In collaboration with other academics, we defined the design parameters for a high-speed road link from the capital to the proposed new airport. Our involvement included a very brief desktop study/assessment of the opportunities this could bring the surrounding areas.We were concerned by the disregard for minority ethnic groups living in villages and small towns surrounding Khartoum. The airport, and the speculative development it would bring, exacerbated this. Our approach was to define a spatial strategy that would safeguard these outlying territories, and promote an appropriate and more suitable local economic development along its length.The Green Nile is a system of layered infrastructures that promote local development: agricultural training centres, permaculture hydroponic fields, a road section that would act as a flood defence. The Green Nile envisaged the road as a piece of civic (civilian) infrastructure, a green line, that would extend the distribution networks offered by the international airport to a wider area.This is our first “Trojan Horse” project, because it was designed to do more than asked for. We hope that if it ever gets beyond a feasibility stage that it goes some of the way towards facilitating a different kind of urban growth, and accompanying social, political and economic patterns, than was expected.