Months into the war that erupted in Khartoum on April 15, 2023, people and their livelihoods were scattered. Residents of Khartoum were forced to move across vast stretches of territory, both within Sudan and beyond its borders, while the space for life in Khartoum State contracted into small, isolated geographic pockets, separated by the unthinkable horrors of war and flashes of hope that fade into the night, only to glimmer briefly with the morning star.
The markets of Khartoum State offered perhaps the clearest testimony to the war, given the density of people who once crowded them. Within days, the familiar footsteps that had animated As-Souq Al-Arabi and the old Omdurman market fell silent.
Even before the war, gold had assumed a central place in Sudan’s security and political economy, from its extraction in remote areas to the gold bracelets worn by women, which became a key target during the looting and occupation of homes, alongside other valuables such as cars and electronic devices.
A new map of Sudan’s gold markets has now taken shape.
Mohamed Bashir, a goldsmith currently working from his shop on Al-Nuss Street, recounted how the goldsmiths of the Imarat Al-Dhahab – Gold Building – lost not only their place of work but also their gold capital. He told Atar that he knows of one goldsmith who lost 20 kilogrammemes, another who lost 30 kilogrammemes, and one who lost more than 100 kilogrammemes of gold.
With the Sudanese Armed Forces’ recapture of Khartoum State and the departure of the Rapid Support Forces, limited commercial activity has begun to return to parts of Omdurman and Karari locality, including Al-Thawra neighbourhoods around Al-Nuss Street and Al-Wadi Street.
Shops and small businesses reopened, their illuminated signs lighting up Al-Nuss and Al-Wadi streets more conspicuously than almost anywhere else in the war-ravaged capital. Gold shops, however, have been the most striking of them all. Many of their owners are goldsmiths who previously worked at Imarat Al-Dhahab building in central Khartoum, which had been the capital’s principal hub for goldsmiths before the war. A new map of Sudan’s gold markets has now taken shape, along with new patterns of how gold is circulated.
A New Map of Gold Markets
After the fighting in Khartoum State subsided, the geography of the markets changed, as did the way people dealt with gold. For many families, gold became the price of survival. They sold their savings and left their homes for destinations they could not always foresee. Some liquidated their gold holdings and converted them into capital for new businesses in safer states.
More than a year ago, a gold-related phenomenon began circulating on social media: the practice of buying gold by the grain. Among goldsmiths, a “grain” refers to one-tenth of a gramme of gold. Under the system, customers, most of them women, go to goldsmiths and purchase individual grains at the prevailing gold price. The buyer does not receive the physical gold until her accumulated grains exceed one gramme in weight.
With the Sudanese pound continually losing value, saving in gold offers a more reliable option, and this new form of gold saving has proved particularly familiar to women.
The system resembles the way women’s informal savings groups operate, through rotating savings schemes or collective funds. Perhaps for that reason, the new form of gold saving has proved particularly familiar to women, and may carry an added advantage.
With the Sudanese pound continually losing value, saving in gold offers a more reliable option, making it increasingly difficult to preserve wealth in Sudanese currency.
For goldsmiths, meanwhile, the system offers a means of pooling substantial capital from large numbers of women who cannot afford to purchase a full gramme at once amid the economic pressures of war.
Yet the grain system also creates a host of complications for goldsmiths, on top of the fundamental difficulties already associated with trading gold in Omdurman.
On Al-Nuss and Al-Wadi streets in Omdurman’s Al-Thawra neighbourhoods, goldsmiths who spoke to Atar described the system as an accounting nightmare for merchants dealing in finished gold jewellery.
Given the additional costs and labour involved, goldsmiths say the overall benefit is not particularly attractive to them, despite persistent customer requests to introduce grain-based purchasing in their shops.
Mohamed Bashir, a goldsmith who recently reopened his shop at Shandi Building, says his female customers repeatedly ask him to offer the system, but he remains unenthusiastic. He weighs each grain against its cost and the complications involved, particularly the religious ones, because, under Islamic jurisprudence, taqābuḍ, the immediate exchange of the two counter-values, is regarded as a necessary condition in buying and selling gold.
Goldsmiths at the Shandi Building, which has resumed operations in Omdurman market, say the grain system is not widespread in the markets and is more commonly requested in residential neighbourhoods.
Bashir believes the grain system could offer a solution for smaller goldsmiths who lack sufficient capital or have only recently entered the gold trade.
Under Islamic jurisprudence, taqābuḍ, the immediate taking and delivery of the two counter-values, is regarded as a necessary condition in transactions involving the sale and purchase of gold. This is supported by a number of Prophetic hadiths and lies at the heart of concerns over falling into riba, or usury.
Taqābuḍ takes place through contracts of financial exchange: the two parties receive and deliver the respective counter-values agreed upon in the transaction. This exchange is the fundamental purpose of concluding the contract and is described by Islamic jurists in terms of qabḍ and iqbāḍ: one party takes possession of what they seek to acquire while the other delivers the corresponding payment.
The mutual process of taking and delivering possession is known as taqābuḍ. It constitutes the intended fulfilment of the contract and is what allows the transaction to be valid and binding.
It is also defined as taking possession of the subject matter of the contract and obtaining effective control over it according to customary practice, whether through physical possession or by removing any impediment to taking possession and disposing of it.
Possession may take different forms. It can occur through takhliya, as in the case of real estate, where the seller places the property at the buyer’s disposal; through transfer, as with large shipments of timber or grain; or through physical handover, as with coins, banknotes, a handkerchief, a garment or a light vessel.
A Trade Built Through Social Media
The internet and social media have played a conspicuous role in reshaping the economic and commercial landscape of this period.
Amani, a young woman, entered the grain system while she was in Egypt around six months ago after discovering it through Facebook. She sent her phone number to the administrator of the page, who added her to a WhatsApp group run by a young goldsmith who had become known on Facebook for operating the grain system.
Within a short period, Amani accumulated enough grains to acquire a 2.5-gramme gold ring and returned to Omdurman to collect it. She did not, however, continue purchasing gold through the grain system after hearing that buying gold without taking possession of it was not permissible under Islamic law.
Amani told Atar that she knows of women who accumulated substantial sums through the system, including some who were able to buy cars. She said debate over the Islamic legality of the grain system was common in the WhatsApp group, to the point that its administrator would sometimes shut the group down and prohibit discussion of the issue.
Although goldsmiths and shops offering the grain system have announced that buyers can take physical possession of their accumulated gold at any time, Amani remains reluctant to participate again because she is not convinced that this can be practically implemented.
The internet and social media have played a conspicuous role in reshaping the economic and commercial landscape of this period. As traders shifted towards digital marketing and personal buying and selling through Facebook commerce groups, social media also helped propel the grain system into the public eye.
More recently, Tola gold bars have appeared across Sudanese social media. The tola is traditionally a unit of weight used for gold, with one tola weighing approximately 11 grammes. The product marketed under the name “Tola” consists of small bars of 999 fine gold in various weights—3, 5 and 10 grammes, purchased as a means of preserving wealth or as gifts. The product is popular in the Gulf states.
Another recent development has been the launch of a Sudanese application called Sabika, which allows users to buy and sell gold by the grain. The application appears to have generated controversy of its own, suggesting how widely the grain-based gold trade has spread.
The company currently has two branches in Khartoum and 35,000 followers on its social-media page. It also distributes gold grains as prizes in promotional competitions. Its operations began in June last year, meaning it attracted this level of engagement in roughly two months.
Goldsmiths Resist Change
The real market remains in the neighbourhoods.
Bashir says public demand for the grain system began to increase gradually more than a year ago. In his view, the main obstacle facing goldsmiths is their inability to manage the system efficiently. Most goldsmiths, he recounted, resist changes to the traditional way they conduct their business, believing that their established methods are safer and more prudent when dealing with a commodity that requires considerable care, caution and vigilance.
Yet Bashir says the transformation of the gold market brought about by the war has also drawn his attention to promising new opportunities.
He sees the shift from selling gold in central markets to selling it in residential neighbourhoods as a change with positive aspects that reduces some of the complications surrounding the trade. He believes the presence of gold shops within neighbourhoods is also an important security advantage, in both wartime and peacetime. Markets, he said, are currently far more desolate than residential areas.
“Although some goldsmiths have reopened their shops at Shandi Building in Omdurman market, they continue to operate on Al-Nuss and Al-Wadi streets as well,” he explained.
Goldsmiths in Karari regard proximity to residential neighbourhoods as an additional marketing advantage, helping shops build stable, productive commercial relationships and networks with people in the communities around them.
Bashir and other goldsmiths who spoke to Atar also noted that, despite the reopening of the main markets, the real market remains in the neighbourhoods. The difference in prices is marginal—sometimes no more than the cost of a round-trip journey by public transport.
Mohamed Bashir said goldsmiths in Omdurman are currently operating at the bare minimum of their profession, buying and selling, without the capacity for repair or manufacturing.
What Khartoum’s gold market most urgently lacks, he believes, are modern gold-processing factories and workshops capable of producing jewellery sophisticated enough to compete with Bahraini and Gulf designs.
