War-torn Sudan still the source of arabic gum market

Gum arabic is being trafficked out of rebel-held regions of war-torn Sudan, posing a threat to Western companies’ efforts to insulate themselves from the conflict, according to Middle East Monitor on March 6th.

Gum arabic is a substance harvested from acacia trees and is used to mix, stabilise and thicken ingredients that are used in mass market products.

Such products include Coca Cola, L’Oreal lipsticks and Nestle pet food.

Sudan is responsible for producing around 80% of the world’s gum arabic supply.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army have been locked in conflict since April 2023 with the RSF having recently signed a charter to form a parallel government, as reported by Maghrebi.

The major arabic gum-harvesting regions in the west of the country, Kordofan and Darfur, have been controlled by the RSF during the conflict.

Since then, the RSF have only allowed traders to market the product for a fee, meaning that a black market has developed and the product is reaching Sudan’s neighbours without proper certification.

However, the RSF insists that it is maintaining control of a legal market, a spokesperson for the group claimed that: “Talk of any lawbreaking was propaganda against the paramilitary group.”

Traders in neighbouring countries such as Chad, Senegal, Egypt and South Sudan – who have far lower gum arabic production than Sudan – have begun exporting large quantities of the product at low prices and with no certification to prove it is ‘conflict free’.

Many international companies and governments placed sanctions and boycotts on Sudanese so as to not economically support the war.

However, companies are now claiming that the lack of clarity risks these boycotts.

Nexira, a company that supplies natural ingredients to the world’s food market, has said that the civil war had led them to mitigate their involvement with any supply chain that may touch the war.

They planned to broaden their sourcing to other countries.

However, buyers have recently been finding sellers who are struggling to authenticate where their arabic gum has come from, suggesting that it has its routes in war-torn Sudan.