The little-known commodity fuelling Sudan’s civil war

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The writer is publisher of the Octavian Report and a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council

Most people have not heard of gum arabic, a sap that comes from the acacia tree. But it is ubiquitous. Found in everything from soft drinks and candy to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, it is a critical ingredient for Coke and Pepsi and gives an M&M its distinctive shell. Commonly listed as E414 on labels, it’s an ingredient in pet food, chewing gum, lipstick, pill capsules and throat lozenges. It is also, tragically, being used to finance what the UN has declared the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a civil war between the government in Khartoum’s Sudanese Armed Forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces. The war has drawn in foreign powers including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Russia and Egypt.

The scale of the suffering is staggering. According to a former US envoy, over 400,000 people have died. More than 15mn have been displaced. Tens of thousands of Sudanese have been massacred, there is widespread sexual violence and a man-made famine has sent millions into starvation. The UN revealed findings of genocide last week. Something must be done to make global leaders take notice. Cutting the flow of gum arabic could do just that.

Both sides have used the commodity to finance their efforts; the groves of Sudan’s subsistence farmers produce 70-80 per cent of the global supply. And no one has yet found an effective synthetic substitute. Sudan exported some 60,000 tonnes of its “white gold” in the year prior to the conflict. It is no surprise, then, that multinationals have been stockpiling gum arabic since the civil war started and the SAF continues to export what it can while the RSF smuggles its supplies abroad.

Western dependence on the commodity has long shaped US policy towards Sudan. When the Clinton administration imposed sanctions on Khartoum in the 1990s over terrorism and human rights abuses, gum arabic was explicitly exempted. And in 2007, Sudan’s ambassador to the US warned the Bush administration not to push his government too hard, by brandishing a bottle of Coca-Cola and declaring, “I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this.”

It remains a critical ingredient in Sudan’s war economy today. The RSF controls large portions of the main gum-producing regions in Darfur and Kordofan where they have looted warehouses, seized shipments and imposed fees on harvesters and traders. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gum arabic has been stolen, smuggled and sold to finance their military operations. At the same time, the SAF controls Port Sudan, where taxes on gum arabic exports fill its coffers with revenue. 

As both sides extract money from the trade, they are now seeking to cover their tracks. Gum arabic is being trafficked through neighbouring Chad, Kenya, Egypt and South Sudan, relabelled as exports from places that have historically not produced much of it. The result is a murky supply chain in which a conflict-tainted product enters global markets largely untraceable. Gum arabic is a uniquely Sudanese commodity that once kept the country’s farmers from starving but now facilitates the starvation of millions. Much like blood diamonds in Sierra Leone and cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the consumer supply chain is again helping to silently finance a bloodbath.

The crisis in Sudan dwarfs any other current conflict on every measure, yet most of us look away. Africans conclude, perhaps rightly, that when there is no geopolitical imperative, the world will turn its back on victims who are black, poor and rural. Consumers should instead demand transparency from corporations about supply chains to ensure that their purchases are not underwriting mass atrocities. Investors should echo the call. The west can use this commodity as leverage to help bring Sudan’s devastating civil war to an end.