Curse of the Nile’s gold: how Sudan is losing its fertile fields and ability to produce food

In Abu Hamad, on the banks of the Nile, verdant orchards, gardens and fields once produced a bounty of dates, citrus fruits, winter grains and cereals for the towns and cities of eastern Sudan, including Khartoum and Port Sudan.

Today, the land looks drastically different. Trees have been cut down, agricultural areas cleared, and farms have been replaced by shops and commercial sites. Dotted around the town and its outskirts, more than 700 mounds of grey waste are poisoning the soil, water and air. The mounds are the toxic remnants of artisanal gold mining, a practice that began in about 2008 and has intensified over the past six years.

In 2024, artisanal operations accounted for more than 90% of Sudan’s gold production. And Abu Hamad in River Nile state has become one of the largest gold-mining and trade towns in the country.

Desperate for income, locals process tailings, the byproduct of artisanal mining, which contains about 70% of gold and is extracted using chemicals such as cyanide, mercury or thiourea, a compound that was initially thought to be relatively safe.

The creeping toxicity has decimated the agricultural foundation of Abu Hamad, transforming the town’s tranquil way of life into a daily battle against pollution and disease. Flood waters carrying runoff from mining sites have caused massive spikes in soil salinity, leading to a catastrophic decline in food production. Mohamed Fathi al-Rahman al-Khalifa, a local farmer, has watched the soil turn hostile.

“When the trees were still very young, the first harvest produced nearly four truckloads of oranges. Today, production does not exceed half a truckload,” Al-Khalifa says, highlighting the unnatural stunting of his orchards.

The agricultural collapse across all major staples is staggering, say farmers. A single acre (0.4 hectares) of wheat that historically yielded between 40 and 60 sacks now produces 12 to 18 sacks.

Similarly, fava bean yields have plummeted from an average of 40 to 50 sacks per feddan (a unit of land equivalent to about an acre, 0.4 hectares) to just three or four, according to local farmers. Even fully mature orange groves that should easily produce 10 truckloads of fruit now yield less than half a truckload, they say, with much of the harvest arriving misshapen and thick-peeled.

Al-Khalifa warns of a looming catastrophe that extends far beyond the borders of River Nile state. “Food security is no longer merely a local issue affecting Abu Hamad. It has become a national issue that concerns Sudan as a whole.

“Sudan possesses enormous agricultural potential and is crossed by the Nile River, [meaning] agricultural products should be abundant and affordable, yet the reality is quite different. Today, we see rising prices for vegetables and farm products across different states and cities,” he says.

The tragedy of Abu Hamad is not isolated. It is deeply entangled in Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rely heavily on the gold sector. Since the war started in April 2023, both sides have been involved in controlling mining, says researcher Suliman Baldo of the thinktank Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker.

Last year, the mining sector generated approximately $1.8bn (£1.3bn) in revenue from production and exports, producing roughly 75 tonnes of gold over the year and exceeding the SAF-controlled government’s target by 13%. This gold accounted for 58% of Sudan’s total export value in the SAF-controlled areas. The actual profit margin, however, may prove much higher, given the high level of gold smuggling across the border into Egypt. Production and trade levels among the RSF-controlled mines remain undocumented.

For the most part, Sudan’s war has allowed mining operations and gold trading to take place unabated and unregulated. According to Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, the head of the Umma party, a former investment minister and a businessman with ties to the gold sector, there is very little incentive for the warring parties to stop these practices.

“This is one of the Sudanese army’s most important incentives to perpetuate the war and prevent it from ending so that it can benefit from the corruption of these funds,” al-Mahdi says. “These funds are not subject to any oversight and are solely managed by the army commander and the governor of the central bank.”

The devastating impact of this unregulated mining is equally visible in the region’s pastures. Abu al-Qasim al-Khazin, a livestock herder from the Al-Sharik locality within the district of Abu Hamad, paints a grim picture of the toll the chemical runoff is taking on local fauna.

“We have seen numerous cases of animals born completely without hair [and] extremely unusual cases in which animals were born without eyes,” Al-Khazin explains.

The toxins affect more than just physical development. “In some cases, the animals appeared to have completely lost their normal behaviour – some people described their condition as resembling madness.”

The environmental disaster has inevitably become a public health emergency. Analysis in 2022 revealed that 20% of drinking water samples contained mercury.

A local doctor and medical activist, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, says that health issues previously rare in the area are now everyday realities. “Among these concerns is the rising rate of miscarriages among pregnant women, as well as cases of congenital abnormalities in foetuses,” they say.

The strain on local healthcare is immense, with the dialysis centre in Abu Hamad now serving close to 100 patients – far beyond its original intended capacity – after a rise in kidney failure.

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The danger peaks during the rainy season, when the lethal grey mounds are disturbed. “During the rainy season two years ago, we witnessed mining waste and tailings being washed away by flood waters and carried into residential neighbourhoods,” the doctor says.

Hashim Abdelazim al-Mahi, an engineer and local environmental activist, has tracked the devastating reality of the pollution. He points to the introduction of thiourea, as an alternative to cyanide in the gold extraction process.

“When thiourea was first introduced into Sudan [in 2017] it was promoted as an environmentally friendly material. However, reality has shown otherwise,” Abdelazim says.

According to recent local medical records, approximately one out of every 50 children is born with some form of serious congenital abnormality, including cleft lip conditions and complex cases such as skull deformities.

Despite the risks, Abdelazim is not demanding a complete end to the industry but rather an end to the negligence. “Of course [gold] mining will continue. We cannot expect the industry to stop completely,” he says. “Mining should not stop, but the state must stop these harmful practices linked to the industry and address them seriously; human health should remain a priority for the state and should never be compromised or bargained away.”

As the land dies, the social fabric of Abu Hamad is unravelling. Driven by soaring poverty and the allure of quick profits, young men are abandoning their education to enter high-risk mining operations.

Mohamed Ahmed Abdelaziz, the headteacher of the Northern Boys’ School in Ghariya, has watched his classrooms empty. Primary school classes have dropped from 75 pupils to 20, and secondary classes show identical attrition. “A student may see someone working in mining who has bought a vehicle or earned a substantial income within a short period and begin to ask himself, ‘Why should I continue studying?’” he says.

The long-term consequences of this shift in community priorities is deeply troubling to the veteran educator. “If large numbers of students continue to abandon their studies, society will lose the teachers, doctors, engineers, university professors and other professionals it needs for development.”

For the young men in the pits, survival, not greed, drives their decision. Al-Daw Adam Jibril Mohammed, a high-achieving student, dropped out of university when he could no longer afford the tuition.

“I felt that education required many years of study, while mining offered immediate and direct financial returns,” Adam says. However, the reality of the work is gruelling and far from a guaranteed payday. “A person may work an entire day and find nothing whatsoever; income from mining is uncertain and depends largely on luck.”

In July, the prime minister, Kamil Idris, who is part of the army-controlled government, ordered the immediate removal of all gold-processing mills from residential and military areas. The directive will also introduce mandatory ID cards for miners and increased security in mining regions. In 2024, authorities also tried to ban the use of mixers such as mercury and cyanide in Wadi Halfa, Northern state, and South Kordofan state. But these piecemeal efforts have proved too little, too late.

In Abu Hamad, the contaminated mounds of toxic soil and gravel remain exposed and untreated. As the rainy season approaches, the risk of these toxins seeping into the Nile River increases. While the war rages on, the residents of Abu Hamad must navigate a landscape permanently altered by human greed. Until state authorities intervene to regulate the informal sector and enforce safe processing methods, the grey mounds will continue to multiply. For the farmers, herders, doctors and children of Abu Hamad, the gold rush has yielded little wealth – only a slow, relentless poison.

This story by independent Sudanese outlet Ayin Network is supported by the Impact Reporting programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (iwpr.net)