Face of Truth: Ahmed Rajab and the Making of Awareness
Ibrahim Shaglawi
At the heart of the war ravaging Sudan, the rising role of youth in digital media emerges as one of the most significant social and political transformations in the country. This phenomenon is a natural extension of patterns witnessed in states that emerged from harsh conflicts and were able, through the tools of new media, to redefine themselves and reclaim both their hard and soft power despite societal collapse and political disappointment.
The rise of young names such as Ahmed Sabri Rajab reflects a qualitative shift in the role of “citizen journalism,” where the content creator is no longer merely a cultural actor but has become part of the power equation within the conflict environment. The war in Sudan is no longer a war of weapons alone, but a war of ideas and legitimacy, targeting the shaping of public consciousness, as confirmed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who described it as “a proxy war targeting the structure of the state and its resources.”
Thousands of youth who responded to the call of the “War of Dignity” did not carry weapons alone—they carried cameras, pens, and interactive platforms, crafting a counter-narrative to the machinery of disinformation and contributing to restoring Sudanese confidence in the possibility of life returning to Khartoum and the state regaining its positions. From here emerges the activism of Sabri and other Sudanese youth as an innovative national response that employs digital media to reinforce trust, build morale, and strengthen the state’s narrative.
Zain’s honoring of Sabri yesterday is a sign of the private sector entering the arena of shaping public awareness and supporting the state’s discourse at a moment of national cohesion and unified ranks in defense of the country. This step aligns with a global shift in which major attentive companies consider digital media part of societal security.
On the political level, the presence of widely circulated national content represents a restoration of the state’s sovereignty over the field of media and information. The images Sabri publishes about the return of services and recovery, or those exposing the horrific violations in El-Fasher, turn into political messages that rebuild internal trust and confront the international community with scenes documenting the magnitude of Sudan’s suffering. Youth have reshaped Sudan’s image before the world when they generated a broad wave of solidarity with the victims of El-Fasher, bravely exposing the crimes of the Rapid Support Forces and their backers.
From a broader political perspective, this role intersects with one of the most important contemporary UN concerns: how digital media can shift from being a tool that fuels conflict into a tool that strengthens security, peace, and stability.
In Sudan, the answer becomes clear: youth who created national media resistant to chaos and disinformation, rebuilding bridges of trust between society and the state. To understand this transformation, it is useful to look at two prominent regional experiences: the Lebanese experience during the collapse of state institutions (1975–1990), when youth in digital media bore the greatest burden in exposing conspiracies and crafting a new national narrative based on unity. Platforms such as Megaphone reshaped collective awareness and became a trusted source surpassing traditional media.
Likewise, the Rwandan experience (1990–1993) after the genocide showed that the battle of reconstruction begins with the battle of awareness. Rwanda established positive youth-led media that confronted hate speech, cultivated trust among people, and reshaped the state’s global image.
By comparing these experiences with what Sudanese youth are doing today, it becomes evident that the rise of Ahmed Sabri and others is not an exceptional event, but the birth of a new socio-political actor who has become part of the power equation in post-war Sudan, guarding the awareness of society in a moment of collapse and rebirth.
This crucial role does not merely mend the social rift caused by the war, but lays the groundwork for a phase in which digital media becomes one of the pillars of the state’s restoration of its sovereignty and its regional and international standing.
It is worth noting, according to #Face_of_Truth, that supporting such talents and initiatives cannot remain individual efforts or private-sector projects alone. They require a clear presence from official institutions, foremost among them the Ministry of Culture and Information. These institutions hold the ability to transform individual experiences into sustainable national projects by designing supportive policies, providing training and funding platforms, and creating an environment that nurtures creativity and invests in it as an influential form of soft power that contributes to state-building and repairing the social fabric in the post-war stage.
Wishing you well and good health.
Thursday, 27 November 2025
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