by the head of the group who meets with the management at a periodic administrative meeting every Saturday. He advised the graduate not to heed rumours which only spoil performance. Jaafer said any administrative decision is stamped and presented on public billboards within the factory which is frequented by the graduates.

It is appropriate to direct the graduates' attention towards market-related projects with an eye to providing the consumers' goods but this makes it mandatory upon the officials in charge of the projects to follow up and coordinate the efforts for taking the products of the graduate to the markets in a competitive way as the graduate is still too week to stand up to the market lords who tend to weaken ambitions of the young people as put by Islamic Omdurman University Vice-Chancellor Hassan Abbas Hassanain in an interview with a newspaper.

In this context, an agreement has been reached with the Family Bank to establish selling centers in neighbouring and other areas in the City of Omdurman.

The Bank has agreed to seek achieving considerable benefits to both the graduate and the consumer who will be able to meats in low prices as the project is aimed at enabling the graduate to keep away from the traditional norm of seeking an wage-based employment and rely on himself by engaging in projects from which he earns high profits, particularly as the project is fully run by the graduate who works on it by himself, In the coming five years the graduate will be fully independent in running his own project.

The graduate's animal fattening project is a partnership between the Islamic University of Omdurman and the Family Bank with a total estimated cost of SDG four million and a first-phase cost of more than one million SDG, takes in 1,200 graduates from different universities and it occupies an area of 50 feddans (acres) belonging to the University.

Jaafer explained that tee are three levels of the relationship between the Bank, the graduate and the relevant department of the University- the first is between the University and the Bank, the former will provide the land plot and the latter will finance the farm, this is known as partnership, the second one is the relationship between the graduate and the Bank, which is a mutual profiting relations, and the third level is the relationship between the University and the graduate which is a relationship between the lessor and lessee. Shaikan Company stands as the guarantor.

The graduate's animal fattening project is a major animal production venture that aims, in its first state, at fattening 4,000 calves in each duration of 40 days. It employs 800 graduates and contributes to meeting the market demand of meats.

Another project is one of poultry which consists of five suspended havens with a producing capacity of 36,000 'fleshy' chickens and employs 75 graduates. There are also plans of establishing convertible industries for processing sausage, burger, pastrami and minced meat, meat packaging and other industries. This project is of a daily producing capacity of 30 tons and takes in 225 graduates.

There is also the fodder processing plant which includes a molasses unit, and a poultry fodder plant with a daily capacity of 64 tons and employs 32 graduates .Moreover, there is the nursery project which consists of 12 units with a total annual capacity of 1.8 million transplants and employs 48 graduates. There is also a project for improvement of the Nubian goat by interbreeding with the Sa'anine caste. This is the greatest project for improvement of goats in the Sudan.

Hassanain said infrastructural projects of barns and water wells have been rehabilitated while modern slaughter-houses have been established and arrangements for environment conservation and for utilizing leftovers for manufacturing fodder have been put in place.

We have failed to meet the representative of the Family Bank to get from him more information on the financing operations by the Bank and his relationship with the graduates, because he was away from the farm for 90 minutes. We were also planning to see the President of the Board of Directors of the Bank, Engineer Widad Yagoub, but we also failed to do so because she was not in her office at the time she had set for meeting us.

Up until the time of preparing this report the Board Chairperson has neither set another appointment nor apologized for seeing us to answer a number of questions we have already prepared around the financing operations, the Bank's relationship with the graduates and the University, the rights of the graduates, the distribution of the profits and so on.

Edited for publishing by Mohamed Osman

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