It is adult military generals who have created this political abyss. I believe that the country's young people - particularly its university students - symbolise Sudan's hopes of reconstructing its future.
I am an academic researching higher education, education in post-conflict contexts and comparative national systems of education. I have also served in government in South Sudan, as the director general for universities in the Ministry of Higher Education. As such, and given my own experiences as a student activist, I have a deep interest in the role of university students in Sudan.
It would not be the first time that university students have come to the forefront to drive political change. They have done so four times before: once in the struggle to gain independence fromin 1956 and thrice as the Sudanese people stood up to military regimes - in 1964, 1985 and 2019. Sudan's university students have not only spearheaded revolutions. They also contributed to a thriving campus culture that has given voice to multiple political views, ethnicities and religious beliefs. No matter the students' individual differences, the four uprisings I discuss here were driven by something they had in common: the desire for Sudan to be democratically ruled.