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Experts worry gum arabic could be fueling the civil war in Sudan.
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00:01You've probably eaten these pink bulbs before.
00:05This is a natural tree resin called gum arabic.
00:09And it's in everything from Coca-Cola and M&M's,
00:12to makeup, ice cream, and pills.
00:17But Sudan, the world's largest producer of gum arabic,
00:21has been in the grips of a devastating civil war since 2023.
00:27The biggest humanitarian disaster of these times.
00:31There are believed to be several hundred thousands of people killed.
00:35Many of Sudan's gum trees have been cleared,
00:38and exports to the EU have dropped.
00:41But somehow, European companies are still getting their hands
00:44on this important resource.
00:46Take a look at this chart.
00:48It shows how gum arabic is now flowing out of Sudan's neighbors,
00:51like South Sudan.
00:52South Sudan, they never produced it.
00:55So it would be strange for them to just start producing from scratch.
01:00Experts say smuggled gum arabic is funding the civil war,
01:04and likely, the purchase of weapons.
01:14So how has the collapse of the gum arabic industry affected the Sudanese people?
01:19And is the world's reliance on the resource only making the conflict worse?
01:28Gum arabic comes from the Acacia Senegal tree.
01:33They're native to this region of Central Africa, known as the gum belt.
01:38And Sudan produces 80% of the world's gum arabic supply.
01:51Hassan al-Torabi Muhammad is a fourth-generation farmer in North Kordofan State.
01:56We found our friends and our friends who work in this area.
02:01To get gum, farmers make cuts in the outer bark of the Acacia tree,
02:05using a tool called a sonki.
02:18From that cut, the tree naturally exudes a sticky sap to cover the wound.
02:37Using a sonki for higher branches, or their hands for lower ones,
02:41farmers carefully peel it off the tree.
03:03Gum was the sixth biggest export product for Sudan,
03:07which shipped out about $183 million worth of it annually.
03:12Before the current conflict, approximately 5 million people in Sudan depended on it,
03:18so 10%, 11% of the population.
03:21Sudan is the world leader in the higher-quality gum arabic called hashab.
03:25While lower-quality gum can be brittle and have impurities,
03:29hashab is clear and consistent, making it more valuable.
03:32Hashab contains compounds that bind things together that don't normally mix,
03:37like oil and water, making it a great emulsifier.
03:40In sodas, like Pepsi and Coca-Cola,
03:43it keeps the oils, which carry the flavor,
03:45evenly distributed throughout the sugary drinks.
03:48Gum is also a stabilizer, so it stops sugar from crystallizing in the can.
03:53Gum arabic makes the protective outer layer on M&Ms,
03:57good and plenty, and orbit chewing gum pellets.
04:00It's in mascara and hair care products.
04:03And in medicine, it holds pills together.
04:07Long before gum is mixed into sodas and candies,
04:11it travels along a complex supply chain.
04:14Before the Civil War, it looked like this.
04:17Farmers across Sudan's growing region sold their gum in local markets.
04:22Traders bought it and transported it along winding roads to the capital of North Kordofan,
04:27Al-Obaid.
04:29Pre-war, Al-Obaid was the world's largest gum arabic market,
04:34with piles of pink nodules up for auction.
04:37This market alone could move 100 tons of resin on peak days.
04:52Once traders like Musa Kala bought it,
04:54they would take it to a facility like this one, in Khartoum, to process it.
05:06Workers sorted through mountains of gum, removing impurities.
05:10Lab technicians pulled samples to make sure it was high enough quality for export to Europe.
05:15This machine tested whether the gum's moisture content was between 13 and 15 percent.
05:21Any higher, and it would risk compromising shelf life or increasing bacterial growth.
05:26Other tests ensured it was high-quality export-grade hashab, not the lower-grade kind.
05:31It was packaged up and sold to an exporter.
05:35European companies like Nexera, the world's largest gum refiner,
05:39would buy it.
05:40Alain Robert in France also bought up a ton of Sudanese gum arabic.
05:45But this all changed when two powerful armed groups in Sudan turned on each other.
05:51Back in 2019, the Sudanese military, or the SAF,
05:55and the paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF,
05:59banded together to successfully oust the 30-year dictator, Omar al-Bashir.
06:05They formed a joint civilian-military transitional government.
06:09The civilians' goal was to steer the country toward democracy.
06:13But the new government posed a threat to the power and vast, unregulated financial empires of both armed groups.
06:20So the RSF and SAF came together again to stage another successful coup to oust the then-civilian leader in
06:292021.
06:30But in the years that followed, tensions brewed between the two factions over the chain of command in a new
06:36unified army.
06:37So in April 2023, a civil war broke out between the RSF and the SAF.
06:46At first, the RSF captured the capital city of Khartoum.
06:51Fighting soon spilled out into other parts of the country, too.
06:54In 2025, the SAF regained control of the capital, but nearly 8% of the city lay in ruins.
07:02By then, the RSF had considerable control of Darfur and Kordofan, where gum is harvested.
07:08Very intense conflict with moving front lines between these two groups, which are competing over power.
07:16And this war is, to a great extent, about control over territories and about control over natural resources.
07:26Reports show both groups have targeted civilians during the war.
07:30And the RSF has been accused of genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur.
07:38About 14 million people have been displaced during the conflict.
07:4334 million, or up to 70% of Sudan's population, are in need of humanitarian aid.
07:50And some estimates put the death toll at 270,000 people.
07:57So it's really a human catastrophe.
08:11And that impact is seen along every step of the gum supply chain.
08:17Many farmers fled when fighting got too dangerous in North Kordofan.
08:21The reason is that most farmers fled to their cities.
08:27And now they are located within the city, like our city.
08:32Or they are located in the prisoners for the prisoners and prisoners.
08:39Other displaced people arrived in these areas and cut down the hashab trees for charcoal.
08:45And so that they can be able to help them, they can change the hashab trees to protect them.
08:50Because the administrative work will be easy, not like when you are waiting for the hashab.
08:56Hassan says the RSF itself also cleared large sections of gum forests to increase visibility around its positions.
09:16That's as little as a fifth of what Musa bought annually before the war.
09:29Not only was there less gum for traders like Musa to take to the market, but moving it was even
09:35harder.
09:37In the beginning of the war, the RSF started to loot and to confiscate reserves of gum arabic from warehouses
09:44and burning infrastructure.
09:46In the first half of 2024, it's estimated that $14.6 million worth of gum arabic was stolen in East
09:54Darfur and Nayala.
09:57You have a militia that cannot properly pay its fighters.
10:01And then the fighters, they turn to looting.
10:03And the RSF in this case, they accept it because they say, well, that's a good way for you to
10:09earn a bit of an additional income.
10:11And then it grows into something much more systematic.
10:15The RSF was also found to be charging illegal levies on trucks carrying gum to markets.
10:21It was reported in 2025 that the militia charged a $513 fee, along with a $51 religious tax per truck.
10:33They're probably paying the salaries of their men or they're buying weapons with it.
10:52The burgeoning transport issues have pushed traders to seek alternative routes to export their gum.
10:58And so that's why they are going to the borders with Chad and with South Sudan and with Egypt and
11:04Libya even, to just avoid having to pay these taxes.
11:08This route out of Port Sudan was the major trade route for gum.
11:13Unofficial border crossings here and here were used to smuggle the commodity out of Sudan.
11:19And it wasn't just traders doing it.
11:22This report indicates that the RSF itself has smuggled significant quantities of gum Arabic to Chad, the Central African Republic
11:30and South Sudan to fund its operations.
11:48Once the Sudanese gum is smuggled out, it's mixed with local supplies to obscure where it came from.
11:54Then it's relabeled as Chadian or Egyptian.
11:57That way, it can be called conflict-free.
11:59It's estimated that 50% of the gum Arabic harvested in Sudan is smuggled out.
12:05And the numbers prove this is happening.
12:08As Sudan's exports to the EU have dropped.
12:11Exports from other African countries nearby, like Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, have soared.
12:18As you can see, in 2021, South Sudan had barely any exports.
12:23South Sudan, they never produced it, so it would be strange for them to just start producing from scratch.
12:29Just like that.
12:30While Chad and Egypt did have gum industries before the war, Esther says it's unlikely they've increased production this much.
12:39It's not actually that easy to produce gum Arabic.
12:42First of all, you need to plant the trees and then it takes a couple of years for the trees
12:45to mature enough to produce the raisin itself.
12:48The change comes from gums smuggled out of Sudan, she says.
12:53And the gap likely only widened in 2025.
12:57In the first half, Chad's exports to the US rose by 81%.
13:01Chad officially overtook Sudan as America's number one source of gum Arabic.
13:09Because Sudan's gum supply chain is so complex, opaque and layered, it's hard for European companies to know exactly where
13:17the gum Arabic came from.
13:19And whether it passed through conflict zones.
13:25A lot of these European companies are likely to, in some way, be connected to a gum that is financing
13:31the war in Sudan.
13:34The first thing that we're advocating for is that companies are doing their utmost best to avoid that gum Arabic
13:42is coming from regions that are currently in the front line.
13:45We reached out to three of the biggest European importers of Sudan gum Arabic.
13:50In a statement to Business Insider, Alain Robert said, we apply a due diligence process to ensure that we do
13:57not source from conflict zones.
14:00And in a statement to Reuters, Germany-based Nexira said the civil war prompted it to cut its imports from
14:06Sudan and broaden sourcing to 10 other countries.
14:11Now the question is indeed then, where do these suppliers get their gum?
14:15But Esther and Joris say a boycott on gum Arabic from Sudan won't help the situation either.
14:21There really is no alternative for Sudanese Arabic as the world market does not supply enough to satisfy the demand.
14:30We should not boycott the gum Arabic trade. It's a fight you're not going to win.
14:35And indeed, it's not going to be beneficial to the Sudanese people that depend on this trade neither.
14:41Alaa and Robert agreed, telling us that abandoning the supply chain would deprive these communities of essential revenue.
14:50Farmers like Hassan have been hit the hardest by Sudan's conflict and crashing gum industry.
15:13Even before the war, Sudanese gum farmers weren't earning much.
15:17Most of the profits were being made by traders and middlemen.
15:22Although the global price of gum Arabic has jumped 12.6% year over year since the start of the
15:28war, to $6.19 a kilo, Sudanese farmers aren't seeing the profits.
15:35That gap has even increased further.
15:38That gap has even increased further.
15:38I mean, in terms of the Arab language, it's not a source of income.
15:43It's just a source of income.
15:44But it also helps him to feel the power of the region.
15:48It helps him to make sure that he has the power of the land.
15:51And this story will have a constant positive effect on the human being in the region.
16:13Because what happens here ripples back to billions of products in homes across the globe.
16:20And this is also the kind of trust.
16:23The store, the consumption of inputs and the interest rate are affecting the benefits.
16:33It will take care of the whole system.
16:35For us, we know that we have to do so much to do so.
16:39As a source of damage, what can we actually extent damage the resources from the land and the city that
16:45we have to deal with?
16:45And ultimately the resources and the resources but only for us can make the resources from thebeam.
16:49Everything is open.
16:49So, we can inspire the resources.
16:50Oh, oh, oh, oh.