Officials in Port Sudan began hunting for alternative buyers.
When Sudan's military government severed diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates last May, the rupture showed up almost immediately in the numbers. Gold shipments from Sudan to the UAE — which had stood at 22.2 metric tons in 2024 — fell to just 8.2 tons in 2025. The UAE's share of Sudan's total gold exports collapsed from 99 percent to 56 percent in a single year.
The backstory is a civil war that has been grinding through Sudan since April 2023, pitting the national army against the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that controls large swaths of the country. Khartoum has repeatedly accused Abu Dhabi of arming and financing the RSF. The UAE has denied it, insisting it backs neither side, and last month renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated political transition. But the accusations were enough for Sudan's authorities to formally cut ties, and the economic consequences followed.
By August, ships carrying Sudanese cargo were already encountering difficulties at UAE ports — a disruption that hit fuel shipments from Sudan's Red Sea terminals as well as gold. Suliman Baldo, executive director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a Sudanese think tank that monitors economic developments, described the moment plainly: events sent shocks through the system, and officials in Port Sudan began hunting for alternative buyers.
They found them. Egypt absorbed 4.9 tons of Sudanese gold in 2025, worth $517 million — roughly twenty times what it had taken the year before. Oman doubled its intake to 0.7 tons, valued at $77 million. Qatar received more than twice as much as it had previously, taking 382 kilograms worth $41 million. Ethiopia, which had imported no Sudanese gold at all before, received 294 kilograms worth $31 million.
The overall volume of Sudan's official gold exports also fell — from 22.9 tons in 2024 to 14.7 tons in 2025. But gold prices have climbed sharply in recent years, which cushioned the blow to export revenues. The shipments to the UAE alone were worth $865 million last year, down from $1.5 billion the year before, but the total income across all destinations remained roughly comparable between the two years.
There is a significant caveat buried in the data. Sudan's state gold producer has acknowledged that official figures capture only part of the picture. Small-scale and artisanal miners operate largely outside the formal system, and their output moves through channels that don't appear in central bank records. United Nations experts have separately accused the RSF of using informal gold sales to bankroll its military campaign — allegations the paramilitary group denies.
The war itself has extracted a cost that no trade statistic can fully represent. Tens of thousands of people have died since fighting broke out in 2023, and the United Nations has described the resulting humanitarian crisis as the largest in the world. Against that backdrop, the scramble to redirect gold shipments from Dubai to Cairo and Doha reads less like a trade story and more like a symptom — one small, measurable signal of a country being pulled apart.
What happens next depends partly on whether Sudan's army can consolidate control, partly on whether any diplomatic resolution with the UAE becomes possible, and partly on how long the new trading relationships with Egypt, Oman, and Qatar hold. For now, Port Sudan's officials are building a new map of the gold market, one destination at a time.
Notable Quotes
Events sent shocks through the system in Sudan — that is the moment officials in Port Sudan began exploring alternative markets.— Suliman Baldo, executive director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker
The UAE supports neither side in the conflict and calls for an immediate ceasefire and political transition.— UAE government position, reiterated last month
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
The UAE was taking 99 percent of Sudan's gold just a year ago. How does a country become that dependent on a single buyer?
The UAE built itself into the world's dominant gold trading hub over decades — low taxes, sophisticated logistics, proximity to producing regions. For Sudan, it was simply the obvious place to sell.
So when the relationship broke down, was Sudan left scrambling, or did it have options ready?
Scrambling, at first. Baldo's phrase — shocks through the system — captures it well. Port Sudan officials started exploring alternatives only after the disruption was already visible.
Egypt absorbing twenty times more gold than before is a striking number. Is that a sustainable shift or an emergency measure?
Probably somewhere between the two. Egypt has its own gold market and the infrastructure to handle it, but whether it becomes a long-term anchor depends on politics that are still very much in motion.
The official figures apparently miss a huge chunk of actual gold production. How much does that complicate the picture?
Enormously. The central bank data tells you about the formal economy. The informal economy — small miners, unrecorded trades — runs alongside it and may be larger. The RSF is accused of operating largely in that shadow space.
The UN says the RSF is funding itself through informal gold sales. Does that mean the war is partly self-financing?
That's the accusation, yes. Gold is portable, valuable, and hard to trace. For an armed group controlling territory with artisanal mines, it's a natural revenue stream.
And yet total export income held roughly steady despite lower volumes. Does that mean Sudan's government is actually okay financially?
It softened the blow, but okay is a stretch. The country is in the middle of the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Higher gold prices helped the ledger; they didn't help the people.