Water is a central resource in Sudan for the production and reproduction of both the rural (pastoralists and farmers) and urban populations. Despite the importance of the waters of the Nile, since early times, due to the constraints imposed by aridity, seasonality, and a lack of infrastructure, Sudanese communities have had to rely on varied and complex socio-technical systems supported by traditional knowledge and principles of water-sharing in order to guarantee that their needs will be satisfied. British colonisation was a milestone in the country’s waterscape: first, it designed a new role for the State, which became a major actor in the regulation and modernisation of water resources, prioritising economic productivity through the construction of dams—beginning with the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile (1925) and the Jezira Scheme for cotton cash crops, the largest in the world. Second, it fostered a new “moral economy” of expert bureaucracies that upset livelihoods, legitimised displacement, and undermined the autonomy of local communities regarding access to water and its use. The first post-colonial governments pursued policies that favoured huge infrastructures, regardless of the increasing awareness of their ecological and social costs, and they were maintained alongside a lack of attention to problems with the domestic water supply, which were mitigated in rural or peri-urban settings by the communities’ hold on small-scale water systems (wells, ḥafīr reservoirs, karrō water carts) and water solidarity networks.