The Mahdi or the Prophet Jesus. All these movements were met with severe repression. Most of their leaders were executed. Tribal resistance was concentrated in the Nuba Mountains and in South Sudan, especially by the Nuer tribe. The British administration worked to win the loyalty of tribal leaders and religious scholars and began preparing and educating some Sudanese to assist in the administration, thereby reducing the Egyptian presence in the lower administrative ranks, which was fully achieved after the emergence of national sentiment and national consciousness in 1924, and the influence of the educated Sudanese civil and military class, influenced by the Egyptian national movement. Like all policies imposed by colonial powers on their colonies in the economic sphere, Britain made Sudan a source of raw materials and a market for its products. It worked to develop agricultural crops, especially cotton, and established several projects for this purpose, the most important of which was the Gezira Scheme. It declared all unregistered lands as state property. It built the Sennar Dam to regulate irrigation in the Gezira Scheme and provided cotton for British textile factories after the global demand increased. Cotton provided a large return for the government budget, as it became a major source of income and met the needs of British textile factories after the global demand increased. The Gezira Scheme had a great impact on the Sudanese economy and society, as foreign capital began to flow in, creating many job opportunities for farmers and irrigation workers whose living standards improved. Railway lines were extended between production areas and Port Sudan, through which 400,000 tons of imports and 22,000 tons of exports, 800,000 tons of domestic goods, and 40,000 passengers were transported in one year. The government established river navigation lines despite the obstacles of the cataracts on the Nile and a network of telegraph lines, and telephones were widespread in most parts of Sudan, transmitting one million messages. However, land routes did not fare as well, perhaps due to natural conditions, sparse population, and large area. Although Sudan's trade in that period relied solely on agricultural crops, it jumped significantly from 1 million pounds to more than 3 million pounds.