The Sudan Radio and Television Corporation (SRTC) contains an extensive archive of radio, video and film recordings, including newsreels, reportages and documentaries. This content dates back to the 1940s, providing a unique historical resource for Sudan. This is one of the one of the largest film archives in the whole of Africa, with around 13,000 film reels of mostly 16mm and 35mm.

Sudan’s radio service launched in 1940 during World War II, broadcasting daily for half an hour with a mixture of news, music and cultural programs. Sudan then officially began television transmission in 1963. Sudan cinema predates both radio and TV, active since the Anglo-Egyptian period in the 1920s. This has resulted in an archive of crucial importance that records many different occasions and events in Sudanese public and private life throughout Sudan and what is now South Sudan, such as: the first meeting of the Sudanese parliament in the run-up to independence; the independence ceremony; Queen Elizabeth visiting Sudan in 1965; regional dances and music; nature in different regions of Sudan; the industrialisation of the country in the 1960s and 70s; the Sudanese railways, that once had the longest network in the whole of Africa; cultural practices; and much more.

The SRTC archive content fell into very poor condition, mostly due to climate and storage conditions. Scanning and conservation to enable scanning has been the only realistic option for saving the content. The huge task of organising, repairing and digitising the SRTC archive was begun by Norway’s University of Bergen, funded by the Norwegian Embassy in Khartoum to conduct this work from 2013 to 2018. Sudan Memory has continued to support the digitisation of the archive since July 2018.

What is presented here is a selection of scanned video and film materials. For more information on the collection, please contact the collection contributor.