Record-high gold prices are fuelling a surge in mining in Sudan, unlocking a crucial source of revenue for the country’s warring parties and allowing them to finance the conflict.
The country’s gold mining industry last year reached its highest output in six years, with swelling numbers of artisanal miners and readily available imported mining chemicals all contributing to the increase, according to two new reports.
Gold production in Sudan reached about 80 tonnes last year, according to estimates from Swissaid, worth more than $6bn and making the country one of the top four gold producers in Africa. More than half the gold is smuggled, according to the report, much of it to countries including the United Arab Emirates and Russia.
The fight for control of gold assets has been one of the drivers of the civil war, which erupted in April 2023 as a result of a power struggle between erstwhile allies from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.
When the war started, the “whole mining sector almost ground to a halt, it was almost complete disruption”, said Yvan Schulz, programme officer at Swissaid.
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However, production has recovered quickly and has now become a critical source of funding for both sides of the conflict, in which more than 150,000 people have been killed and more than 12mn people displaced. UN agencies have warned of a looming famine.
Ahmed Soliman, senior Africa research fellow at think-tank Chatham House, said: “The industry supports the livelihoods of up to a million people, but ultimately those resources are being extracted to destroy the country, to import arms and are helping the warring parties tear Sudan apart.”
Gold became the principal export earner for the former regime in Khartoum after the oil-producing south of the country seceded in 2011.
The mining sector, which the mining ministry has said now contributes 60 per cent of export earnings in SAF-controlled areas, has continued to grow in spite of some limited sanctions efforts. These include US sanctions introduced under Joe Biden’s administration earlier this year on a UAE-based gold purchaser which Washington said bought gold from Sudan.
In a recent report, the Washington-based think-tank C4ADS argued using sanctions to target the supply chains that drive domestic production could provide leverage over the warring parties.
“Minerals, historically a crucial funding source for the SAF and RSF, are a growing but under-addressed pressure point,” said Denise Sprimont-Vasquez, programme director at C4ADS.
“Sudan has limited domestic manufacturing capabilities for key mining precursor chemicals like sodium cyanide and mercury,” she said. “As a result, the import supply chain offers an opportunity to stem the flow of these critical supplies.”
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Some 90 per cent of Sudanese gold mining is artisanal, but larger concessional mining operations have also continued despite the civil war.
In Darfur, the Sungo mining area controlled by Al Junaid, a holding company controlled by Hemeti’s family, is a key funding source for the RSF, despite being under US sanctions since 2023. At least six large mines in the north of the country continue to operate in territory under SAF control, according to C4ADS.
These larger mines rely on precursor chemicals such as sodium cyanide to operate. Trade records indicate companies in China, the UAE and Germany shipped sodium cyanide to Sudan during the past two years.
Sasha Lezhnev, senior policy adviser at The Sentry, a non-profit group, said: “With the rise in gold prices, there has been a gold rush, in places where gold is mined illegally or illicitly — including Sudan.”
“It is right now quite easy to smuggle and export the gold, which almost exclusively goes to the UAE.”
The war entered a perilous new phase this year after the SAF, with the help of allied Islamist militias and new high-grade Turkish drones, regained vast swaths of territory and recaptured the capital Khartoum.
The RSF, which has largely retreated to the western Darfur provinces, has struck back using Chinese drones supplied, according to defence analysts, by its alleged backers in the UAE.
The RSF strikes have targeted fuel depots, hydroelectric dams, power stations and the international airport in Port Sudan, the wartime headquarters of the SAF.
Soliman, the co-author of a Chatham House report on the central role that gold is playing in the conflict, said the militarised networks controlling the gold trade are deeply entrenched, and long predate the civil war. They have been swelled by business people drawn to the sector after other parts of the economy collapsed.
He said European and US measures to sanction companies and individuals have been ad hoc.
“Creating greater visibility around conflict gold is important, but that includes highlighting and disrupting those networks involved, understanding who the companies are, what the supply chain looks like, and then targeting them, as much as possible, through the major hubs,” he said.
“It needs to be done in a co-ordinated fashion. It’s difficult to see that happening in the current geopolitical climate.”
The SAF and RSF did not respond to requests for comment.