Sudan's economy: gold that leaves off the books

Why gold now carries Sudan's export earnings

The Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) records that oil made up 70% of Sudan's exports before South Sudan seceded in 2011, and that losing it greatly reduced the country's ability to import capital goods. By 2025 the export accounts rested on gold. The World Bank's Macro Poverty Outlook for Sudan, published in 2026, calls gold the country's "dominant export commodity" in 2025 and puts it at 53% of total exports in the first quarter of 2026. Sudan Tribune, citing Central Bank of Sudan data in April 2026, gave a share of more than 58% of export value.

Most of that gold is dug by hand. In April 2026 the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company, the sector's regulator, put artisanal mining at about 80% of national output, concentrated in River Nile, Northern and Red Sea states, with organised corporate mining supplying the other 20%. It reported that gold production in the first quarter of 2026 had reached 89% of the planned target, and that revenue collected from artisanal miners had reached 113% of its own.

Exports of goods and services fell by 37.1% in 2023 and by 30.0% in 2024, then rose by 75.0% in 2025, in the World Bank's series. The Bank expects gold to lead the further recovery of exports and warns that European Union restrictions on gold of Sudanese origin may raise export costs and limit access to some markets. Food and petroleum products made up much of the import bill in 2025, and petroleum products alone were 26% of import value in the first quarter of 2026, while the conflict in the Middle East pushed up import and production costs.

How much of Sudan's gold leaves off the books

Sudan's finance minister said that the country produced roughly 70 tonnes of gold in 2025 and that official exports did not exceed 20 tonnes. The central bank's count for the year is lower still, at 14.7 tonnes exported through official channels for US$1.536 billion. On those figures, most of the gold mined in 2025 never passed through the official export record.

Published counts of Sudan's gold differ by multiples from year to year and from one counter to the next:

The BTI's 2026 country report describes where the rest goes. Official foreign and local companies mine gold alongside informal miners and manufacturers, and "a portion of this production is exported through official channels, while the majority is smuggled to the international market". A significant part of production lies in areas held by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and substantial quantities still come from areas the army holds. When the government announced a halt to relations with the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of supporting the RSF, gold exports to the UAE carried on as before and may even have grown. Wikipedia's article on the war describes gold from RSF-held areas being sold mainly to the UAE, moving through Emirati networks from Darfur and other conflict zones into global markets.

The RSF's hold on the mines is older than the war. Omar al-Bashir formed the force from the Janjaweed militias of Darfur, and in the words of the Congressional Research Service he allowed it "to seize gold mines and other assets". The BTI dates its control of the Darfur gold mines to 2017, and Wikipedia records that its commander received several of those mines from al-Bashir as patronage. On 24 February 2019, two months into the protests that ended his rule, al-Bashir decreed capital controls on the trade of gold and foreign currency.

When the fighting began in April 2023, Sudan's minister for minerals accused the RSF of looting about 15 tonnes of silver and 1,273 kilograms of gold from the Sudan Gold Refinery in Khartoum. On 18 July 2025 the European Union adopted a fourth package of restrictive measures over the war, and Red Rock Mining Company and Alkhaleej Bank were among those it named.

Why gum arabic leaves through neighbouring countries

Gum arabic is harvested from the sap of acacia trees. In Sudan the source is Acacia senegal, known locally as hashab, which grows readily on the qoz sands of Kordofan and Darfur, where cultivators occasionally plant it when land is returned to fallow. Britannica records that it was long one of Sudan's principal exports. The UN human rights office reported in July 2026 that before the war Sudan supplied roughly 70 to 80% of global exports of crude gum arabic, that the trade supported the livelihoods of millions of Sudanese, and that food and beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers still rely heavily on it.

The office's briefing paper of 15 July 2026, Business and Human Rights in Conflict: Gum Arabic from Sudan, found that much of the crop now originates in areas held by armed actors. It reported that the RSF has profited from looted gum, from charges imposed on traders and from control of cross-border routes, and that traders crossing army-held areas meet layers of checkpoints with formal and informal charges. Official trade has fallen while exports from neighbouring countries have risen, which the office read as a sign that some Sudanese gum is being diverted through illicit channels and absorbed into neighbouring export markets.

The BTI puts the shift more starkly. Sudan once accounted for around 70% of the world's exports of the gum, it says, and the crop now leaves the country almost entirely through illegal channels; UN Security Council estimates put the losses from the collapse of the legal trade at US$200 million as of early 2025. The closure of Khartoum International Airport and of several ports and border crossings cut exports, of gold and gum arabic above all. In May 2024 The Wall Street Journal reported that the RSF and the army were both financing their operations from sales of gum arabic.

What Sudan lost when the south seceded

Oil exploration began in the mid-1970s, the significant finds were made in the Upper Nile region, and crude exports began in the last quarter of 1999. The reserves lay mostly in the Muglad and Melut rift basins in the south. Two pipelines carried the crude to Port Sudan on the Red Sea: the Greater Nile Oil Pipeline, which runs 1,600 kilometres from the Unity field by way of Khartoum, and the PetroDar line, which runs 1,380 kilometres from the Palogue field in the Melut Basin. Muglad crude, known as Nile Blend, went to the Khartoum refinery, whose capacity the China National Petroleum Corporation doubled to 100,000 barrels a day in 2006.

On 3 November 1997 the United States imposed a trade embargo and froze the Sudanese government's assets under Executive Order 13067, so American companies could not invest in the oil industry and Chinese, Malaysian and Indian companies became its major investors. China owns a 40% share in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company. Growth exceeded 10% a year in 2006 and 2007, by Wikipedia's figures.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in Nairobi on 9 January 2005, divided income from the oilfields evenly between north and south until a referendum on secession. When South Sudan became independent in July 2011 it took about 75% of the oilfields, by Wikipedia's count, or more than 70% of Sudan's oil resources, by the BTI's. Production in Sudan fell from around 450,000 barrels a day to under 60,000, and then recovered to around 250,000 barrels a day in 2014 and 2015. Wikipedia describes the years after the split as stagflation, with growth of 3.4% in 2014 and 3.1% in 2015 and inflation at 21.8% in 2015.

In April 2012 South Sudan's army captured the Heglig oil field, which the Sudanese army later retook, and in August 2012 the two governments agreed that South Sudanese oil would be carried through Sudan's pipelines to Port Sudan. South Sudan is landlocked and depends on that pipeline and on Sudan's refineries to sell its crude.

How the Gezira scheme made cotton Sudan's export

Cotton is the older export. Under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, Britannica records, taxes were kept deliberately light and Sudan depended on Egyptian subsidies for many years, yet railway, telegraph and steamer services were extended, above all in Al-Jazirah, to launch the cotton-growing scheme that Britannica still calls "the backbone of Sudan's economy". The Sennar Dam, 40 metres high, was built on the Blue Nile in 1925, and a 1,400-kilometre railway line serves the Gezira cotton region. The geography article describes the clay plain itself.

The independent state rebuilt its foreign reserves from the crop. After the army seized power on the night of 16 to 17 November 1958, the government of Ibrahim Abboud abolished the fixed price on cotton and sold all of Sudan's cotton, rebuilding the foreign reserves.

Until the early 1970s most of what Sudan grew was eaten at home. In 1972 the government turned towards the West and planned to export food and cash crops, but commodity prices fell through the decade while the cost of servicing debt taken on to mechanise farming rose. The Structural Adjustment Program agreed with the IMF in 1978 pushed mechanised export agriculture further, and Wikipedia's economy article records that it caused great economic problems for Sudan's pastoralists, whose open grazing land has been lost for decades to mechanised dryland and irrigated farming.

For 1999 that article lists irrigated cash crops of 5,950,000 tonnes of sugarcane, 980,000 tonnes of peanuts, 220,000 tonnes of sesame and 172,000 tonnes of cotton. Grain sorghum, called dura, is the principal food crop. Cattle, sheep and camels are exported to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Food imports exceed food exports, the BTI's 2026 report records.

The RSF advanced into the south-east in 2024, disrupting farming in what the Congressional Research Service calls Sudan's agricultural heartland, and the army recaptured the south-east early in 2025. By 2024, according to Fikra for Studies and Development, the fighting had put more than 60% of the agricultural land out of service, and estimates cited in the BTI's 2026 report hold that about 70% of the country's farmers had been displaced. In areas under RSF control, the same report says, large tracts of land have been sold or given to international agricultural companies, especially ones based in the UAE.

Where Sudanese people find work

Farming and herding have always employed most Sudanese, and the count has been taken unevenly. The 1955 to 1956 census put almost 86% of the workforce in agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries or hunting. The International Labour Organization estimated 70 to 80% for 1998. Services took an estimated 13 to 22% that year, against 4.6% in 1955 and 1956, and industry, counting manufacturing, mining, power and construction, 7 to 9%, against 5.6%. Oil employed few people directly. Its effect on jobs came through the government spending it allowed, which created new posts, often in the public sector.

The ILO put employment at more than 7.9 million in 1989. By 2000 the labour force had grown to an estimated 12 million, of whom the government counted 9.6 million as actively employed, and about 30% of the workforce was female; the BTI gives women 29.6% of the labour force in 2023. In 2022, by the BTI's figures, 94.4% of all employment was informal.

Drought in 1983 and 1984 sent several million people from the west and east to Khartoum and other towns on the Nile, and many stayed, living in shanty towns and working in the informal economy. The Gulf War of 1991 sent thousands of Sudanese workers home from Kuwait and Iraq.

The government estimated unemployment at about 20% in 2009, a figure Wikipedia doubts because so many Sudanese farm on a small scale or for subsistence. The BTI gives 11.4% as the estimate before the war and reports that the rate has risen steeply since 2023, with falling revenue leaving the state unable to pay salaries in many sectors, teachers among them. After the October 2021 coup the military dissolved all trade unions and professional associations, Freedom House reports, and labour activism has been largely suppressed since the war began.

What the war has done to Sudan's output

How far output and revenue fell

The UN estimated that economic activity fell by more than a third in the first three weeks after fighting began on 15 April 2023. By July 2023 Sudanese economists put the damage at US$9 billion, about US$100 million a day, and the property and goods looted at another US$40 billion, with Khartoum and South Darfur the areas most affected. In February 2024 the finance minister said the economy had shrunk by 40% in 2023, expected a further fall of 28% in 2024 and put the drop in state revenue at 80%. The finance ministry set no national budget for 2023 or 2024 and stopped issuing quarterly reports.

The World Bank's estimates, published in 2026, run as follows:

The Bank puts the cumulative loss of output in 2023 and 2024 at about 40%, and GDP at US$60.2 billion in 2025, or US$1,164.5 a head. Assuming the conflict ends by 2027, it projects growth of 3.5% in 2027 and 6% in 2028. In September 2025, at the peak of the lean season, the IPC found 21.2 million people, 45% of the population, facing acute food insecurity at Phase 3 or above, with famine confirmed in El Fasher and Kadugli.

What happened to the Sudanese pound

Sudan introduced a new pound in January 2007 at an initial rate of US$1 to SDG 2. The pound was devalued in October 2018, after which the exchange rate swung widely and cash ran short; queues for petrol, bread and banknotes at cash machines were common, and inflation was around 70% at the time. Protests began in Atbara on 19 December 2018 against a tripling of the price of bread there, and Britannica records that they started over rising prices, shortages of bread and proposals to end certain subsidies, spurred by IMF recommendations. The uprising that followed is the subject of Sudan: politics.

On the parallel market the dollar reached SDG 730 in September 2023, against an official rate of SDG 625, and SDG 1,250 in February 2024. The BTI, citing World Bank consumer price data, gives inflation of 194% in August 2024, up from 138.8% in 2022. In December 2024 the central bank issued new SDG 1,000 notes and required old notes to be exchanged through official bank accounts. The government said this would strip the RSF of cash looted since 2023, and critics warned that it put at risk the savings of millions living under RSF control, where no central bank has been set up.

Inflation eased in mid-2025 and rose again in 2026. The Central Bureau of Statistics measured annual inflation at 44.50% in May 2026, down from 45.84% in April, with food and beverages at 49.81%. The World Bank gives 51.3% year on year by the end of June 2026 and estimates that the pound lost around 48% of its value between December 2025 and the end of July 2026 as fuel import costs rose. Money supply grew by 46% between December 2025 and June 2026, against 29% in the same months of 2025, which the Bank traces to central bank financing of the budget deficit.

How Sudan's debts and banks met the war

Sudan's dealings with its lenders have broken down before. After the military took power in 1989, many donors in Europe, the United States and Canada suspended development aid, though not humanitarian aid. In 1993 the IMF suspended Sudan's voting rights, the World Bank suspended its right to draw on loans and credits, and Lomé funds and EU agricultural credits of more than one billion euros were suspended.

The American embargo of November 1997 was eased on 13 January 2017, when many sanctions were lifted, and on 6 October 2017, when most of the rest went. On 14 December 2020 the United States removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, under a deal in which Sudan agreed to pay US$335 million to victims of the 1998 embassy bombings. The transitional government formed in 2019 opened talks with the IMF and World Bank, and its prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, estimated that US$10 billion over two years would halt the panic. By 2021 Sudan was on course for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, and the BTI records that the coup of October 2021 blocked it.

The debt itself is old. The BTI notes that Sudan has failed to service its external debt for more than five decades, and that the IMF's 2019 consultation forecast it at US$61.6 billion in 2025, equal to 213% of GDP. The World Bank's own debt ratios fall from 180.0% of GDP in 2023 to 128.5% in 2025, and its projections leave out any restructuring achieved under the HIPC process.

Few Sudanese used banks before the war. Only 15% had an account, and hawala networks served the regions without branches, as they have continued to do since 2023, according to a 2024 report by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest. The central bank's last published annual report, from 2018, counted 37 banking and non-bank financial institutions, five of which dominate the market, and all of Sudan's banks operate according to Islamic principles. Since the fighting began the banks have lost half their capital and up to 70% of branches have closed, the BTI reports.