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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the intricacies of profit margins in value chains starting at gold mining sites in Sudan, particularly how patterns of revenue distribution are shaped by the ambivalent access to extractive technologies, from hand-held hammer and chisel to the state-owned refinery.

Paper long abstract

Gold mining in Sudan transformed from a niche activity to a vital part of the population's economy in just 25 years. Initially driven by economic crises, global price shifts, and access to previously unavailable extractive technologies, this development has now become closely linked with the war economy, serving not only as one of the few viable income sources but also as a key element in extractivist geopolitics that sustains warfare. At the centre of the value chains connecting gold mining sites in the country with global markets via Dubai is a simple technological difference: the extractive efficiency of mercury versus cyanide, with the former recovering about 30% of gold from ore and the latter about 90%. This 60% gap underpins the exploitative tailings business, where small-scale miners' waste is cheaply acquired by larger producers, many of whom are connected to armed groups. Rather than a straightforward artisanal-industrial divide, mining sites represent arenas of technological heterogeneity, where a child crushing stones with a hammer may work alongside ball mills and carbon-in-column facilities. The resulting dependencies and profit margins follow familiar stratifications, yet detailed revenue distributions reveal a less obvious role for manual labour within survival economies and the logistics linking these activities to the expanding circuits of global gold trade. We argue that this particular status of manual labour reflects the economic rationales maintaining it, while also highlighting its fundamental importance for current and future resource governance, both locally and globally.