The rapid development of a mining economy in Sudan has been one of the highlights of the last two decades. In less than 15 years, the country has become Africa’s second-largest gold producer, after South Africa. Just before the fall of Al-Bashir’s regime, the Minister of Mines boasted a production of up to 100 tons of gold a year, a considerable achievement given that the price of the precious mineral has risen steadily since 2000. This growth in mining is not unique to Sudan, however: in many African countries, high ore prices driven by growing global demand, associated with an abundant workforce and the large numbers of young people looking for work in underdeveloped environments, have encouraged a mining boom of this scale, the biggest in African history. In Sudan, this context was exacerbated by the crisis created by the independence of South Sudan, which put an end to the largesse—relative but real—of a regime that had set out to develop the country thanks to the oil windfall of the 2000s. Mining was quickly seen as a lifeline both for the increasingly contested regime, which was losing precious oil revenues, and for the millions of people who had been hit hard by the economic crisis.