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You've probably eaten these pink bulbs before. This is a natural tree resin called gum arabic, and it's in everything from Coca-Cola and M&M's to make up, ice cream, and pills. But Sudan, the world's largest producer of gum arabic, has been in the grips of a devastating civil war since 2023. The biggest humanitarian disaster of these times. There are believed to be several hundred thousands of people killed. Many of Sudan's gum trees have been cleared, and exports to the EU have dropped. But somehow, European companies are still getting their hands on this important resource.
Take a look at this chart. It shows how gum arabic is now flowing out of Sudan's neighbors, like South Sudan. South Sudan, they did never produce it, so it would be strange for them to just start producing from scratch. Experts say smuggled gum arabic is funding the civil war, and likely the purchase of weapons. So, how has the collapse of the gum arabic industry affected the Sudanese people? And is the world's reliance on the resource only making the conflict worse? Gum arabic comes from the acacia senegal tree. They're native to this region of Central Africa, known as the gum belt. And Sudan produces 80% of the world's gum arabic supply.
Hassan Alturabi Mohammed is a fourth generation farmer in North Kordofan State. To get gum, farmers make cuts in the outer bark of the acacia tree using a tool called a sonki. From that cut, the tree naturally exudes a sticky sap to cover the wound. Using a sonki for higher branches or their hands for lower ones, farmers carefully peel it off the tree. Gum was the sixth biggest export product for Sudan, which shipped out about $183 Before the current conflicts, approximately 5 million people in Sudan depended on it, so 10% 11% of the population. Sudan is the world leader in the higher quality gum arabic called hashob. While lower quality gum can be brittle and have impurities, hashob is clear and consistent, making it more valuable.
Hashob contains compounds that bind things together that don't normally mix, like oil and water, making it a great emulsifier. In sodas like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, it keeps the oils, which carry the flavor, evenly distributed throughout the sugary drinks. Gum is also a stabilizer, so it stops sugar from crystallizing in the can. Gum arabic makes the protective outer layer on M&M's, Good & Plenty, and Orbit chewing gum pellets. It's in mascara and hair care products. And in medicine, it holds pills together. Long before gum is mixed into sodas and candies, it travels along a complex supply chain. Before the Civil War, it looked like this. Farmers across Sudan's growing
region sold their gum in local markets. Traders bought it and transported it along winding roads to the capital of North Kordofan, Al Ubayyid. Pre-war, Al Ubayyid was the world's largest gum arabic market with piles of pink nodules up for auction. This market alone could move 100 tons of resin on peak days. Once traders like Musa Kulub bought it, they would take it to a facility like this one in Khartoum to process it. Workers sorted through mountains of gum, removing impurities.
Lab technicians pulled samples to make sure it was high enough quality for export to Europe. This machine tested whether the gum's moisture content was between 13% and 15%. Any higher and it would risk compromising shelf life or increasing bacterial growth. Other tests ensured it was high-quality export grade Hashab, not the lower grade kind. It was packaged up and sold to an exporter. European companies like Nexira, the world's largest gum refiner, would buy it.
Alland & Robert in France also bought up a ton of Sudanese gum arabic. But this all changed when two powerful armed groups in Sudan turned on each other. Back in 2019, the Sudanese military or the SAF and the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces or RSF, banded together to successfully ousted the 30-year dictator, Omar al-Bashir. They formed a joint civilian-military transitional government. The civilian's goal was to steer the country toward democracy, but the new government posed a threat to the power and vast unregulated financial empires of both armed groups.
So, the RSF and SAF came together again to stage another successful coup to oust the then civilian leader in 2021. But in the years that followed, tensions brewed between the two factions over the chain of command in a new unified army. So, in April 2023, a civil war broke out between the RSF and the SAF. At first, the RSF captured the capital city of Khartoum. Fighting soon spilled out into other parts of the country, too. In 2025, the SAF regained control of the capital, but nearly 8% of the city lay in ruins. By then, the RSF had considerable control of Darfur and Kordofan, where gum is harvested. Very intense conflicts with moving frontlines between these two groups, which are competing over power. And this war is to a great extent
about control over territories and about control over natural resources. Reports show both groups have targeted civilians during the war. And the RSF has been accused of genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur. About 14 million people have been displaced during the conflict. 34 million, or up to 70% of Sudan's population, are in need of humanitarian aid. And some estimates put the death toll at 270,000 people. So, it's really a human catastrophe. And that impact is seen along every step of the gum supply chain. Many farmers fled when fighting got too dangerous in North Kordofan. Oh. Other displaced people arrived in these areas and cut down the Hashab trees for charcoal.
Hassan says the RSF itself also cleared large sections of gum forests to increase visibility around its positions. That's as little as a fifth of what Musa bought annually before the war. Not only was there less gum for traders like Musa to take to the market, but moving it was even harder. In the beginning of the war, the RSF started to loot and to confiscate reserves of gum arabic from warehouses and burning infrastructure. In the first half of 2024, it's estimated that $14.6 million worth of gum arabic was stolen in East Darfur and Nyala. You have a militia that cannot properly pay its fighters. And then the fighters, they turn to looting. And the
RSF in this case, they accept it because they say, "Well, that's that's a good way for you to earn a bit of an additional income." And then it grows into something much more systematic. The RSF was also found to be charging illegal levies on trucks carrying gum to markets. It was reported in 2025 that the militia charged a $513 fee along with a $51 religious tax per truck. They're probably paying the salaries of the of their men or they're buying weapons with it. The burgeoning transport issues have pushed traders to seek alternative routes to export their gum. And so that's why they are going to the
borders with Chad and with South Sudan and with Egypt and Libya even to just avoid these to having to pay these taxes. This route out of Port Sudan was the major trade route for gum. Unofficial border crossings here and here were used to smuggle the commodity out of Sudan. And it wasn't just traders doing it. This report indicates that the RSF itself has smuggled significant quantities of gum arabic to Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan to fund its operations. And all Once the Sudanese gum is smuggled out, it's mixed with local supplies to
obscure where it came from. Then it's relabeled as Chadian or Egyptian. That way, it can be called conflict-free. It's estimated that 50% of the gum arabic harvested in Sudan is smuggled out. And the numbers prove this is happening. As Sudan's exports to the EU have dropped. Exports from other African countries nearby, like Chad, Egypt, and South Sudan, have soared. As you can see, in 2021, South Sudan had barely any exports. South Sudan, they did never produce it, so it would be strange for them to just start producing from scratch, just like that. While Chad and Egypt did have gum industries before the war, Esther says it's unlikely they've increased production this much.
It's not actually that easy to produce gum arabic. First of all, you need to plant the trees, and then it takes a couple of years for the trees to mature enough to produce the resin itself. The change comes from gums smuggled out of Sudan, she says. And the gap likely only widened in 2025. In the first half, Chad's exports to the US rose by 81%. Chad officially overtook Sudan as America's number one source of gum arabic. Because Sudan's gum supply chain is so complex, opaque, and layered, it's hard for European companies to know exactly where the gum arabic came from,
and whether it passed through conflict zones. A lot of these European companies are likely to in some way be connected to a gum that is financing the war in Sudan. The first that we're advocating for is that companies that are doing their utmost best to avoid that gum arabic is coming from regions that are currently in the frontline. We reached out to three of the biggest European importers of Sudan gum arabic. In a statement to Business Insider, Alland & Robert said, "We apply a due diligence process to ensure that we do not source from conflict zones." And in a statement to Reuters,
Germany-based Nexira said the civil war prompted it to cut its imports from Sudan and broaden sourcing to 10 other countries. Now, the question is indeed then where do these suppliers get their gum? But Esther and Joris say a boycott on gum arabic from Sudan won't help the situation either. There really is no alternative for Sudanese gum arabic. There's the world market does not supply enough to satisfy the demand.
We should not boycott the gum arabic trade. It's a fight you're not going to win and indeed it's not going to be beneficial to the Sudanese people that depend on this trade neither. Alland and Robert agreed, telling us that abandoning the supply chain would deprive these communities of essential revenue. Farmers like Hassan have been hit the hardest by Sudan's conflict and crashing gum industry. Even before the war, Sudanese gum farmers weren't earning much.
Most of the profits were being made by traders and middlemen. Although the global price of gum arabic has jumped 12.6% year-over-year since the start of the war to $6.19 a kilo, Sudanese farmers aren't seeing the profits. That gap has even increased further. Source of income just like him. Because what happens here ripples back to billions of products in homes across the globe.
