Sudan’s Collapsing Borders Are Africa’s Next Big Test
By Dr Abdelnasser Solum Hamed
Director, East Africa & Sudan Program – FOX Research Center
More than two years into Sudan’s brutal conflict, over 6,000 foreign mercenaries from at least seven African countries are now fighting inside Sudan’s porous borders. What started as a power struggle for Khartoum has become a regional storm that risks tearing apart Africa’s fragile security order.
In June, fighters from Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces — backed by Libyan militias loyal to Khalifa Haftar — crossed into the Jebel Uweinat triangle, the harsh border zone where Sudan, Libya and Egypt meet. This was not an isolated incident. It is a warning of how Sudan’s war is expanding beyond its ruined towns and scorched villages to reshape entire borderlands.
Across Darfur, South Kordofan, and parts of eastern Sudan, government authority has all but disappeared. Local warlords, smugglers, and hybrid militias now control gold mines, smuggling routes, and supply chains that stretch deep into the Sahel.
Every week, young men from Chad, Niger, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Mali cross these broken frontiers to fight for pay — or for the promise of loot. “We see fighters crossing every week — some for gold, some just to survive,” says a local trader near the Chad-Sudan border.
These men will not stay inside Sudan’s borders forever. Chadian rebel groups who fought alongside the RSF are already returning to challenge their own government, better armed and trained. In the Central African Republic, remnants of Sudanese militias are slipping across the border, threatening communities that are already on edge.
Further east, South Sudan is becoming another powder keg. Ugandan troops have entered Upper Nile State claiming to protect Juba’s government, while Ethiopia deploys reinforcements to secure its side of the border. In May, Khartoum accused unnamed neighbours of launching drone strikes on Port Sudan from bases in Somaliland — a sign that Sudan’s conflict is becoming a testing ground for new kinds of remote warfare.
What holds this dangerous spread together is the collapse of borders as lines of protection. These frontiers have become open corridors for weapons, mercenaries, and illicit trade. Meanwhile, the African Union’s response is painfully slow, and major international actors are stepping back. In May, AFRICOM announced it would halt direct military aid and only share intelligence — a clear signal that Washington has little appetite to be drawn into Sudan’s chaos.
This is not the first time Africa has seen borders dissolve under the weight of conflict. The Great Lakes wars of the 1990s showed how quickly militias and weapons can flow across fragile states, turning local conflicts into regional nightmares.
But Sudan’s collapse could be worse. Sitting at the crossroads of North, East, and Central Africa, its implosion risks creating a vast ungoverned zone stretching from the Sahel to the Red Sea. Many of the mercenaries fighting there now will eventually carry new weapons and skills back home to fuel fresh insurgencies.
Africa’s leaders and the wider world cannot afford to ignore what is unfolding. Containment is still possible — but only if Sudan’s neighbours act together to control borders, cut off the flow of weapons and gold, and prevent warlords from turning the region into a permanent mercenary market.
This war will not stay inside Sudan. If left unchecked, it could easily become Africa’s next continental crisis — more complex, and more devastating, than the world is ready for.
⸻
Dr Abdelnasser Solum Hamed is Director of the East Africa & Sudan Program at FOX Research Center and an expert in crisis management and counterterrorism.