ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Sesame, long treated as a dependable export crop for Ethiopia and Sudan, is being pulled deeper into war in 2025 and 2026 as fighting tears through Ethiopia’s Amhara region, Sudan’s eastern farming belt and the Red Sea corridor that moves the crop abroad, April 15, 2026. The reason is increasingly clear: control over farmland, labor, border access and export routes now carries military and political value, turning a vital oilseed into a conflict commodity.
A Chatham House study on the conflict economy of sesame in Ethiopia and Sudan argues that the crop now sits at the center of a wider struggle involving armed forces, militias, local elites and rival authorities competing for land, production and trade. That matters because the main sesame belt is not peripheral farmland. It stretches across eastern Sudan and northwestern Ethiopia, including areas around the disputed Al Fashaga border zone. Before that border dispute escalated in late 2020, farmers on both sides were still selling sesame according to price and market conditions. Now politics, security and commerce overlap.
Why the sesame trade matters
The sesame trade is not a niche sideline for either economy. Chatham House says Ethiopia’s three main oilseed crops contribute about one-fifth of the country’s agricultural export profits, with most of that share coming from sesame. A USDA review of Ethiopian agricultural exports during the Red Sea shipping disruption found that coffee, sesame and kidney beans together generated 55% of the country’s agricultural export revenue in 2023. Even when shipping delays and price mismatches hit traders, sesame remained too important to ignore.
Sudan’s dependence runs just as deep. Chatham House found that sesame accounted for nearly 30% of Sudan’s agricultural exports between 2011 and 2021, after South Sudan’s secession weakened oil income, and that Gedaref alone contributes about 30% of Sudan’s sesame production. In other words, when war creeps toward Gedaref, Blue Nile or the roads leading east, it is not just a rural security story. It is a story about one of Sudan’s key export pillars.
How war is reshaping the sesame trade
On the Ethiopian side, insecurity is undermining both production and market confidence. Reuters reporting on the Amhara conflict said fighting has plagued the region since mid-2023, killed civilians and left more than 2 million people dependent on food aid, while communications restrictions have limited outside verification. Chatham House says Ethiopia’s sesame sector was already badly shaken by the Tigray war and its aftermath, with sesame exports more than halving between 2020 and 2022 as conflict hit major production zones such as Humera and Welkait.
On the Sudanese side, the damage reaches from farms to the port. In May 2025, Reuters reported that drone strikes on Port Sudan hit the container terminal, fuel depots and other infrastructure in the city that had become the army-aligned government’s wartime capital and the country’s main base for aid operations. By March 2026, Sudan was publicly accusing Ethiopia of allowing drones to be launched from its territory, an allegation Reuters said it could not independently verify. Whether the immediate bottleneck is a front line, a border accusation or a damaged port, the commercial effect is similar: higher risk, weaker logistics and more political control over who can move crops and who can profit from them.
The deeper shift is that the sesame trade no longer behaves like a normal commodity chain. A farmer’s access to land, a trader’s access to trucks, a broker’s access to a warehouse and an exporter’s access to the port are all increasingly shaped by who controls territory. That is why the phrase “conflict commodity” matters here. It does not mean sesame causes war by itself. It means the crop has become valuable enough, and strategically placed enough, to be captured, taxed or rerouted by those fighting around it.
Earlier warnings from the sesame trade
The warning signs were visible years before the current framing hardened. In February 2021, Reuters tracked the Al Fashaga border dispute as clashes flared over fertile land farmed by Ethiopians but claimed by Sudan. That same year, a Reuters investigation into Mai Kadra showed how sesame farms and seasonal labor were already tangled up in ethnic violence in western Tigray. Then, only weeks after Sudan’s war erupted in 2023, Reuters reported that exports of sesame and other key goods had ground to a halt as airports closed, banks shut and shipping stalled.
What comes next for the sesame trade
The sesame trade will not stabilize just because global demand remains strong. Ethiopia can still post better export numbers in some months, and Sudan can still produce in pockets that remain under firmer control, but neither country has a secure commercial environment while farmland, labor routes, borderlands and ports are all contested. The next phase of the crisis may not look like a failed harvest alone. It may look like a crop that still grows, but only moves through corridors defined by armies, militias and politically connected traders.
That is the real danger for the sesame trade in the Horn of Africa. Once a crop becomes part of a conflict economy, repairing the market requires more than better prices or better weather. It requires safer farms, predictable border access, functioning transport, and a political settlement strong enough to push armed actors back out of the value chain.
