Sudanese CEO Rebuilds Factory While War Rages Around Her

While most business owners who escaped Sudan's civil war stayed away, Alaa Hamadto drove back into Khartoum with drones flying overhead.

The founder of SolarFoods, a company that helps farmers preserve crops using solar-powered dryers, spent 36 hours traveling through conflict zones without food or water. When she finally reached her factory in Khartoum North, she found it destroyed. The roof was gone. Every machine had been stolen. Even the electrical cables and transformer were ripped out.

She didn't turn around. Instead, she started filming, documenting what happened to the factories and businesses in the industrial area. She posted videos showing the destruction, bearing witness when no one else would.

Other factory owners who had fled to safety watched from abroad. Some questioned why she would risk her life "for money." But Hamadto had a different reason for returning. "I could not imagine asking other people to rebuild a country I had abandoned myself," she says.

Her father taught her that lesson decades ago. He was a senior scientist in the UK with a prestigious career. In the 1980s, he gave it all up to return to Sudan. "You go outside, you educate yourself, you get exposed to different technologies, but you have to come back to your country and help your own people," he told her.

Hamadto followed his path in her own way. In 2014, she left a successful dentistry career to build SolarFoods. Relatives thought she had wasted her education. She kept building anyway.

After the war destroyed her Khartoum factory, she rebuilt in Kassala, a safer city near the Eritrean border. The new location puts her closer to the NGOs that buy her dryers and the raw materials she needs. More importantly, living costs are lower for her staff.

Why This Inspires

Hamadto became the first business owner to return to Khartoum North's industrial zone after fighting intensified. Her decision shocked other entrepreneurs. Her videos and updates inspired them. They started calling her "Alaa the Brave."

She's not trying to be brave. She's simply carrying forward what her father believed: that the people who leave to learn have a responsibility to come back and build. That difficult things are worth doing. That Sudan's future is worth betting everything on.

Now, as conditions slowly improve and people begin returning home, Hamadto faces a new decision: stay in Kassala or rebuild again in Khartoum. Either way, she's already shown what's possible when someone refuses to abandon hope.