Sudan: ‘It made me dream again’: The students refusing to let war stop their education

Sarah Tekhlu was ready to give up on university. An Eritrean refugee, she had already been displaced once from Khartoum to Madani, then again to Port Sudan, as war tore through the country around her. Higher education, she had decided, was a luxury she could no longer afford to want.“I was about to surrender to the idea that higher education was not necessary because I could not attend college,” she says.Then came a scholarship that changed her mind.Since the war erupted between rival militaries in Sudan in April 2023, more than 14 million people have been forced to flee their homes, making it the world’s largest displacement crisis.‘It made me believe in myself again’Sarah is one of hundreds of refugee and internally displaced students in Sudan who have kept their degrees alive through the DAFI programme – scholarships backed by the UNHCR–Mastercard Foundation partnership and run with Windle Trust International.© UNHCR/Assadullah NasrullahSarah Tekhlu is a refugee from Eritrea and works as a kindergarten teacher.The money covers tuition and living costs. But for Sarah, studying information management at Comboni College in the capital Khartoum, it offered something harder to put a ...