More often than not, the geopolitical lens applied to the African continent is that of an extension of the great power competition, as the US and China compete for Africa’s rare earth minerals.  This growing competition in Africa is a strategic function of  U.S.efforts to reshore semiconductor manufacturing and the role of rare earth minerals will play in the future green economy, like the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries:  “…electric vehicles are expected to command half the global market by 2030 and…demand for lithium is expected to increase 42-fold by 2040. China is responsible for some 80 percent of the world’s lithium refining.  (1)

Africa is the source of the raw materials to counter this competitive advantage held by China:  “…the U.S. and China are in a race for the critical minerals — such as cobalt and lithium — that will likely power the projected transition to clean energy.  African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo have some of the largest deposits of these resources, but China currently dominates the supply chain as well as their refinement, and the U.S. wants to reduce its reliance on the Asian giant.” (1)

And while there is a natural resources element to the current instability and violence in Sudan, it is only as the central plot point in one of the seven narratives emanating from Sudan that provide a clear fact-based and evidentiary context to better understand the severity of the following significant global power shifts, risks, and uncertainties which your organization should integrate into your geopolitical risk awareness:

1. The Growing Global Refugee Crisis
2. Africa as the Potential Site of the Next Proxy War
3. Saudi Arabia as a “Rising Global Power and Neutral Mediator”
4. Saudi-Iran Rapprochement
5. Weaponized Critical Infrastructure and High-Risk Biological Hazards in Conflict Zones
6. Future Regional Conflicts Based on Rare Earth Minerals
7. The Unintended Consequences of Social Media and Misinformation are a Global Phenomenon

1 – The Growing Severity of the African Refugee Crisis and the Ongoing Global Refugee Crisis

…around 3,000 South Sudanese are fleeing back to their fragile country every day.

The main site of the Sudanese evacuation is Port Sudan – which is a harrowing 500-mile journey from the violent Sudanese Capital of Khartoum. This refugee crisis distills the level of displacement that some populations are experiencing as part of the larger global refugee crisis:  according to the International Rescue Committee, over 100 million people have now been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of ongoing conflicts and crises in countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Yemen.”  Add Sudan to this growing list:

“Thousands of people have descended on a port city in eastern Sudan in recent days, fleeing the violence in the capital and trying to secure their escape aboard vessels heading over the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.

The coastal city of Port Sudan — the country’s biggest seaport — has been transformed into a hub for those displaced by the war, with people using cloth and chairs to construct makeshift tents, packing a local amusement park for shelter and waiting for help in three-digit heat.

Although international evacuations are now focused on Port Sudan, tens of thousands more people have fled by land into Chad, Egypt and South Sudan since the conflict erupted between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group.

At least 50,000 people have left Sudan since the fighting began, according to the United Nations, and the violence has killed more than 500 civilians, according to the World Health Organization. The true number of casualties is likely much higher.

The conflict has thrust Africa’s third-largest nation into chaos, with many people displaced but unsure of how to escape the violence.

On Port Sudan’s waterfront, video footage and images shared on social media showed families waiting under the scorching sun, in temperatures of over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Some people rested on suitcases which contained the few possessions they had managed to take.

Sudan had already hosted one of the biggest refugee populations in Africa: about 1.1 million people, most of them from South Sudan, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Many of those people, including Yemenis and Syrians, are now again trying to escape to safety. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, around 3,000 South Sudanese are fleeing back to their fragile country every day.” (2)

2 – Sudan is a Candidate for the Next Proxy War

There’s little appetite for prolonged conflict.

Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, a former warlord who heads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is battling Sudan’s de facto military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, for control of the country.  (4)

The battle in Sudan risks becoming a proxy war, dragging in neighboring states and world powers.   That would be in nobody’s interest:

• It threatens nearby states like South Sudan which exports oil through its northern neighbor, and the interests of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
• War would disrupt Russian mercenary group Wagner’s gold operations, plans by UAE companies to construct ports and China’s investments in Sudan, including more than $6 billion in loans.
• Refugees could flee across borders:  “Many civilians are looking to escape via Sudan’s seven neighboring countries as conditions deteriorate, with internet and electricity outages plus a shortage of food, water, and gas. Up to 20,000 Sudanese living in border areas such as the western region of Darfur have fled into neighboring Chad. Egypt, which has a significant Sudanese population, is seeing refugees crossing the border in trucks. (4)
• “It’s a country whose crisis will not be contained within,” said Murithi Mutiga, program director for Africa at International Crisis Group. “You need a cease-fire quickly or you are staring at civil war.”
• Both sides have backers:
  • Egypt’s military carried out exercises with Sudanese forces earlier this month. Separately, both countries oppose an Ethiopian dam on a Nile River tributary that Egypt threatened military action against.
  • The UAE sees Hemedti as a bulwark against Sudanese Islamists and his forces have fought alongside Wagner and the army of the neighboring Central African Republic against rebels. They’ve won favor with UAE and Saudi Arabia by battling those nations’ opponents in Yemen.
• But Sudan is vast and in a troubled neighborhood, with Ethiopia emerging from a devastating civil war and Libya wracked by conflict. There’s little appetite for prolonged conflict.  “There are people who would be concerned to see the RSF lose but no one wants to see the armed forces collapse,” Mutiga said. (3)

The governments of Ghana, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, China, and various European Union nations say they are working to evacuate all their citizens from Sudan. The United States, Britain, France, and Canada over the weekend evacuated diplomats and their families. But it was currently unsafe to evacuate private U.S. citizens, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum—which is now temporarily closed—said on Saturday. (4)

3 – Saudi Arabia as a “Rising Global Power and Neutral Mediator”

The Saudi media was quick to hail the kingdom’s evacuation efforts.

Saudi Arabia has played a central role in the evacuation, extricating more than 5,000 foreigners from Sudan since the fighting erupted just over two weeks ago between the forces of two rival Sudanese generals. Saudi Arabia is one of the closest countries to Sudan — less than 150 miles across the Red Sea — and has the means to manage a large-scale evacuation.

The operation also fit efforts by the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to position Saudi Arabia as a rising global power and neutral mediator. Saudi officials have relationships with both of Sudan’s warring generals, and Saudi Arabia is a member of the four-country group that tried and failed to steer Sudan to civilian-led rule.

Saudi Arabia said that its rescue operation, using warships and privately chartered vessels, had evacuated 5,197 people of 100 nationalities as of Sunday, of whom only 184 were Saudi. But the demand has far outstripped supply. So far, some Sudanese who are dual nationals have been evacuated. But many of the people waiting to leave Port Sudan only hold Sudanese passports, and there is concern that they could be trapped indefinitely in the port as countries prioritize getting dual nationals out. For those without any passport, it could be even harder to escape.

Some of those who did board ships for the 180-mile trip to Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, Jeddah, wept for the home and family they had to leave behind.  The head of Saudi Arabia’s General Department of Passports said the country would grant free visas for all foreign nationals who had been evacuated from Sudan on a legal basis, but that they must have scheduled plans to leave the kingdom. Details of the process remained unclear on Monday.

The Saudi media was quick to hail the kingdom’s evacuation efforts. Newspapers printed photographs of Saudi soldiers welcoming evacuees in Jeddah, handing out flowers, and cradling babies. Some evacuees held tiny Saudi flags. (2)

4 – Saudi-Iran Rapprochement Visible in Sudan Evacuation Effort

The countries agreed to end their rift and reopen diplomatic missions in a deal brokered in March by China.

• The growing rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran after years of mistrust was visible on Monday as Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranian citizens fleeing the war in Sudan.
• The Saudi navy carried the 65 Iranian citizens from Port Sudan to Jeddah, and they will fly onward to Tehran.
• Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani called the transfer “a positive event” that had taken place thanks to Saudi-Iranian cooperation.
• Ahmed al-Dabais, a senior Saudi military officer handling the operation, told Iranian evacuees in a video carried by local television that the two countries were good friends and brothers and that they should regard the kingdom as their own country.
• Revolutionary Shi’ite Muslim Iran and conservative Sunni Saudi Arabia had feuded for years, backing opposing sides in wars and political struggles across the Middle East in a tussle for influence that fed conflicts and inflamed sectarian hatred.
• Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations in 2016 after Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom’s Tehran Embassy following Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite Muslim cleric.
• However, the two major oil producers agreed to end their rift and reopen diplomatic missions in a deal brokered in March by China. (5)

5 – First Putin Weaponized the Nuclear Facility in Ukraine, Now The High Risk of Biological Hazard After Fighters Seize Biolab

Soldiers have seized a bio lab containing samples of cholera and measles in Khartoum.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said there’s a “high risk of biological hazard” in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, after a biolab containing deadly pathogens was seized by fighters.

There’s a war in Sudan right now as two rival generals struggle for power. After a week of fighting, one of the factions has seized the National Public Health Laboratory which contains samples of measles, cholera, polio, and other diseases.

Now, lab workers are unable to return to the facility and secure the hazardous materials. “This is the main concern: no accessibility to the lab technicians to go to the lab and safely contain the biological material and substances available,” Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO’s representative in Sudan, told reporters on Tuesday.

According to the lab’s website, it contains “reference laboratories related to the control of some diseases such as polio, measles, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.” The lab is engaged in various aspects of studying and controlling diseases, including identifying pathogens, testing for them, and sending samples to international labs. The work is aimed at preventing and identifying possible epidemics, and the lab works with the WHO. (6)

6 – Foreshadowing Future Regional Conflicts in Africa Based on Rare Earth Minerals

 With an ongoing gold rush in the region, the precious metal is driving the conflict.

• Sudan is a pivotal link in the increasingly fragile and violent geopolitics of both the Sahel and the Red Sea/Horn of Africa regions.
• The bloody fighting across the country that began on April 15 is the result of a clash between the two most powerful military forces in the country – General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, president since October 2021, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemeti (Hemetti, Himedti), Sudan’s vice-president and commander of the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
• The fighting is driven by rivalry between the generals, heading different factions within the security forces in the wake of the ouster of long-time President al-Bashir in April 2019.
• They represent different power groupings in Sudan and enjoy sponsorship from rival outside forces.
  • Al-Burhan is connected to Sisi in Egypt.
  • Hemeti is thought to be closer to the Emiratis.
  • Both have links to Russia.

But the condition of possibility for this clash is the political economy of Sudan to which one of the keys is gold. As the work of a brilliant group of French scholars reveals, the emergence of General Hemeti as a challenger for power in Khartoum, is a reflection of the power shift brought about within Sudan and the wider region, by a spectacular gold rush. 

As it has swept from East to West, the gold rush has been rearranging populations, economic, social, political, and military relations across the Sahel. 

As the International Crisis Group reported in 2019:

• In central Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger), gold mining has intensified since 2012 due to the discovery of a particularly rich vein that crosses the Sahara from east to west.
• The first finds were made in Sudan (Jebel Amir) in 2012, followed by others between 2013 and 2016 in Chad (Batha in the center and Tibesti in the north of the country), in 2014 in Niger (Djado in the north east of the country, Tchibarakaten to the northeast of Arlit, and the Aïr region in the center north), then finally in 2016 in Mali (the northern part of the Kidal region) and Mauritania (Tasiast, in the west).
• The cross-border movement of experienced miners from the sub-region, notably from Sudan, Mali, and Burkina Faso, has fuelled the exploitation of these sites.
• These recent discoveries come in addition to the gold already mined in Tillabéri (western Niger), Kayes, Sikasso, and Koulikoro (southern Mali), and various regions of Burkina Faso, making artisanal gold a hugely important issue in the Sahel.

This information is part of a really interesting longer post by Adam Tooze at his substack and is worth a read:  Chartbook #209 The Sudan crisis and the Sahel gold rush.

7 – The Unintended Consequences of Social Media and Misinformation Manifest on a Global Scale

Potentially hijacked Twitter accounts promote Sudanese paramilitary force.

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2023/02/16/saudi-arabia-and-the-future-of-money/

https://oodaloop.com/archive/2023/04/11/the-future-of-the-u-s-governance-of-critical-minerals/