Toxic gold tailings spread around Abu Hamad in Sudan

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Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) display gold bars seized from a plane that landed at Khartoum airport in an investigation into possible smuggling. Photograph: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters theguardian.com

A gold milling station in Abu Hamed Photograph: Ayin theguardian.com

A defector from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arrives after surrendering to the Sudanese military in the west of Omdurman last month. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images theguardian.com

Abu al-Qasim al-Khazin, a livestock herder in Abu Hamed. Photograph: Ayin theguardian.com

Moahmed Ahmed Abdelaziz, the headteacher of the Northern Boy’s School. Photograph: Ayin theguardian.com

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More than 700 mounds of grey waste now ring Abu Hamad in Sudan’s River Nile state, according to a Guardian report from the town. The piles are the leftovers of artisanal gold mining that expanded after starting around 2008 and has intensified in recent years, reshaping what residents describe as once-fertile orchards and fields that supplied nearby cities including Khartoum and Port Sudan.

The Guardian describes farms being cleared and replaced by shops and commercial sites as Abu Hamad turns into one of Sudan’s largest gold-mining and trading towns. The environmental damage is not a side effect at the margins of the economy; it is bound up with how the country finances itself during war. The paper reports that artisanal mining accounted for more than 90% of Sudan’s gold production in 2024, and that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rely heavily on the gold sector. Since the war began in April 2023, the report says, both sides have been involved in the gold trade and mining activities—turning a local land-use conflict into a revenue stream with armed protection.

The business model described is extractive twice over: miners dig, then others buy tailings that still contain much of the gold. Locals process these tailings—reported to contain about 70% of the gold—using chemicals such as cyanide, mercury, or thiourea. The Guardian links that chemical processing to toxicity in soil, water and air, and to floodwaters carrying runoff from mining sites that increase soil salinity. In a farming district, salinity is a slow-motion confiscation: land remains “owned” on paper while becoming harder to use.

Residents quoted by the Guardian describe yields collapsing. One farmer, Mohamed Fathi al-Rahman al-Khalifa, says his orange harvest fell from nearly four truckloads to less than half a truckload. He also reports wheat yields dropping from 40–60 sacks per acre historically to 12–18 sacks, and fava bean yields falling from 40–50 sacks per feddan to 3–4 sacks. Mature orange groves that should produce around 10 truckloads, he says, now yield less than half a truckload, with much of the fruit misshapen and thick-peeled.

This is the kind of damage that does not stay local. The Guardian connects the situation to rising prices for vegetables and farm products across Sudan, despite the country’s agricultural potential along the Nile. When a fragile state leans on gold for cash while farming capacity erodes, the near-term winners are the actors who can move and monetise bullion. The longer-term bill arrives as food insecurity, public-health exposure to industrial chemicals, and a rural economy pushed toward whatever activity is most protected and most liquid.

Abu Hamad’s landscape is now described in waste mounds and milling stations rather than orchards. In the same country where armed factions trade gold to keep going, farmers are counting sacks per acre and watching the numbers shrink.