Wad Madani is the capital of Al Jazirah state in east-central Sudan. In 1993, it's population was 211,362. It is linked by rail to Khartoum and is the center of a cotton-growing region. The city is also the center of local trade in barley, livestock and wheat.

In the early eighteenth century is was a small Turko-Egyptian outpost, and grew rapidly following a 1925 program to stimulate local economic development.