The latest fighting to erupt in Sudan has plunged the nation into a fresh crisis. Since 15 April, conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces has left nearly 800 people dead and forced about a million others to seek sanctuary abroad. It has disrupted daily life, destroyed property and shut down universities.
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 from colonial Britain in 1956 and thrice as the Sudanese people stood up to military regimes – in 1964, 1985 and 2019.
The congress’s members articulated calls for independence. They galvanised many other Sudanese to push for the withdrawal of the British colonial state. Most recently, university students and academics were at the forefront of the popular uprising in 2019 that ended Omar al-Bashir’s rule after 30 years. Khartoum at the centre The University of Khartoum, in various iterations, has been central to all these protests. The institution was originally a satellite college of the University of London. It was established as a public university at independence in 1956.