Sudan News Agency (SUNA)
It is Sudan's official news agency and the country's primary source of official news. Its story began with a decision announced on January 1, 1970, when former president Gaafar Nimeiry announced from the city of El Obeid — on the occasion of the independence celebrations — the creation of a Sudanese news agency, and it was formally inaugurated on the second anniversary of the May Revolution in 1971. It issued its first bulletins in Arabic and English on September 21, 1970, then the first law regulating its work was issued on November 19, 1973, and it was reorganised as a public authority following the 2003 Public Authorities Act.
The project's roots go back to the early 1960s, when former information minister Abdel Majid Abu Hassabu decided to turn the external information department into an official government agency through a cultural agreement with Czechoslovakia, sending journalists to train at the "Četka" agency in Prague, before the 1969 coup froze the project without cancelling it. Information Minister Mahgoub Osman tasked the late journalist Abdel Karim Al-Mahdi with creating the new agency — he was its first director — before he was succeeded by Mustafa Amin, who led it until 1985. It began operating from a small office on University Street in Khartoum, and became in that period the sole reference for official news, according to the book "The Sudanese Press and Totalitarian Regimes".
The agency today describes itself as an "independent professional press institution" committed to accuracy, balance and objectivity, and its official mission is to gather news and information in text, audio and image from inside and outside Sudan, process it and broadcast it domestically and abroad in a way that serves the country's interest. It operates through three integrated sectors: editorial, technical and engineering, and financial and administrative affairs.
SUNA broadcasts its services in three languages — Arabic, English and French — via its official website and digital platforms, and its headquarters is in Khartoum. It is a member of the Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), and distributes its bulletins to local and international media, remaining for more than five decades Sudan's first window on official news.
(Sources: English Wikipedia — Sudan News Agency; State Media Monitor — 2026 agency profile; the book "The Sudanese Press and Totalitarian Regimes" — Hurriyat newspaper 2016; the agency's official website)
— Editorial Team
