Sudan’s kleptocratic elite have sought to control gold for wealth and patronage, at the same time competition between the SAF and the RSF over gold has driven and sustained the civil war.
Before looking at the ways in which gold has linked Sudan’s war to the wider region, it is first necessary to understand Sudan’s gold sector and the changing role that the commodity has played in the country’s political economy. The military has controlled Sudan for all but 13 of its 69 years of independence. Both the SAF and, more recently, the RSF have benefited from the long-term conflation of security and commercial interests in Sudan, with the emergence over 30 years of a military-industrial complex that controls most of Sudan’s economy, including the gold sector, and diverts resources away from the national budget and state institutions.
Existing gold production in Sudan
Three primary modes of production dominate gold extraction in Sudan: artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM), processing of gold tailings and large-scale industrial mining. A significant amount of Sudan’s gold production is not captured in official statistics, with the figures released indicative of what the authorities wish to be made public in any given year. This often results in significant variances in the production and export figures cited by different government bodies, including the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) and the Central Bank of Sudan.
The largest contributor is ASGM, which accounted for 53.71 tonnes – or 83 per cent – of the total declared gold production of 64.36 tonnes in 2024. Artisanal miners rely on inefficient traditional methods that extract a maximum of 30 per cent of the gold from ore, leaving a significant portion of gold and mercury particles in the residue, known as tailings. More than a million Sudanese are involved in ASGM in large open-air mining zones across 12 of Sudan’s 18 federal states.
The second mode of production is the processing of gold tailings, locally known as karta, using semi-mechanized techniques, primarily employing cyanide, to attempt to extract the remaining gold. This approach – which includes methods such as closed cyanide circuits, heap leaching and immersion in open-air ponds – produced 4.95 tonnes of gold, or 7 per cent of Sudan’s total declared production, in 2024.
Large-scale industrial mining ostensibly represents the third mode, accounting for 5.70 tonnes of gold, or nearly 9 per cent of the total production in 2024. This is led by franchise companies licensed to explore vast concessions, often hundreds of thousands of square kilometres in size. These companies are expected to use advanced geological mapping, remote sensing and advanced extraction techniques to gradually modernize and industrialize Sudan’s gold production. By 2020, there were 144 franchise companies operating in Sudan: 56 per cent were Sudanese, 29 per cent foreign, and 15 per cent jointly owned. Of these, 131 were in the exploration phase, four inactive, and nine in production.
However, many franchise companies have failed to fulfil their contractual obligations to develop industrial mining operations. Instead, several have shifted their focus to large-scale processing of artisanal tailings, effectively functioning as tailings-processing companies rather than industrial miners. Some franchise companies directly contract artisanal miners within their licensed blocks to supply ore to their processing facilities. This appears to be the case for the Russian and UAE-owned Kush for Exploration and Production Co. Ltd. and its affiliate Alliance for Mining Co. Others, including most Sudanese-owned companies and Meroe Gold – a company linked to M-Invest, the investment arm of the erstwhile Wagner Group and its successor Russia’s Africa Corps – send brokers to purchase tailings from artisanal miners and wet mill owners in gold markets and artisanal mining zones.
This shift from industrial mining to tailings processing highlights systemic challenges within Sudan’s gold industry. Weak regulatory enforcement has enabled franchise companies to prioritize low-cost, high-profit tailings processing over long-term investments in industrial mining growth, undermining the sector’s potential for sustainable development and opening the door for corruption.
Tamkeen and the primacy of gold after 2011
During the Bashir era (1989–2019), military and security elites colluded with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to capture state assets. Political and economic power was built on a policy of Tamkeen (Arabic for empowerment), a state policy where regime loyalists established control over corporate assets across key sectors of Sudan’s economy to enrich its ruling party members and maintain power. In exchange for their loyalty, senior SAF officers, especially those considered to be Islamist and from favoured ethnic groups, were given economic privileges in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and retired officers were given access to land and directorships.
The Bashir regime exploited revenues from Sudan’s booming oil sector to build up a centralized network of patronage, mainly benefiting the security sector and the NCP, which was the political arm of Sudan’s Islamist movement, the real power behind the Bashir regime. However, South Sudan’s secession in 2011 resulted in the loss of two-thirds of Sudan’s oil revenue, which spurred a boom in gold mining, reinforced by the dramatic rise in international gold prices during the 2000s.
Growth in the gold sector from 2012 changed the nature of Sudan’s political economy, as gold quickly took the place of oil as the main source of Sudan’s foreign currency. In contrast to oil, which was controlled by the government from production to export, the artisanal nature of the gold industry posed significant challenges for government regulation – as ASGM accounted for as much as 80 per cent of production. To assert its dominance over gold-producing areas of the country, the Bashir regime used violence and coercion, enforced by a plethora of security agencies and armed groups, which subsequently became involved in gold.
The inability, or rather the unwillingness, of the state to oversee the gold sector led violent actors to prevail. This dominance of violent actors has its roots in the state’s use of armed actors to extract natural resources from peripheral areas in the country. During the colonial period, the rampant violence against local communities benefited the colonial power. The practice continued in post-independent Sudan and is still prevalent today, with Sudan’s regular and auxiliary forces benefiting the most from the sector thanks to the entitlements that the Bashir kleptocratic system granted to uniformed forces.
During the three decades of the Islamist regime of Omar al-Bashir (1989–2019), the regime awarded gold mining concessions to state security and defence agencies, including paramilitary groups and former armed movements loyal to the regime. The government tolerated large-scale gold mining and trading operations involving loyalist ethnic militias, such as the Desert Shield militia of the Kebabish tribe, based in North Kordofan state. The regime also allowed the SAF, the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), and the RSF to engage in unofficial gold export activities through their respective companies, which are nominally state-owned in the case of the SAF, and privately-owned by the commanders of the RSF. The latter used their security and political power to grow the wealth of their clan.
At the local level, the involvement of national defence and law enforcement agencies in the gold-mining sector made it difficult for the state to maintain the rule of law. Independent reporting and several court cases demonstrated the impunity of the NISS, the SAF and the RSF for involvement in gold-smuggling operations. A policy of allowing armed actors free rein in the gold sector was integral to the regime’s survival strategy of economically empowering the security forces and paramilitary bodies that defended it against rural insurgencies and urban uprisings in northern and central Sudan. It is estimated that before the current civil war 50–80 per cent of the country’s gold was smuggled, rather than exported through official procedures and channels, with Khartoum International Airport a key hub, particularly via a VIP lounge that seems to have enabled senior officials to abuse their influence to transport gold abroad.
Economic competition triggers the war
Both the RSF and the SAF used their security and political influence during and after Bashir’s rule to consolidate and expand their footholds in gold extraction and trade. Both also drew resources from links to foreign companies, particularly in Russia and the UAE, with which they had prior ties.
As a result, the reform-minded government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (2019–2021), which replaced the Bashir government in mid-2019, was unable to dismantle the Bashir-era Tamkeen system. The Hamdok government set up the Empowerment Removal Committee to recover stolen assets and carry out macroeconomic reforms, such as exchange rate unification, requiring SOEs – including companies linked to the military – to be subject to independent audits. It also pushed for all SOEs to be brought under the oversight of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (including in the gold sector). This threatened the economic power of the security agencies and former Bashir elites, and was a major factor in the October 2021 coup that saw military actors led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan overthrow the Hamdok government.
Economic competition between the SAF and the RSF in gold mining and trade was a leading driver of the current war.
Economic competition between the SAF and the RSF in gold mining and trade was also a leading driver of the current war. During Bashir’s reign, the regime was able to moderate rivalry between them, sharing lucrative opportunities for partnership with external investors between the two forces to keep each in check. The regime allowed RSF commanders’ privately-owned companies to develop partnerships with foreign companies, while also offering lucrative deals to SAF-controlled companies, including with Russian-controlled subsidiaries of the Wagner Group.
For instance, the Mining Ministry awarded Sudan Master Technology, in partnership with the government, a gold exploration licence at Block 3A in Red Sea state in 2012. Sudan Master Technology had a 70 per cent stake and the government held the remainder. As a company of the army-controlled Defense Industries System (DIS), Sudan Master Technology enjoys broad exemptions from taxes, customs and laws regulating government procurement, contracting and public audit requirements. In 2018, Bashir instructed the Mining Ministry to award the government’s 30 per cent share in Block 3A to Meroe Gold, a Sudanese subsidiary of M-Invest, the investment arm in Sudan of Russia’s Wagner network. The US placed both Meroe Gold and its parent company, M-Invest, under sanctions in July 2020 and the EU and UK followed suit in 2023.
Similarly, a 2022 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project documented agreements between Aswar – the holding company under the DIS umbrella, operated by the SAF’s military intelligence – and M-Invest to facilitate Wagner Group’s operations in Sudan. These agreements involved payments of millions of dollars for services such as visa processing, weapon supplies and the organization of flights using Sudanese military planes, with military signal codes to land on military air bases.
After the 2021 coup, growing political competition between the RSF and the SAF was mirrored by economic competition, particularly in the gold sector. International media attention on the gold businesses of the RSF commanders led to covert investment agreements with several large privately-owned processing companies and the rapid expansion of RSF holdings in gold production and trade. This alarmed SAF commanders, who felt the need to ramp up and expand their own production, resulting in their agreement for the direct processing of gold through the use of cyanide in at least two SAF divisional headquarters.
In incidents documented by environmental activists and the local media, the SAF divisional headquarters in Atbara in River Nile state and Dardeib in Red Sea state leased part of their military areas to local entrepreneurs to produce gold through cyanide leaching in open air ponds. The serious environmental and health risks that this posed led to protests and claims that the SAF had issued 40 licences for 60 cyanidation basins, reflecting underlying concerns among SAF leaders about the RSF’s rapid expansion in the sector, at a time when both forces were still ostensibly allied in protecting the Bashir regime and resisting Sudan’s democratization efforts following Bashir’s fall.
This covert rivalry extended to other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and livestock trade, and the banking sector, creating economic competition that further strained relations between the two forces. Ultimately, these tensions laid the groundwork for the military confrontation that began on 15 April 2023.
The scramble for gold following the outbreak of war
Sudan’s civil war is driven by competition for power and resources between the SAF, led by General Burhan, and the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti). The two generals worked together during the transition, including to overthrow the civilian government of former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, but then turned against each other after the coup. Both want to retain their political power, preserve their multi-billion-dollar business empires and avoid democratic reforms in Sudan that could lead to a representative civilian government, which would likely see the RSF and the SAF leaders face prosecution and proper accountability.
The SAF asserts itself as the de facto state actor through the Transitional Sovereignty Council, which it took over after the military coup against the legitimate civilian government in October 2021, and through its control of the remnants of state institutions. The operations of these have mostly been transferred from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The SAF-controlled de facto authorities are subsequently referred to in this paper as the Port Sudan authorities. The SAF’s domestic arms production was insufficient to prosecute the war, and was further aggravated by the RSF’s seizure of the SAF’s largest weapon manufacturing factories in the first weeks of the conflict, which forced the SAF to seek arms from China, Iran, Russia, Türkiye and elsewhere.
New weapon supplies are financed by a complex network of SAF-aligned companies and Islamist and former regime-controlled business networks. The Port Sudan authorities continue to exploit gold produced in the areas that they control and have actively sought to expand production. The SAF also benefits from taxation of gold production, which is overseen by the Ministry of Finance.
For its part, the RSF moved quickly to consolidate its control over gold-producing areas in Darfur and Kordofan and critical infrastructure that would support its war effort. In the first two months it captured both the currency printing house and the Sudan Gold Refinery in Khartoum, which held an estimated 1.3 tonnes of unrefined gold with a value estimated at $150 million ready for export. The RSF also raided banks and private houses for cash and gold. This gold and other looted valuables, such as private vehicles, were transported west to Darfur and across Sudanese borders into Chad. Moreover, the RSF also quickly retook control of Jebel Amer, once a significant gold-producing area in North Darfur and has since consolidated other gold-producing areas across the Darfur region, thus acquiring the ability to finance weapon and logistical purchases.
