Economy

Sudan is one of Africa’s largest gold producers. In recent years before the 2023 war, official exports exceeded 40 tonnes annually — and the informal, undeclared trade was estimated to be several times larger. The country also holds substantial reserves of chromite, iron ore, copper, zinc, manganese, uranium, and several other commercially significant minerals. By geological endowment alone, Sudan is not a poor country. Yet almost none of this wealth has translated into development. The gold gets extracted, much of it illegally, and moves — through the UAE, primarily — into international markets with minimal benefit to Sudan beyond whatever the diggers themselves earn in often dangerous conditions. The processing, refining, trading, logistics, and finance that capture most of the value in a mining supply chain all happen elsewhere. ...

In 1955, the year before Sudanese independence, the Sudan Railways network stretched across 4,756 kilometres of track. It connected Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, south to Sennar and Kosti on the White Nile, west through Kordofan to Nyala in Darfur, north along the Nile to Wadi Halfa on the Egyptian border. It was, at independence, one of the most extensive rail networks in Africa — the physical infrastructure of a country that moved its cotton, its sorghum, and its people on steel rails through the desert. ...