Sahel acacia gum — when Sudan's war disrupted the global Coca-Cola supply chain

<p>Gum arabic is the polysaccharide you have eaten today without knowing it. It stabilizes the Coca-Cola formula, holds the sugar coating on M&amp;Ms, and is the emulsifier in roughly 60% of soft drinks worldwide. Sudan, specifically the Kordofan and Darfur acacia belt, produces around 70% of global supply. The April 2023 outbreak of the Rapid Support Forces – Sudanese Armed Forces war put that supply chain into a category-five disruption.</p> <p>The harvesting economy is pastoralist. Acacia senegal and acacia seyal trees are tapped during the dry season — November through April — when smallholder herders and seasonal labourers cut bark and collect the exuded gum nodules. The collection happens in exactly the areas that became active conflict zones: Kordofan, parts of Darfur, the White Nile border districts. Yvan Guichaoua at the University of Kent has written extensively on how the Sahel conflict economy disrupts seasonal pastoral livelihoods; the gum arabic harvest is the canonical case.</p> <p>The supply-chain response in 2023–2024 was telling. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, and Nestlé lobbied successfully to keep gum arabic exempt from US Treasury sanctions on Sudan-linked trade — on the grounds that the gum was &#x27;humanitarian&#x27; because smallholder livelihoods depended on it. The exemption was substantively true and politically convenient: it allowed continued purchasing from Port Sudan-based processors, some of whom have RSF or SAF commercial connections.</p> <p>Chad and Senegal have tried to capture some displaced production. Chadian acacia exports rose roughly 40% in 2024, drawing on previously dormant harvest areas around Lac Iro. Senegalese production is structurally smaller — different acacia variety, lower yield — but the FAO has been working with the Senegalese Agence Nationale de la Grande Muraille Verte to expand gum-producing plantations as part of the Great Green Wall programme.</p> <p>The deeper lesson is about how Sahelian smallholder pastoralism intersects with global consumer-goods supply chains. The gum arabic story is not about Sudan being uniquely important; it is about how thin the substitution layer is for a commodity that depends on specific tree species growing in a specific semi-arid belt under specific dry-season rhythms. Climate change and conflict together can knock out an irreplaceable input. The world found out in 2023 that there is no Plan B for gum arabic. There rarely is, for any smallholder-produced specialty input, until the disruption forces the question.</p>