Sudan's war economy: How hunger, gold and smuggling routes fuel an escalating crisis

On 8 December, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized Sudan's largest oil field in Heglig, halting production at the main processing facility for South Sudan's exports, which account for nearly all of Juba's revenue.

The field sits in West Kordofan near Sudan's southern border, an area that rival forces frequently draw into battles over territorial control.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had previously accused the RSF of launching drone attacks on the site, causing earlier shutdowns as recently as August.

Just days earlier, on 4 December, United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric condemned an attack on a World Food Programme (WFP) truck near Hamrat al-Sheikh in North Kordofan.

The vehicle was part of a convoy delivering aid to displaced people in Tawila, North Darfur, many of whom had fled conflict in el-Fasher and its surroundings.

The attack killed eight people and injured many others. It was the sixth major assault on WFP personnel, assets or facilities in Sudan within the past year alone.

This persistent violence underscores the acute operational dangers facing humanitarian workers in Sudan, risks that are inseparable from the country's wider political and economic conflict.

These incidents are not isolated tragedies but manifestations of a war fuelled by its own political economy. The capture of Heglig's revenue-generating infrastructure and the assault on humanitarian lifelines operate as dual engines of the same conflict machine: one secures the resources that finance the fighting, while the other weaponises deprivation to displace populations and dismantle resistance.

Together, they reveal a conflict that reshapes power dynamics by design, where control over resources and humanitarian access sustains a war meant to outlast any ceasefire and determine Sudan's future.

Economic unravelling

As Sudan's conflict approaches its fourth year, the world's gaze has drifted.

Yet for 12.4 million displaced Sudanese, the war's brutality is magnified by an invisible crisis: the systematic dismantling of the country's economy.

While air strikes and widespread violence dominate headlines, a parallel war is being waged through hyperinflation, resource theft and the strangulation of civilian survival mechanisms. This shadow conflict has turned Sudan into a laboratory of predatory economics, where warlords profit from starvation, and global complacency enables a cycle of violence that feeds on itself.

Sudan's war cannot be understood solely through military analysis. It is a conflict where gold smugglers wield more power than diplomats

The numbers defy comprehension.

Since war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the Sudanese pound has lost more than 233 percent of its value. Inflation exceeded 113 percent by mid-2025, and 24.6 million people now face acute food insecurity - the highest figure recorded globally.

But behind these statistics lies a calculated reality: Sudan's war cannot be understood solely through military analysis. It is a conflict where gold smugglers wield more power than diplomats, where checkpoints replace banks, and collapsing infrastructure has created a dystopian marketplace controlled by armed factions.

Sudan's war is fought with money as much as with bullets.

A clear currency war is underway, alongside the weaponisation of inflation. Indeed, the country's economic unravelling is no accident but a deliberate tool of control. 

The banking system has collapsed in conflict zones, with branches looted and safes emptied, while in parts of Darfur, families trade possessions for meals.

A humanitarian analysis report noted that in some areas, the cost of a basic food basket has risen by more than 300 percent since the war began. The pound's freefall has forced transactions into foreign currencies, creating a two-tier economy where only those with access to hard currency or military connections can survive.

Resource capture

Inflation is turbocharged by deliberate wartime policies: military monetisation, agricultural sabotage, and the capture of essential resources, including gold and gum arabic.

In RSF-controlled areas, owners of Starlink terminals pay 150,000 Sudanese pounds - roughly $100 - annually, while the SAF monopolises fuel imports. Both factions print informal currencies to fund operations.

Once Africa's breadbasket, Sudan's farmland now lies fallow. More than 400 agricultural establishments in Khartoum have been destroyed, and 70 percent of Darfur's irrigation systems are no longer functioning, worsening food shortages.

Sudan's gold reserves - Africa's third largest - have become the war's financial engine. An estimated 50 to 80 percent of production is smuggled annually through neighbouring hubs, generating $6bn in 2024.

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The RSF controls 85 percent of Darfur's artisanal mines, while SAF-aligned oligarchs divert state mining revenues to arms purchases.

The consequences are devastating: despite UN reports tracing smuggled gold to international markets, no meaningful sanctions have targeted these trafficking networks, reflecting explicit global complicity.

The RSF has also weaponised Sudan's gum arabic trade - a key global commodity used in products such as Coca-Cola - to fund its operations. Controlling major production regions in Kordofan and Darfur, the group has imposed informal taxes, looted warehouses and smuggled resin across borders.

In May 2025, the RSF reportedly stole 10,000 tonnes of gum arabic worth $75m from al-Nuhoud, and has systematically extorted fees from traders while diverting shipments to Chad, South Sudan and Libya.

A UN report found that $14.6m in looted gum arabic was used to finance RSF activities in just six months of 2024. Meanwhile, multinational corporations face ethical dilemmas as smuggled gum enters global supply chains, often through RSF-controlled routes, making it untraceable.

This dynamic mirrors colonial-era resource extraction, in which local communities suffer while armed groups and foreign markets reap the profits.

Humanitarian predation

With formal trade paralysed, the RSF has engineered an economy of predation through aid diversion and survival taxes.

According to the UN spokesperson, most humanitarian agencies, including UN-run facilities, have faced large-scale looting since April 2023.

Food convoys are seized and resold at RSF-run markets with significant markups. Relief workers have also accused the SAF of obstructing access to areas under RSF control. Displaced families pay bribes at checkpoints for safe passage, sometimes with Starlink terminals as currency.

The collapse of Sudan's health sector has epitomised this crisis by creating a black market for medical services, in which disease itself becomes a weapon.

The IRC reported that 80 percent of hospitals in conflict zones are non-operational, and 70 to 80 percent of health facilities in affected areas have closed or are barely functioning. Dialysis and cancer drugs are sold on the black market at 20 times their pre-war price. Cholera outbreaks this year were worsened by the blocking of water purification supplies following RSF attacks.

Sudan's economic collapse has also torn apart social bonds and destabilised the wider Horn of Africa.

In el-Fasher, neighbours informed on one another in exchange for food, while displaced people took up arms to protect themselves against RSF attacks, including women.

The brutal war has created a refugee crisis, with four million people fleeing to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, overwhelming clinics where one in five children arrives acutely malnourished.

Economic reckoning

Transnational gold smuggling now finances conflicts in Libya and the Central African Republic, while RSF-aligned traffickers expand arms and narcotics networks.

Yet the international response remains gravely inadequate. The 2025 UN humanitarian appeal is only 21 percent funded, while major donors have cut aid budgets by 40 percent compared to 2024.

Jean-Michel Grand of Action Against Hunger warned that Sudan is a test of whether the world still believes in the universality of human dignity - and so far, we are failing.

In an era of shadow finance, durable peace demands an economic reckoning

A ceasefire alone cannot resolve a war powered by its own revenue streams. Any meaningful political process must dismantle the financial architecture that enables the violence to regenerate.

This requires targeted sanctions on enablers, audits of gold flows, seizures of military-linked assets and support for community-run food programmes that have become the final defence against famine in besieged cities.

Regional financial institutions, including the African Development Bank, should channel hard currency through verified civilian networks, while expedited work permits for Sudanese refugees would help reduce predatory remittance practices.

Forensic audits of war profiteering are further essential to future accountability. Civilian agency cannot be relegated to mere symbolism in peace talks; it must be embedded in every stage of justice and governance.

Sudan's war will not conclude through parchment diplomacy, but when the international community finally confronts the economic networks that sustain it.

Smuggled gold, stolen gum arabic, and diverted aid fund violence stretching from the Sahel to the Red Sea. The paradigm is clear: in an era of shadow finance, durable peace demands an economic reckoning. To ignore this is to be complicit in a war without end.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.