International Journal of Development and Sustainability ISSN: 2186-8662 – www.isdsnet.com/ijds Volume 7 Number 3 (2018): Pages 934-949 ISDS Article ID: IJDS18020501 Unchaining the trade: Beyond the direct benefits of gum Arabic value chain in Sudan Yahia Omar Adam 1* , Abuelgasim Abdalla Adam 2 1 University of Khartoum, Faculty of Forestry, Shambat Campus, Code 13314, Khartoum Bahri-Sudan 2 United Nations Environment Programme-Sudan Office Abstract Market or value chain analysis is an important tool to aid understanding of the flow of traded non-timber forest products (NTFPs), from local harvesters or producers to the final consumers, as well as the relative distribution of benefits at each stage. However, there is little consideration of the flow of benefits to external actors supplying goods and services to the chain actors as well as exploration of how widely the economic and development benefits of NTFP trade permeate. As an illustration, the study examined the gum Arabic value chain in East Darfur, Sudan. Snowball sampling was used to select market chain and external actors who were then interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. Four different sets of chain actors were identified and their income distribution was assessed. It has been estimated that there are approximately 2,000 external actors who supply goods or services to the market chain actors. For many of these the income from supplying the gum Arabic chain actors is their most important source of cash income, and for some, it is their only source. This study therefore indicates that much work on NTFP incomes and value chains has overlooked this wider constituency, and therefore underestimated the importance of NTFP trade in local and regional economies. Keywords: External Actors; Income Generation; Non-Timber Forest Products Trade; Sudan * Corresponding author. E-mail address: gumaa1973@hotmail.com Published by ISDS LLC, Japan | Copyright © 2018 by the Author(s) | This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cite this article as: Adam, Y.O. and Adam, A.A. (2018), “Unchaining the trade: Beyond the direct benefits of gum Arabic value chain in Sudan”, International Journal of Development and Sustainability, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 934-949.