This article—originally co-published by the author as part of the Center for Environmental and Social Studies team—comes at a pivotal moment, two years into a brutal war that has turned gold mining into Sudan’s primary occupation and main source of income, accounting for over 50% of the country’s official exports.
This marks the highest contribution by gold in the country’s history.
While the central role of gold in financing the war is undisputed, the report argues that the first shots of the conflict were, in fact, fired in the mining sector, a battleground for control over the resource that now fuels a war unlikely to end unless Sudan’s gold is redirected toward state-building and away from the grip of warlords.
Since the outbreak of the war in April 2023, Sudan’s mining sector has morphed into a silent battlefield where political and military interests clash with the ambitions of a dominant elite.
Sudan’s mineral wealth now fuels war and empowers militias, while citizens face poverty, illness, and environmental ruin.
In a country facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, over 12 million people are displaced or forced to flee, hunger and disease are rampant, and children are suffering unprecedented levels of harm, mineral wealth is anything but a remedy.
Instead, it has become a catalyst, funding war and entrenching militias power while ordinary citizens are left to endure poverty, illness, and environmental devastation.
Gold mining expanded in Sudan during the global financial crisis of 2007, with a dramatic surge after the independence of South Sudan, which deprived the country of 90 per cent of its foreign currency earnings.
Sudan’s misfortune lies in the fact that its gold boom coincided with two of the most significant global price hikes in history.
From just $8 per gramme in the early 2000s, gold prices skyrocketed to $59 in 2011.
When war broke out in 2023, prices averaged $60 per gramme. Today, they exceed $100, driven by global trends such as the Russia–Ukraine conflict, US funding for Ukraine via frozen Russian assets, and growing mistrust of the dollar.
Many countries and banks have turned to gold, amid fears that American and British borrowing systems can no longer be backed by gold reserves.
Locally, Sudan’s gold rush reflects this exceptional global transformation.
Early in the boom, military involvement was limited compared to that of traders and influential figures from the Al-Bashir-era regime.
However, as reliance on gold increased and the National Congress Party ruling role diminished, security agencies expanded their grip.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of Jebel Amer and other mining sites starting in 2017, following their transformation into an autonomous force with separate legal standing. That same year, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) increased their role in gold production and export via Al-Sabika Al-Zahabiya Company.
Coincidentally, the Defense Industries System (DIS) was established that year with financial and administrative independence from the state and spearheaded the army’s incursion into the mining sector. Similar patterns unfolded across other forces, including the Popular Defense Forces, leading to the militarisation of Sudan’s gold and the detachment of military institutions from political oversight, a process akin to severing the state from its most valuable resource. The snowball had begun to roll.
Concurrently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) emerged as the world’s largest importer of African gold by 2016. Its favourable fiscal policies made it the region’s trading hub and gateway to global markets. However, lax regulation also turned the UAE into a smuggler’s paradise.
In 2023, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed the UAE on its grey list over concerns regarding money laundering and transparency, concerns closely tied to Sudan’s gold.
Official figures show that the volume of gold officially imported by the UAE from Sudan has long exceeded the amount exported through formal procedures—an economic link that ties the growth of the parallel market to the UAE’s rise.
Despite official production reaching 107 tonnes in 2017, real figures were likely far higher. Then Minister of Industry Musa Karama estimated actual output at over 250 tonnes that year. Smuggling flourished, weakening the state and strengthening military-linked parallel markets. Even after the December Revolution, hailed for its peaceful resistance and radical demands, military dominance over gold persisted, and in fact deepened. This was evident in the plunge of officially recorded production to just 35 tonnes in 2020, despite increasing output and stable fuel supplies.
The 2021 coup worsened the situation, and the war sent it spiraling further.
In 2024, Sudan exported just 23 of 64 tonnes of gold legally—the rest, worth over $4 billion, disappeared into shadow networks.
In 2024, Sudan officially produced 64 tonnes of gold, a notable rise compared to previous years. On the surface, this suggests improved economic performance. But a closer look reveals a grim reality: only 23 tonnes were officially exported, meaning just 34 per cent of production followed legal channels. Over 41 tonnes were smuggled, evading government oversight and denying the national treasury much-needed revenue.
The estimated value of the smuggled gold exceeds $4 billion. In fact, Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim disclosed that over 48 tonnes were smuggled to a neighbouring country, likely Egypt, during 2024 alone.
Based on official figures, nearly $9 billion, three times the country’s total exports, was drained from Sudan’s economy this year, ending up in the pockets of individuals and clandestine networks thriving in the chaos of war and lawlessness.
Most alarmingly, 96.8 per cent of Sudan’s official gold exports went to the UAE, where it is refined, laundered, and re-exported globally.
Despite repeated government announcements about diversifying export destinations, such as plans to send gold to Qatar, the UAE remains the chief beneficiary. Mounting allegations point to opaque relationships between the UAE and militias controlling several mining zones.
Instead of benefiting the Sudanese people, gold revenues are recycled to fund the war and bolster the fortunes of military leaders and complicit officials entangled in this shadow economy.
This manipulation is not limited to international trade. It strikes at the heart of the domestic economy.
While global prices for gold hover around $100 per gramme, Sudan officially exports gold at about $74 per gramme. This disparity, fueled by corruption, mismanagement, and collusion with traders, means Sudan forfeits the lion’s share of value-added benefits. The result: a deeper fiscal crisis, a hollowed-out state, and an inability to finance essential services or pay public sector wages.
In 2024, Sudan earned just $183,000 from gold exports—out of $1.57 billion in official trade.
Official documents show that Sudan received a mere $183,000 in direct revenue from gold exports in 2024, an absurdly low figure compared to total official exports valued at $1.57 billion.
This means only 0.01 per cent of the proceeds made it into state coffers.
Such numbers underscore the state’s catastrophic failure to regulate the sector and signal the overwhelming dominance of gold militias and their allied merchants. These actors now control the entire gold supply chain, from extraction to smuggling, and from export to money laundering.
In RSF-controlled areas, where data is scarce and information is hard to verify, traditional and informal mining sites have become battlegrounds of a different sort.
The RSF exercises control over key mining regions in Darfur and North and West Kordofan.
Hundreds of thousands of miners work in harsh, perilous conditions with primitive tools and no oversight. Many are forced to pay protection fees to various militias just to access mining areas.
Worse still, they are compelled to sell their gold at up to 35 per cent below global prices, essentially rendering them bonded labourers, risking their lives to survive while their sweat and suffering bankroll the war and enrich its architects.
Communities have fought for a share of the gold pie. In some areas, they managed to secure four per cent of total production under what is locally termed “social responsibility.”
But even this modest share pales in comparison to the state’s former 34 per cent cut. Instead of allocating revenues for local development or war relief, the government has failed to disclose spending figures. Its unpublished reports refer vaguely to supporting the war effort.
The erosion of transparency and absence of reliable data open the door to corruption.
War, then, becomes a convenient excuse for plunder. The path to rebuilding state revenues lies in increasing the state’s share and reasserting control over the sector.
But the catastrophe is not just financial, it is also environmental and public health-related.
Traditional miners and unregulated companies routinely use toxic chemicals like mercury, thiourea, and cyanide to extract gold.
Without training, safety protocols, or environmental protections, these substances seep into soil and groundwater, destroying farmland and pastures.
Diseases have spread. Miscarriages and birth defects have surged.
Experts warn that many mining areas could become uninhabitable in just a few years, amid a total collapse of healthcare and zero compensation or preventive measures. These regions are slowly turning into toxic wastelands, deepening local suffering and leaving communities to pay the war’s price both economically and biologically.
Meanwhile, elite fortunes are ballooning at an unprecedented pace. The report’s detailed data shows that profits among top traders linked to militias and government elites have risen by between 350 to 500 per cent in just one year, the bloodiest phase of Sudan’s modern history.
A single small-scale export, barely 10 kilogrammes of gold, can yield between $160,000 and $200, 000, equivalent to or exceeding the government’s total annual gold revenue. In such a context, notions of development, reconstruction, or even economic reform ring hollow. What exists is a full-fledged war economy, where wealth is recycled to perpetuate conflict, not end it.
Reducing this war to mere military advances and retreats will not resolve the crisis.
The true challenge lies in dismantling the corrupt, war-profiting networks driving the conflict. Redirecting national resources toward genuine state-building is an urgent priority, not a luxury to be postponed in the name of “security.”
Turning a blind eye only guarantees the war’s continuation, prolonging the suffering of millions who have lost everything but the hope of defeating the greed and chaos that ignited and now sustains this devastation.
Sudan does not merely need international condemnation. It needs decisive global action. The world must exert serious pressure on the warring parties, putting the welfare of communities at the forefront.
Transparent oversight of gold and other key sectors, like gum Arabic, must be enforced.
Institutional reconstruction is vital to ensure Sudan’s resources are managed free from militarised control. This will require domestic awareness and grassroots pressure campaigns to reclaim the country’s wealth.
Sudan’s mineral resources do not belong to warlords or traders. They belong to its people, and must be used to rebuild, not to destroy, the nation.
