Tag: Records of Sudan

SUDAN Memory: The Project Digitising a Country’s History

A group of academics have spent close to a decade scanning historic documents and images and making them available online.

Sudanese academic Badreldin Elhag Musa followed the news with alarm when Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters set fire to two libraries containing historic documents in the Malian city of Timbuktu in 2013.

While local residents managed to smuggle many manuscripts to safety in advance, a Unesco team later found that some 4,200 of the documents stored in the libraries were either destroyed or stolen – about a tenth of its archives .

At the time, Elhag Musa already had concerns about the preservation of rare documents in his country. The events in Timbuktu accelerated the sense of urgency for the scholar, a member of the Sudanese Association for Archiving Knowledge (Saak).

The tragic episode served as a warning that highlighted the plight of cultural heritage artefacts in areas of actual or potential conflict – just like Sudan.

Elhag Musa set a plan in motion, connecting with King’s College London Professor Marilyn Deegan, who has over 20 years of experience in digital humanities. His goal: to find ways to safeguard as much of Sudan’s cultural heritage as possible.

A decade later, the result is Sudan Memory, a project that seeks to preserve and promote valuable cultural materials about Sudan through digitisation. The online platform aims to ensure current and future generations can benefit from the country’s rich heritage.

In total, more than 200 people and over 40 institutions have been involved in the project, which offers 60,000 digitised documents.

The results are invaluable: The materials range from manuscripts, photographs, books and films, covering a myriad of topics, as well as jewellery, traditional dresses, and artefacts from different regions spanning around 6,000 years of history.

“We never expected such success when we started,” Elhag Musa told Middle East Eye.

His colleague Deegan notes, “We’ve digitised… well over 100.000 images,” adding, “We thought we would be able to do millions…but I think we did do a lot.”

Sourcing collections

One of the reasons that prompted Elhag Musa and his colleague at Saak to protect Sudan’s cultural heritage with such urgency was that many of the country’s richest archives, particularly private collections, are in danger.

The reasons are manifold, ranging from extreme weather and lack of appropriate storage to neglect and conflict.

Many valuable collections, whether public or private, are also locked away and not easily accessible to the public.

Yet at the same time, many of Sudan’s archives and collections were in good enough condition to undertake a project like Sudan Memory, as Deegan saw for herself on her first visit to Khartoum, Omdurman and Atbara in May 2013.

“Archives in Sudan are not (like) the British Library, but they are not too bad,” she said.

Although its origins go back a decade, the Sudan Memory team was only able to start digitising documents in 2018, some time after securing funds.

At first, the focus was on large institutions; one of the entities that contributed the most was the National Records Office (NRO), which serves as Sudan’s national archives.

The NRO holds more than 30 million documents, some dating as far back as 1504 CE, and they are currently classified into around 300 collections.

Today, some of these materials can be found in the Sudan Memory archive, including early issues of The Sudan Times newspaper, as well as old magazines, rare books and precious photographs.

Another major collection included in the Sudan Memory project was provided by Al Rashid Studio, the largest private photo studio in the country.

Located in the city of Atbara, once the centre of Sudan’s railway industry and regarded as the cradle of its trade union and communist movements, the studio holds over four million negatives dating back to the 1940s.

Through these negatives, the Rashid family has captured the cosmopolitanism that once defined Atbara, as well as some of the changes Sudan has undergone in recent decades.

“What’s interesting about [it] is looking at the early images and seeing over time how things like fashion changed, and how that’s related to politics,” Deegan noted.

A turbulent process

Building the Sudan Memory archive was not an easy task, primarily as a result of political circumstances in the country.

Training could not start until scanners were imported into the country and these were not installed until July 2018, as the team had to navigate sanctions still in place at the time – a period when former president, Omar al-Bashir, was still in charge.

These restrictions also affected the purchase of other equipment and the transfer of funds to teams within Sudan. 

Additionally, in the lead-up to the revolution in Sudan in late 2018 and the period until the formation of the now-ousted transitional government, there was little stability within the country’s institutions with many regularly closing, thereby disrupting the project. 

And just as the situation began to settle down and work restarted, the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, once again putting a hold on scanning in local institutions.

Throughout this turbulent process the project stayed going thanks to the efforts of Katharina von Schroeder, Sudan Memory’s project manager in Khartoum.

“Just like many other projects, Covid times were difficult,” Elhag Musa said.

“But for us the passion was great, and as Marilyn continued to work on targeting international sources [of funding], we went on to focus on training talented team members on digitisation skills,” he added.

As if all this was not enough, the military coup of October 2021, which derailed the fragile transition in the country, further aggravated political instability in Sudan and delayed the project’s launch in Khartoum indefinitely.

“It has just been so turbulent over the last few years,” Katherine Ashley, another of Sudan Memory’s project managers, told MEE.

“But people, if anything, have become as or even more generous and excited to share their collections and do things about it,” she noted.

Private collections

About halfway through the project, the Sudan Memory team decided to expand beyond the country’s major institutions and dive into private collections as well.

And that’s when Ashley, who has extensive experience in the field, came in.

“The big collections are amazing, but the ones that people feel so passionate about are (ones) hidden away in people’s homes; private collections and stories,” she said.

“This is what (made me realise) how important it is to try and make some effort…on Sudan and record some of these oral histories and stories,” Ashley added.

One such preserved collection is that of  Sadia el-Salahi , a Sudanese artist and designer born in 1941 in Omdurman and famous for her pioneering work on Sudanese folklore and traditional costumes.

In 1968, Salahi joined the Sudanese Ministry of Culture and became the first Sudanese national to hold the position of head costume designer, according to Sudan Memory.

“She sadly passed away…but we were lucky to record what was left of her collection and also do a video recording about her career and life story,” Ashley said of Salahi, who died in 2022.

Another jewel in the crown of the Sudan Memory project is an interactive 3D reconstruction of Suakin Island , on the west coast of the Red Sea, as it was in 1900.

The portal also features some important documentation about the history of the island, and links to digitised content about it.

To a great extent, the reconstruction of Suakin was possible thanks to Mohamed Nour, a local Sudanese citizen, and his family, who dedicated their life to building a museum of the island’s history through photographs, artefacts and other documents.

“It’s a lifelong work that they are continuing,” Ashley said.

Remembering Sudan’s Jewish community

A significant part of the archive created by Sudan Memory does not come from within the country but by a process they call digital repatriation: content about Sudan acquired from institutions and individuals abroad.

“We are bringing Sudanese materials back into the country,” Deegan noted, adding: “We are pushing Sudanese materials out to the world, but also bringing stuff back in.”

One example is the Tales of Jewish Sudan archive , a collection of stories, photos and recipes from Sudan’s Jewish community compiled by historian Daisy Abboudi, a descendant of the Sudanese-Jewish community born in the UK.

The history of Sudan’s Jews is difficult to trace, but Abboudi has documented that from the early 20th century onwards, Jews from all over the Middle East and North Africa began to arrive after the building of a rail connection to Cairo by the British army.

At its peak in 1950s, Sudan’s Jewish community numbered approximately 250 families, mainly concentrated in Khartoum, Omdurman and Wad Madani. And its members were predominantly merchants involved in the textiles, silks and Arabic gum trades.

“The community was very active, they had a club, a synagogue… It was an equipped, functioning community,” Abboudi told MEE.

“It was small, but I think that that made it even more vibrant and active,” she added.

However, from the mid-20th century onwards, and for reasons ranging from the establishment of the State of Israel to the rise in antisemitic incidents and rhetoric in Sudan, the Jewish community began to shrink amid successive waves of emigration.

According to Abboudi, by the end of 1973 following the Arab-Israeli war, the last remaining Jews left Sudan.

To prevent the memory of the once vibrant Jewish community in Sudan from fading, Abboudi started Tales of Jewish Sudan in 2015 with the aim of preserving its history and stories before it was too late – a goal now shared with Sudan Memory.

“Living in the more Ashkenazi-dominant British community, I felt that my history was neglected, ignored or somehow not present. And that’s why I started,” she said.

“But also for my generation and the generations to come, because I realised that as soon as those people are no longer here, that community will be forgotten,” she explained further.

Another curious example of repatriated Sudanese materials comes from Air Tickets History , a collection belonging to Greek collector, Gklavas Athanasios, that today holds over 4,500 airline tickets and boarding passes from more than 1,000 airlines spanning six continents. 

The extensive collection includes several documents dated from 1960 to 1983 from Sudanese airlines, such as Sudan Airways, the national airline; also one of the first airlines in Africa, Mid Airlines, a charter airline established in Khartoum in 2002, and Marsland Aviation.

“I started collecting tickets when I was eight and had my first flight with Olympic Airways, from Athens to Samos Island,” Athanasios told MEE. “But about the Sudanese tickets I unfortunately don’t have much information, as I bought them on Ebay many years ago.”

All in all, the compilation of these documents gathered from major institutions and private collections both inside and outside Sudan helps to build up a complex picture of the memory of a nation.

“We were optimistic, but we didn’t expect at all that we would succeed in the organisation of such magnificent collaboration,” Elhag Musa said.

And the process that has been followed also serves to pave the way to go further.

“What we do have at least is a much broader understanding of what is there and what else could be done in the future,” Ashley said.

“And we now have established a process to do it.”

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

source/content: middleeasteye.net / Middle East Ege (headline edited)

________

The Rashid Studio has more than four million negatives dating back to the 1940s (Sudan Memory)

__________

SUDAN

SUDANESE Photographer Ala Kheir looks to preserve memories of his homeland at a group show in New York

The Khartoum-based photographer’s work has become ‘a nostalgic collection’ of what his city looked like before the current outbreak of violence .

When the Khartoum-based Sudanese photographer Ala Kheir was approached to feature in “Reframing Neglect,” a group show in New York presenting works by African photographers, he had no idea that the exhibition would be staged as his country was plunged into another violent conflict.  

Sudan has been in the throes of political turmoil since authoritarian leader Omar Al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019, but the explosion of violence on April 15 between Sudan’s two warring generals Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces took the world by surprise, including Kheir.  

“Reframing Neglect,” curated by contemporary artist and activist Aïda Muluneh, is focused not on warfare, but on the need to end what are termed “neglected tropical diseases,” which included leprosy, sleeping sickness and river blindness. It showcases works by Kheir and photographers from six other countries in Africa — Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia.  

Kheir’s works in the exhibition were shot in the Stables Industrial Area, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Khartoum where families fleeing unstable regions have made makeshift homes. It’s also where the majority of the people in Sudan living with NTDs reside. But now, with the violence that has transformed Khartoum into a constant battleground, even they have been forced to find refuge elsewhere. 

Kheir’s work subtly addresses Khartoum’s complexity, as well as the socio-economic issues that shape it, or at least shaped it before the current violence.  

“I work in a way that feels more like seeing,” Kheir explains from his home in Khartoum.  “This city has been my playground for so long. Even though I am from Darfur, Khartoum is where most of my work is. Through my photography I try to document and engage with the city and understand it better. 

“With my camera I’ve been to all parts of the city, all parts of the community,” he adds. “I’ve been photographing projects in the outskirts — in the poor, relatively new neighborhoods — and in the center of the city, where the action is.”  

Through photography, Kheir strives to raise awareness of the community of artists whose lives are now at risk in Khartoum. 

“I try to use photography with the aim of self-reflection, while also enjoying the process and the difficulty of making a simple photograph that delivers a message,” he says.  

Kheir runs The Other Vision, a platform that focuses on photography education and training in Sudan, through which he assists young photographers and connects Sudanese artists to the rest of Africa, as well as engaging with the public to address social issues to bring about change in Sudan. 

“When I look at my photography now and think about the war that is currently taking place in Khartoum, my work has become very important to me,” he tells Arab News. “I keep looking at the photographs I took of the city; they have become a nostalgic collection of what it used to look like. 

“Since I cannot photograph the city now like I did before, I am reviewing the work I have done over the past 10 years and I want to publish a book with these images,” he continues. “Khartoum and Sudan will not be the same after this war.” 

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

____________

‘Home is Here,’ one of Sudanese photographer Ala Kheir’s images from the New York group exhibition ‘Reframing Neglected.’ (Supplied)

_________

SUDAN

SUDANESE-AMERICAN Iman Abuzeid makes it on Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women List

Achieving success is no easy feat especially if you are working from the ground up. With passion and skill, a lot of people achieve self-made success. Today we are celebrating one such individual, Sudanese-American physician Iman Abuzeid who is the co-founder and CEO of a digital nurse hiring platform. She just nabbed a spot on Forbes’ ninth annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women and for good reason, with an impressive net worth of 350 million US dollars.

Being only one of two Arab women on the Forbes list, Abuzeid’s ranking is placing the Arab identity and voice at the forefront. Beyond that, the 38-year-old doctor is the only self-made millionaire on the list who earns money through the field of medicine on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women. She achieved her impressive ranking almost a year after her nurse-hiring start-up called Incredible Health was able to raise 80 million US dollars and that helped hike her company’s valuation to 1.65 billion US dollars.

Along with Abuzeid, many other prominent self-made women made it to the Forbes list including TV creator Shonda Rhimes and Insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller. Also for the sixth consecutive year, the top spot went to building supply distributor Diane Hendricks. With all that being said, knowing the incredible work each of these women achieved acts as a beacon of inspiration for younger girls to follow in their footsteps.

source/content: scoopempire.com (headline edited)

____________

___________________________

AMERICAN / SUDANESE

SUDAN: Young Sudanese Inventor Moatasem Jibril, Utilises Electronic Waste to Build Robots

Moatasem Jibril, a young man from Sudan, is realising his dream of conducting technological experiments to manufacture robots by using recycled electronic waste.

Despite modest capabilities and living in a mud house in the city of Omdurman, west of the capital, Khartoum, Jibril did not give up on his dream of making a robot, even after having to quit university due to the deteriorating economic conditions of his family.

For about ten years, Jibril has been trying to create robots in a narrow space inside his family house, and he challenges poverty by working daily in the market to earn money to purchase the materials he needs for his project. He hopes that his dream will be funded by any businessman or institution.

Sudan is suffering from many crises, starting with a shortage of basic and imported commodities, as well as the depreciation of the local currency, in addition to the government’s measures to lift fuel subsidies at the request of the International Monetary Fund in 2021.

Childhood dream

Jibril’s dream of making robots arose from his childhood, inspired by cartoons.

“Making robots is a dream that has been in my mind since childhood, and I try hard to turn my dream into reality,” he said.

He started making robots nine years ago, after watching many movies that talk about inventors.

The young man mainly relies on the electronic waste that he obtains at a low price from local markets to build his robots, since the basic components exceed his financial ability.

He is searching continuously and painstakingly in electronic markets on the internet for any electronic parts offered for sale that are suitable for his industry, to buy them at reasonable prices.

Sudan is witnessing fluctuations in the abundance of foreign exchange, which raises the cost of imports and bears the final consumer the exchange rate differences, in addition to the rise in global prices, especially fuel and food.

Economic conditions

“In the initial stages, I moved more freely after studying and saving some money from my daily allowances,” Jibril said.

He was studying electronics engineering at the International University of Sudan. He often worked while studying, to save money to pay tuition fees and sit for exams. However, due to financial weakness of his parents, he missed many exams and eventually found himself dismissed from the University.

Jibril did not pay attention to the ridicule of his school and neighbourhood friends, and continued to implement his idea day and night.

“I still suffer from the mockery of colleagues and friends at the University when I begin to explain my project related to the manufacture of robots,” he said. “They consider it mere triviality, despite my continuous explanation of the idea of the project using engineering methods and three-dimensional designs.”

Jibril hopes that his economic conditions will improve, so he can return to the University to complete his academic studies in engineering and software fields.

He aspires to complete a project in building robots on a scientific basis and then start selling them.

As for his big dream, it is to go beyond the robotics industry and reach the stage of manufacturing micro-precision missiles and apply his motto that says: “Everything is possible with determination and persistence.”

He is looking forward to the future by completing his academic studies and hopes to find sponsorship from local or international institutions that will adopt his project to crown his success story and reach the world.

source/content: middleeastmonitor.com (headline edited)

___________

Sudanese Moatasem Jibril, who dropped out of his electronics engineering course for economic reasons, works on a robot in his house using waste products in Khartoum, Sudan on 2 March 2023 [Mahmoud Hjaj/ Anadolu Agency]

_________

SUDAN

SUDAN: Basma Saeed, Head of Solutions Mapping, UNDP Accelerator Lab Sudan

Women in UNDP Special Report 2021.

How do you use tech/data to tackle important issues? Tell us about your work.

Data, specifically qualitative research methods, is important to apply a systems lens of work as a means to connect the dots between the various solutions I’ve been mapping. Looking at a portfolio of solutions rather than stand-alone silver bullets creates evidence to better understand complex problems that are in nature wicked and interlinked. This method of starting with the solution and portfolio of solutions becomes a proxy indicator of a need and blind spot in a system or system of systems and/or a signal of change taking place.

I work with ordinary people who create extraordinary things to adapt to change quickly. My work is then to analyse that to share with the UNDP network and government counterparts for better decision making.

Solutions mapping is like pointillism. A series of dots may not make much sense but when it begins to connect and harmonise, you step back and see a picture. An example of that was during Covid-19 and how micro enterprises were forced to figure out ways to continue work under limitations of social and safe distancing. Observing a pattern of cashless solutions and connecting these with similar solutions both in Sudan, regionally and across the globe underlined the need but also an accelerated shift to a cashless economy as result of this new normal.

What was the most impactful project you worked on in the past year?

One of the ways to support a thriving local innovation ecosystem is one that facilitates this very ecosystem to see itself and its diverse and often unusual stakeholders.

If I were to liken the current ecosystem in Sudan, I would describe it as a map of islands with few bridges in between. When you start to ‘see’ solutions, as a mapper, you can see in all the ways they connect, align and interlink in this bigger and collective effort to create impact.

Everywhere I go, I cannot stop emphasising the ripple effect of the Solutions Fair held in early 2020. Whereby for the first time, stakeholders from different groups spanning academia, private and public sectors where in the same giant hall as Giulio Quaggiotto, Head the UNDP Strategic Innovations Unit has coined, the development mutants. A social experiment of sorts, of what takes place when the traditional development actors meet the unusual and unexpected.

The organic connections, knowledge sharing and diffusion that begin to form from which a community of solution holders emerged. With the first Covid-19 case reported in March and subsequent lockdown, it was this very community network that I was able to tap into to understand how they were responding, pivoting with Covid-19. The socio-economic impact but also the incredible resilience to reconfigure and do things differently under this immense and limiting challenge. How this network was connecting, working and collaborating with other networks. From university labs shifting to production of hand-sanitizers for students to distribute for free in the urban centres, to a social enterprise supporting highly affected street tailors into an organised collective to mass produce re-usable masks. The power of connections and compound impact that bridge the usual with the unusual.

What are some innovations from the pandemic that have caught your eye?

Indigenous Sound Bites. This completely grassroot effort was carried out by Dr. Hiba Abdelrahim of Sudan Unity Networking who first noticed the glaring gap in inclusive Covid-19 communication available in local and indigenous languages. She started to reach out to a network of Sudanese polyglots on Facebook to record sound bites of Covid-19 WHO guidelines and safety precautions. Through networks and network of networks on social media from Telegram, Whatsapp, Youtube, a collective distribution approach was used to share and reshare these sound bites to ensure this reaches volunteers on the ground in rural and hard to reach areas to share this vital and critical health information.

What is one unexpected learning from 2020?

2020 was a year of personal growth and learning forced by being cut off from the usual pace and external stimuli of everyday life and way of work. Facing a collective and shared challenge caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the uncertainty of this new reality and what that means at a personal and professional level created a space to pause for much needed reflection on what really matters. Family and well-being, particularly mental well-being, and health have always been important. But what was unexpected was how much that really is a priority at the core of the choices I make and should and ought to be making.

In a way, the great re-set of this year was a wider ripple effect for social solidarity which emphasised the need for better support for care work and care economies. An integral support system that was consistently undervalued but came to the forefront with the pandemic in the welfare of, for and by communities.

What are your priorities for 2021?

Balance. Solutions mapping, and I am biased for obvious reasons, is an important protocol that introduces mixed research methods and approaches to development practice. The importance of constant and consistent engagement with the systems outside the work of UNDP, and connecting to those closest to the problem in the context of development challenges, allows solutions mappers to be a bridge to share, diffuse and shine light on context responsive knowledge with decision makers at UNDP and government counterparts that may influence programming, policy or inform better partnerships and possibly open unexpected pipelines in the market.

All the while, it is imperative to embed the practice and protocols of solutions mapping within UNDP thereby creating movements and networks of UNDP mappers in the country office to re-learn to see, observe and engage with ecosystems through this new lens. This is akin to having one foot out with one foot in, a balancing act to ensure that I am not leaning heavily on one foot at the expense of the other.

What tool or technique particularly interests you for 2021?

Ethnographic cartography (EC) is a method I am particularly keen to explore its possible applications in the context of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in Sudan. EC inspired by Everyday Geographies and Personal Geographies, is a multi-sensory approach combining two activities.

The first, MyWalks is an activity that is intended to reawaken the senses to look for the unexpected. A simple premise of walking through a familiar route, re-walked or a new route walked for the first time. The experience of the journey starting at A is more important by engaging the senses and observing rather than reaching the destination at B.

The second, MessyMaps is the technique to record this multi-sensory experience through images, sound and notes. The outcome of this supports better understanding and engagement of the ecosystem in which I am mapping solutions and how these solutions exist, interlink and engage with the environment it operates out of and with.

I first came across an application of this method through the amazing work “Other Maps” undertaken by a fellow Solution Mapper, Paulina Jimenez at UNDP Ecuador. In academia, this emerging method was used to produce qualitative GIS representations of resilience. In this use case, Dr Faith Evans incorporated emotion, social connections and experience to present an experimental map visualisation of informal settlements in Kenya.

Which other countries inspire you and why?

India. As I onboarded to the Accelerator Lab, the cohort of AccLab mappers had the unique opportunity to get first-hand knowledge and support from the Accelerator Lab Network knowledge partner, the Honey Bee Network and GIAN.
Virtual classes led by Prof Anil Gupta and Dr Animika Dey on mapping inclusive grassroots innovation was an eye opener to the work led by India over the last two decades to recognise, incorporate and support grassroots innovations in the National Innovation Policy. As one publication describes it, propositioning grassroots innovations in the S&T policies of India created a space for “the innovation agenda [to] shift from presenting grassroots innovation as a divider of the national innovation wealth to a provider of it”. (1)

The kind of effort India has spearheaded is one I would hope can be galvanised for Sudan to learn from and emulate.

Who do you admire? Who is your hero?

My grandfather. A food scientist, teacher, researcher, former FAO and fierce advocate for R&D turned entrepreneur and thought leader in the F&B industry of Sudan.

I remember once asking him why he did not invest in better advertising for his products or fancier packaging. His response was that his responsibility and priority is to ensure accessibility for the everyday Sudanese informed by the forefront of sustainable food production research. In which the everyday consumer not only benefits from the product itself but is able to re-use and repurpose the packaging for domestic needs.

The value system he has abided by until his retirement almost a decade ago is one I admire and have grown to appreciate even more as a development practitioner. The principles he went by still ring true and relevant in industrial innovation and sustainable consumption and production today.

(1) Jain, A., & Verloop, J. (2012). Repositioning grassroots innovation in India’s S&T policy: From divider to provider. Current Science, 103(3), 282-285. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24085031

source/content: govinsider.asia (headline edited)

_____________

_________

SUDAN

SUDANESE Historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan is SIBF 2022 ‘Cultural Personality of the Year’

Sharjah International Book Fair is honouring the leading academic for his distinguished works in research and documentation.

The Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) has announced Sudanese historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan as ‘Cultural Personality of the Year’ for its upcoming 41st annual edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2022) in recognition of his invaluable contributions to the field of history and documentation of the nation’s developmental journey in political, cultural and scientific fields, in addition to his substantial efforts in promoting the research and documentation movement in Africa and Asia, and published  more than 30 books.

The SIBF ‘Cultural Personality of the Year’ initiative stems from SBA’s vision to honour distinguished figures who have contributed richly to various fields and serve as inspiration and model to younger generations.

Commenting on the selection of the Sudanese historian for its 2022 edition, which runs under the theme ‘Spread the Word’ from November 2 – 13 in Expo Centre Sharjah, HE Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri, Chairman of SBA, said: “Our efforts echo the vision of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, of celebrating distinguished intellectual and creative personalities as pillars of sustainable cultural development. The Arab cultural world needs the invaluable work of distinguished figures like Prof. Yusuf Fadl Hasan to advance our realities and build our future.”

He added: “Sudan has constantly enriched Arab culture through leading contributions by prominent individuals in various fields. Naming Prof. Yusuf the Cultural Personality of the Year is a tribute to more than 60 years of vital work in research, documentation and studies of the African and Asian continents.”

Born in Al Mahmiyya, Sudan, in 1932, he received Bachelor degree in General Arts from Khartoum University in 1956, and Bachelor degree with honours in History from London University in 1959, and PhD in History from the University of London in 1964. He served as a lecturer at the History department at the University of Khartoum.

He served as the director of the Sudan Research Unit (which became the African and Asian Studies Institute) between (1972-1983), entrusted with chronicling the Sudanese heritage and spearheading a team of researchers. Prof. Yusuf served as the president of Khartoum University between 1985 – 1991, and was the editor of Sudan note and record magazine that has more than 20 editions. He also launched Sudanese studies magazine.

He has published more than 30 books, including The Arabs and Sudan: from the seventh to the early sixteenth century (1966), Introduction to the history of Islamic States in Eastern Sudan, Studies in Sudanese History, and co-edited Tabaqat wad Dayf Allah.

source/content: atalayar.com (headline edited)

____________

___________

SUDAN

SUDAN: Google Doodle celebrates Sudanese Composer and Oud player Asma Hamza

Google search engine features late Sudanese musician Asma Hamza celebrating anniversary of her winning the Laylat AlQadr AlKubra music competition in Sudan.

According to Google’s description on 17 July, “On this day in 1997, Asma was among the winners of the Laylat AlQadr AlKubra music competition in Sudan. This win was a turning point in her career and helped her gain recognition in a male-dominated field.”

Considered the first female composer in Sudan, Hamza was born in 1932 and loved music while growing up, dreaming of becoming a singer. However, her vocal cords were not equipped to handle singing safely, so she switched to whistling the tunes instead. When her father heard her whistle in harmony, he borrowed an oud (similar to a lute but with a thinner neck and no frets) so Asma could practice.

Despite the fact that it was not socially acceptable for women to practice music in Sudan during her time, her father encouraged her interest in music. In fact, the whole family enjoyed singing and was fond of music.

Hamza did not like her own voice and directed her interests towards playing the oud, which her father purchased for her. Surrounded by musicians who often visited her family home, including Ahmed Mustafa, Osman Hussein, Hassan Attia, and Abdel Aziz Mohamed Daoud, Hamza started by playing the oud while listening to other performers and copying their strokes by ear. As she began mastering the instrument, she soon became the very first Sudanese woman with formal training on the oud, which she received in response to her perseverance.

As she started carving her own place in Sudan’s music scene, she performed in small gatherings, followed by bigger stages. She often used lyrics by renowned poets, leading to compositions that were then performed by renowned singers. Her melodies resonate with many people in Sudan and across the Arab world.

On 17 July 1997, Hamza was announced as one of the winners of the Laylat AlQadr AlKubra song competition held in Sudan, standing among many male musicians. This win is considered an important turning point in her career.

Hamza passed away on 21 May 2018.

source/content: english.ahram.org.eg (headline edited)

___________

__________

SUDAN

SUDAN: Ismail Ahmed Ismail: From last place to Sudan’s First Olympic Medal

While winning an Olympic medal is a personal goal for thousands of athletes, for 24 nations it is a dream that has only ever come true once. Tokyo2020.org looks at the glorious moment and the impact it had on the lives of the athletes who achieved it.

The background

Sudan made its Olympic debut at Rome 1960 and since then the country has participated in most of the Olympic Games.

Despite its nearly 50 years of participation in the Olympics, Sudan’s first medal on the world’s greatest sporting stage didn’t come until Beijing 2008, when Ismail Ahmed Ismail won silver in the men’s 800m.

Born in a Darfur farming tribe, Ismail was introduced to athletics at school. Surprisingly, instead of 800m, he started as a 3,000m runner and participated in 1,500m races as well. After watching his performance in long-distance races, the then national athletics coach Omer Khalifa advised him to move down to 800m. So he did and went to win the National Junior Championships.

In 2002, Ismail participated in the World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica and finished fifth in a time of 1:47.20. Two years later, he had his first Olympic experience at Athens 2004, where he made to the 800m final after a personal best in the semi-final. But he would go on to finish last in the final.

In an interview with IAAF in 2008, Ismail explained that he was not optimistic at the prospect of winning at the Games and was exhausted in the final.

“I just wanted to do my best,” he said.

History in the making
Al though Ismail continued improving his performance in 800m, since Athens he had been troubled by injuries and only took part in a few races throughout 2007. But he did not allow this setback to seize his dreams on the track.

“I knew I was going to come back. My coach (Jama Aden) was the one talking to me. I ran in the African Championships (2008, in Addis) and I was 2nd. I know I can do it again,” he said in the IAAF interview.

Somali-born Jama Aden is an Olympian himself and had coached Abdi Bile to a world title in 1987. He saw great potential in Sudanese runners like Ismail.

Aden’s confidence became a driving force behind the athletes, who trained on a land troubled by conflicts and poverty. According to a report by The Christian Science Monitor back in 2008, Ismail and his teammates had to use old paint cans filled with concrete for weight training and would run at the track at the never-completed athletics stadium surrounded by rubble. They also had to finish training before sunset as there were no floodlights.

Thanks to a rebound in early 2008, Ismail made it to Beijing 2008 together with another home favourite Abubaker Kaki, who ran a world junior 800m record of 1:42.79 at the Oslo Bislett Games in June 2008.

But a small injury stopped Kaki in the 800m semi-final in Beijing with Ismail making the final. This time, he did not let the chance go.

Placed at lane eight, Ismail had a relatively slow start but then he sped up on the second lap to pass reigning world champion Alfred Yego of Kenya. He kept the momentum until the finish line to finish behind Wilfred Bungei of Kenya. Clocking 1:44.70, he won Sudan’s long-awaited Olympic medal, a silver.

Life-changing impact

Ismail’s historic win in Beijing has another huge significance on the world outside sport. His success came in a time when Sudan was facing an unprecedented political crisis. To him and his teammate, Beijing was a chance to show people the positive side of Sudan.

After securing the country’s first Olympic medal, according to AP, people in Sudan hailed Ismail as a national hero and the picture of him wrapped in a Sudanese flag landed him on the front pages of the country’s newspapers.

Quoted by the Sudan Media Centre, Ismail said, “I can’t find words to express my joy. This is an achievement for my country first and then for me. I was able to achieve this honour because of a lot of hard training.”

With his achievement at the Beijing 2008 Games saw Ismail became the flagbearer at the Opening Ceremony of London 2012. However, in London he failed to make the 800m final.

At Rio 2016, no Sudanese athlete participated in the men’s 800m.

Scrolling through Sudan’s Olympic record, one could easily notice that athletics has been their major field of competition. Among the 81 Olympic participants, 33 of them are in athletics, followed by 17 in boxing. With Ismail’s historic breakthrough, there is a fair reason to expect Sudanese athletes to mark another milestone in the future.

source/content: olympics.com (headline edited)

_____________

(Picture by 2008 Getty Images)

__________

SUDAN

SUDAN: ‘I began to question everything,’ says Cannes Award-Winner Mohamed Kordofani

The Sudanese filmmaker gave up a comfortable career in Bahrain to make movies that could shed light on his homeland’s deep divides. He’s now a Cannes award-winner .

Great art often raises more questions than answers. In the case of “Goodbye Julia,” the Saudi-backed film that won the first-ever Freedom Award at the Cannes Film Festival last month, those questions were born in a single historic moment.  

It was February 7, 2011, and Sudanese filmmaker Mohamed Kordofani was sitting with his family in Khartoum as they read out the results to the South Sudanese independence referendum. His country was quite literally split in two and, as his shock turned to shame, a long search for truth began — one that would upend his entire life and turn him into one of the region’s most promising storytellers.  

“Something sparked inside of me. Why would 99 percent of a whole nation vote to separate? I couldn’t fathom it, and I began to question everything — about my society, my upbringing, and even myself,” Kordofani tells Arab News. 

“I was brought up in a typical Eastern Sudanese household, and the traditions and norms I inherited from previous generations made me think that racism was just a normal part of life. I hadn’t realized the true damage that everyday hate could cause. I had been so confident in my ignorance. I told myself, ‘No more.’ And I’m a better person now because of it,” he continues. 

Truth be told, Kordofani had never wanted to be a filmmaker. In fact, at the time of the secession, he was working in Bahrain as an aircraft engineer, settled in a seemingly comfortable life in which he could safely start a family. He was never a cinephile and had no great interest in the artform. But as he wrestled with the deep flaws within himself and his home country, his ideas began to take narrative shape.  

“It’s funny to me that I found myself at Cannes when I didn’t come from a cinema background like so many of my peers. I have impostor syndrome about this — wondering why I’m here when so many others are not. Growing up, I watched movies like everyone else, sure, but that was it,” says Kordofani. “I wrote stories for myself in university, but no one would ever read what I wrote. I didn’t know anything about cinema, but I chose filmmaking because I realized it was a tool I could use to tell my stories to biggest audience possible.”  

For years, Kordofani led a double life. He would use his annual leave and dip into his savings to make short films, screening them for the local community to great acclaim before traveling back to his workaday life in Manama. By 2020, he realized he had to make a choice: continue with the life that had been prescribed him, or follow what had become his passion. He chose the latter.  

“When you’re married and have kids, switching careers can be very scary, but, honestly, I was miserable,” he says. “I said, ‘You only live once’ and, at age 37, I left engineering behind to start a production company at a time when there was no film industry in Sudan. I burned all my bridges, cancelled my engineering license, and put myself on a new path.”  

By that time, his efforts to make “Goodbye Julia” were well underway. The idea had come to him at home in Bahrain one night, as he and his wife argued over whether they should get a live-in maid to help around the house. The idea repulsed Kordofani. 

“I thought the whole setup was unfair. These people work for a long time, often have no off-days, and it all sounded to me like slavery. It took me back to growing up in Sudan, and the help that we had around the house that wasn’t much different — always made up of people from the south of the country. It made me think back to the separation in 2011, and the plot started forming in my mind,” he explains.  

The film follows two women from the north and south of Sudan respectively — Mona, a retired singer racked with guilt for causing a man’s death, and another named Julia, the man’s widow. Mona offers Julia — who doesn’t know about Mona’s involvement in her late husband’s death — a job as her maid in order to atone for her misdeeds, against the wishes of her husband Akram, who is open in his resentment of southerners.  

In early drafts, Kordofani was unsatisfied with how one-dimensional all the characters felt. “I was writing with my engineering mentality,” he says. “All of them were binary — zero or one, black or white. It wasn’t until draft three or four that I actually felt I understood that the film wasn’t just about separation. I had to not only delineate their differences, but reconcile them, and reconciliation is about understanding. 

“I had to learn to stop judging them, and empathize. That was not hard to do, because they are me,” he continues. “Each of them, from the conservative husband Akram to the socially progressive wife Mona, were a reflection of my own points of view at one time in my life or another, back when I felt I was a victim of my society. And they turned from black-and-white to gray, and that turned them into a good catalyst for dialogue.”  

As his script progressed, Kordofani began pitching the film internationally, but found that the predominantly white decisionmakers couldn’t fathom the racial divide of his home nation. 

“In one pitch session in Portugal, the first question was, ‘I don’t understand. You are black. And the southerners are black as well. So you’re talking about black-on-black racism? How does that work?’ I responded, ‘Yeah, if this were a comedy, we’d call it “50 Shades of Black,”’ Kordofani says wryly.  

The film has found instant success coming off its Cannes debut — it is the first Sudanese film ever to screen at the storied festival — scoring big deals for theatrical releases in countries across the world. Ultimately, though, Kordofani made the film with Sudanese audiences in mind.  

After all, part of the reason that he imbued the film with so much complexity — why he asks hard questions without reaching for easy answers — is that he wants to inspire discussion in Sudan, hoping to bridge the divides that continue to plague the country as it verges on a civil war that Kordofani believes is caused by the same underlying social illness as the 2011 secession was.  

“We’re a divided people. Political division, ethnic division, and tribal division have always been the root cause of all our problems,” he says.  

Kordofani, meanwhile, has begun to accept that he truly is a filmmaker, and a stamp of approval from Cannes could mean he’ll be able to tell stories for the rest of his life. He’s come to terms with the fact that he doesn’t have the answers, whether in politics or his art, and that his journey to find them will continue for years to come. Indeed, accepting his own imperfections may be the big answer he was always looking for.  

“When I finished the final scene, I cried so much. We were we were on a bus from Kosti to Khartoum, a five-hour ride, and I think I cried the whole ride,” he says. “It hit me that my intention was to make a film that may change people. And I found out that I was the one who was changed the most by making this film. I feel I finally understood myself.” 

source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)

___________

TKordofani addresses the crowd after receiving the Freedom Award for ‘Goodbye Julia’ at the Cannes Film Festival on May 26. (AFP)

__________

SUDAN

SUDAN: Nima Elbagir, Journalist and Award-Winning International Television Correspondent

CNN has promoted senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir to the role of chief international investigative correspondent.

A London-based Sudanese journalist, Elbagir has broken countless stories for CNN from war and crisis zones, reporting on human rights abuses in places like Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Libya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Yemen. In 2017, her undercover reporting exposed migrants being sold at slave auctions in Libya and prompted responses from the government and the United Nations.

Elbagir has scooped up numerous awards in her career, including the Royal Television Society’s Television Journalist of the Year Award in 2020, a duPoint Award, a Polk Award in 2017, the International Center for Journalists 2018 Excellence in International Reporting Award, the 2018 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, a 2019 Gracie Award, and the LA Press Club’s 2019 Daniel Pearl Award.

Elbagir joined CNN in Feb. 2011 as a full-time reporter based at network’s Johannesburg bureau, before later moving to Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to joining CNN as a freelancer in 2010, Elbagir worked in various capacities for the UK’s Channel 4 for a number of years from 2005: she freelanced from Kabul, Afghanistan for Channel 4 News; reported for the Unreported World documentary strand; and both reported and presented for Channel 4 News and More4 News.

source/content: adweek.com/TVNewser/CNN-Revolving Door (headline edited)

___________

pix: cnn.com

_________

SUDAN