Gum Arabic - Production

Production

While acacia gum has been harvested in Arabia, Egypt, and West Asia since antiquity, sub-Saharan acacia gum has a long history as a prized export. The gum exported came from the band of acacia trees which once covered much of the Sahel region: the southern littoral of the Sahara Desert running from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Today, the main populations of gum-producing Acacia species are harvested in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Acacia senegal is tapped for gum by cutting holes in the bark, from which a product called kordofan or Senegal gum is exuded. Seyal gum, from Acacia seyal, the species more prevalent in East Africa, is collected from naturally occurring extrusions on the bark. Traditionally harvested by seminomadic desert pastoralists in the course of their transhumance cycle, acacia gum remains a main export of several African nations, including Mauritania, Niger, Chad, and Sudan. The hardened extrusions are collected in the middle of the rainy season (harvesting usually begins in July), and exported at the start of the dry season (November). Total world gum arabic exports are today (2008) estimated at 60,000 tonnes, having recovered from 1987–1989 and 2003–2005 crises caused by the destruction of trees by the desert locust. Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria, which in 2007 together produced 95% of world exports, have been in discussions to create a producers' cartel.