Mayada Abdo

Mayada Abdo is a Sudanese journalist at Al Jazeera and the first Sudanese woman journalist to work at the network.

Education was inseparable from her attachment to media. University gave her the chance to deepen a passion already practised before enrolment, and she consistently ranked first in her cohort through to a master’s degree in media. She briefly worked as a teaching assistant. Combining employment with academic excellence was demanding, but the experience accelerated her maturity.

Political media had interested her since childhood, when she followed news on the radio and led school-broadcasting activities. At seventeen, in 2000, she began professional work as a radio presenter. She moved through different programmes before reading news bulletins. In 2005, she first appeared on television in cultural and general programmes and then in news and political broadcasting, while also preparing programmes and undertaking journalistic work.

Her career moved rapidly across institutions and cities. She worked at Local Tripoli Radio, Jamahiriya Radio, official Jamahiriya Television and other Libyan channels, including the semi-private Al Shabab channel, before joining Sudan’s Al Shorouq. In 2012, she moved to Dubai and later worked with Al Sharqiya from London. She joined Al Jazeera in Doha in 2014.

Assignments covered political, humanitarian, social and cultural issues. Among the most prominent were the 2008 war on Gaza, the 2014 Iraqi elections, the 2016 Brussels bombings, the attempted coup in Türkiye, the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the 2019 Sudanese revolution.

Professional firsts remained vivid: the first voice on air, first television appearance, first major bulletin, first live coverage, first assignment abroad and first experience of living alone outside her country. Coverage of the removal of President Omar Al-Bashir and her entry into the sit-in at Sudan’s General Command were particularly enduring memories.

Entering broadcasting so young meant working beside veterans while continually proving that age did not define competence. Television presented another barrier: dark-skinned women were still rare on Arab screens, and some tried to persuade her that appearance would limit her prospects. She treated the prejudice as a reason to insist on diversity. She also refused to rely on professional lobbies for protection, choosing to let the quality of her work defend her.

Field reporting exposed her to obstruction, threatening messages and, during one assignment, physical attack. She completed the task and continued to approach work in countries under tension with patience, an awareness of risk and readiness for difficult outcomes. Encounters with people living through conflict reinforced her belief that journalism is not paper, questions, make-up, fashion or fame. Every story concerns a human being, and every event carries a cause that demands moral commitment.