The Gold That Vanishes

In 2025, Sudan’s artisanal miners produced a record 70 tonnes of gold. This boom wasn’t driven by prosperity, but by hundreds of thousands turning to small-scale mining as a last resort amid war and famine.

Official export figures, however, tell a very different story. The Central Bank in Port Sudan records less than 20 tonnes leaving the country. That leaves roughly 50 tonnes, valued at nearly $4 billion, missing from the books. Gold does not just evaporate.

What appears at first glance to be chaotic wartime smuggling increasingly resembles something more structured: a cross-border extraction system in which Egypt plays a central role. This is not merely the work of rogue criminal networks operating beyond state control. It is a system enabled by policy decisions, border practices, and economic mechanisms that convert Sudan’s conflict gold into clean global commodity flows.

The “Zero Customs” Loophole

In May 2023, shortly after Sudan’s civil war erupted, Egypt approved a decree exempting incoming gold from customs duties and taxes. The measure was touted as humanitarian relief, allowing Sudanese refugees and travellers to bring personal savings into Egypt without penalty. But the practical effect was far broader. By removing customs scrutiny and taxation from gold entering the country, Egypt created a permissive corridor for raw, unrefined bullion to cross its southern border. At a time when Sudan’s institutions were fragmenting and oversight mechanisms collapsing, this policy effectively signalled that gold arriving at Wadi Halfa or Argeen would face few barriers.

Once across the border, cities like Aswan have emerged as key processing hubs. Once there, gold is melted down, recast, stamped, and folded into Egypt’s formal supply chain. It can then be exported onward, often to major global hubs, with its origins obscured. The transformation is simple but powerful: conflict gold becomes “Egyptian-sourced” gold, cleansed of its bloodstained provenance by the furnace.

Currency Warfare

Perhaps the most insidious element of this system is not at the border, but in Sudan’s mining markets themselves. Large quantities of counterfeit Sudanese 1,000 and 500-pound notes have circulated across gold-producing towns such as Abu Hamad, Al-Abidiya, and Singa, in recent years. These notes do not appear in Egyptian markets. They appear in Sudan.

Counterfeit currency is transported south, hidden among legitimate goods. In mining markets where formal banking has collapsed and cash is king, agents and intermediaries use this paper to purchase real gold from artisanal miners. To secure supply, they often pay slightly above prevailing local rates.

For a miner struggling to feed his family, the offer is irresistible. He walks away with a thick stack of banknotes. But if those notes are counterfeit, or if the flood of fake currency drives rapid inflation, the value of his earnings collapses. Egypt-linked traders, by contrast, walk away with gold: a hard asset recognised and priced globally.

This is not just opportunism. It functions as economic sabotage. Flooding a fragile wartime economy with counterfeit currency destroys purchasing power, accelerates hyperinflation, and deepens poverty. As the Sudanese pound weakens, dependence on imported goods, including cheaper Egyptian products, intensifies. Hard assets flow north. Monetary instability spreads south.

Egypt’s Barter with Sudan

Southbound convoys carry subsidised Egyptian fuel and essential supplies into Sudan. Gold travels north by the same routes. For Sudan’s armed actors, especially those aligned with the Sudanese Armed Forces under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, fuel is power: running generators, mining equipment, and military vehicles.

While Burhan’s autonomy can at times complicate Cairo’s preferences, his survival remains strategically useful to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. A military authority in Sudan that depends on external supplies for backing is more predictable than a sovereign civilian order capable of autonomous negotiating over borders, trade, and governance. In this sense, Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is not merely a wartime actor, it is Egypt’s preferred instrument of influence in Sudan.

A Strategy of Weakness

A strong, democratic Sudan would likely audit its mines, tighten its borders, stabilise its currency, and sell its gold transparently at global market rates, prioritising national revenue over opaque cross-border arrangements. But a fractured Sudan cannot.

Egypt’s strategic advantage lies precisely in this imbalance. A weakened neighbour, governed by generals reliant on external support, creates enduring leverage over Sudan’s economic lifelines and political trajectory. This is not a temporary alignment born of the current war. Cairo’s involvement in Sudan’s military power cycles stretches back over a century, from colonial-era security coordination to post-independence interventions that repeatedly favoured centralised military rule over autonomous civilian authority. The pattern is consistent: when Sudan’s sovereignty strengthens, Egypt’s leverage contracts; when Sudan fragments, Cairo’s influence expands.

For President Sisi, partnership with Burhan is less a matter of personal affinity than strategic continuity. A dependent military authority in Khartoum secures Egypt’s preferential access to Sudanese resources and limits the emergence of an independent political order that could challenge regional hierarchies. Stability, in this framework, is not defined by peace inside Sudan but by predictability for Egypt.

For Africans, from Nairobi to Kampala to Johannesburg, the implications are clear: this is not merely about Sudan and Egypt. It is about whether African resources will continue to be extracted through systems of manipulation and asymmetry, or whether states will assert transparent, accountable control over their own wealth.

Sudan’s gold represents its future. The question is, who will ultimately claim it?