Between Inspiration and Hegemony: Sudan, Egyptian Soft Power, and the Question of a Composite Identity

Hisham Yousif Abdelrahman
Dr Amani Al-Taweel’s article on “Inspiration and Hegemony”, published on her Facebook page on 19 May 2026, raised a profoundly complex question concerning the nature of the cultural relationship between Egypt and Sudan, and the limits of Egyptian soft power’s influence on the Sudanese elite and its sense of identity and self-awareness. Yet any discussion of this relationship requires caution against oversimplification. Sudan was never merely a cultural periphery receiving influence from a dominant Egyptian centre, nor was Egyptian influence always a deliberate act of hegemony. In many respects, it was the result of Egypt’s cultural production, media, and educational institutions’ superiority throughout much of the twentieth century.
No one can deny that, for decades, Egypt possessed the most powerful instruments of soft power in the Arab world. Beyond cinema, theatre, and music, there was the radio station Sawt al-Arab (“Voice of the Arabs”), which became one of the most influential tools in shaping modern Arab consciousness, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s. It is important here to distinguish between Egyptian national radio broadcasting, which began transmission from Cairo on 31 May 1934 and was directed primarily towards a domestic Egyptian audience, and Sawt al-Arab, established on 4 July 1953 with an entirely different mission and vision. From its inception, it was designed to address the Arab world as a whole, carrying the discourse of Arab nationalism and anti-colonial liberation beyond Egypt’s borders.
By contrast, although Sudan’s Omdurman Radio was established relatively early, on 1 April 1940 — years before Sawt al-Arab — its influence remained largely confined within Sudan, much like many national radio stations of that era. Sawt al-Arab, however, possessed a consciously transnational ambition from the outset, which granted it overwhelming influence across the Arab East, and to a lesser extent in North Africa, until it became, for entire generations, the voice of Arabism, liberation, and post-colonial identity.
In Sudan specifically, Sawt al-Arab was not merely a radio station. It became a daily window onto the wider Arab world. Through it, Egyptian dialect, political discourse, music, and drama entered Sudanese homes, helping to cement Cairo’s image as the cultural capital of the Arabs.
From this perspective, it becomes easier to understand how entire generations of Sudanese were shaped by Egyptian culture — through education, media, migration, universities, and even through films and television dramas commonly referred to simply as “Arabic films”, despite being predominantly Egyptian. Yet this broad influence does not mean that Sudanese society was merely a passive recipient dissolved into the Egyptian model. Sudan historically possessed remarkable cultural richness and a highly educated intellectual class. This image was reflected in the famous Arab saying: “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Khartoum reads.” The phrase pointed to the reputation Sudanese people earned among Arabs as one of the societies most deeply attached to books and knowledge. It did not merely reflect the value of reading within Sudanese culture. Still, also the nature of the educated Sudanese personality, often distinguished in Arab and international settings by its broad awareness of geography, history, and international affairs compared to many societies more inward-looking in orientation.
Perhaps what most distinguishes northern Sudan — stretching from Wadi Halfa in the north to beyond Kosti in the south, and from east to west — is this historical richness born of centuries of migration and demographic intermixing. Sudan was never a closed or ethnically “pure” space in any rigid sense; rather, it functioned as a crossroads where peoples and cultures intersected. Arabs arrived from the Arabian Peninsula, while Egyptians and Turks came during the Turco-Egyptian era, alongside Moroccans, Shinqiti migrants, and numerous other groups who settled and integrated through intermarriage, coexistence, and everyday interaction.
As a result, it is difficult to speak of northern Sudanese society as separate from this historical fusion. Many Sudanese families carry within their histories ties of kinship, migration, or memory connected to Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, or other Arab and Islamic spheres.
This intermingling produced not merely ethnic or genetic diversity, but a distinctly Sudanese sense of self combining Arab, African, Islamic, and local elements simultaneously. Perhaps this is why attempts to reduce Sudanese identity to a single definition inevitably fail to grasp Sudan’s own historical reality. Sudanese identity was formed through centuries of interaction, openness, and cultural exchange — not through isolation or exclusion.
Nor should any discussion of mutual influences between Sudan and Egypt ignore Sudan’s own civilisational depth, because the relationship between the two countries was never historically a one-way process of influence. Sudan did not enter history merely as a receiver of external ideas. It was also home to one of the oldest civilisations in the Nile Valley: the Kingdom of Kush, which left profound marks across the entire Nile region and helped shape the political, cultural, and civilisational dynamics of the area.
Historically, relations between the northern and southern reaches of the Nile Valley were always characterised by mutual interaction and influence rather than by a fixed centre and permanent periphery. Within this context, the era of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty — of Nubian Sudanese origin — stands as one of the clearest examples of the deep interconnectedness between Egypt and Sudan. The rulers of Napata extended their authority into Egypt during a significant period of ancient Egyptian history within the framework of a shared Nile civilisation, rather than according to the logic of modern nationalist supremacy, concepts that did not yet exist at the time.
Referring to these historical realities should not be interpreted as an attempt at nationalist boasting or identity competition between the two peoples. Rather, it serves as a reminder that Sudan, like Egypt, possesses a profound civilisational legacy that has shaped the region’s history. Such a balanced understanding may help transcend narratives that reduce the relationship between the two countries to a simple equation of unilateral “Egyptian influence”, moving instead towards a more equitable vision rooted in recognising the deep historical interaction and mutual influence across both banks of the Nile Valley.
This is precisely what makes the relationship with Egyptian soft power more complex than a simple binary of domination and submission. A Sudanese intellectual who studied in Egypt, lived among Egyptians abroad, or whose consciousness was shaped by Egyptian media did not necessarily lose intellectual independence or cultural specificity. Rather, such individuals often retained a broader worldview shaped equally by Sudan’s unique position at the intersection of the Arab and African worlds.
Here, the deeper question emerges: is the crisis of the Sudanese intellectual truly one of Egyptian influence, or is it fundamentally a crisis of defining Sudanese identity itself?
Since independence, Sudanese elites have been divided between a current that saw Sudan’s future in integration with Egypt within a shared political and cultural entity, and another current that insisted upon national independence and the construction of a distinct Sudanese identity separate from the Egyptian centre. Politically, the latter position prevailed through the establishment of the modern Sudanese state.
Yet the debate did not stop at the limits of the relationship with Egypt. It expanded into the broader question of civilisational identity itself: Is Sudan Arab in belonging, African in roots, or a composite civilisation impossible to reduce to a single definition?
From this emerged multiple intellectual schools. Arab nationalist currents viewed Sudan as an extension of the wider Arab-Islamic sphere. At the same time, other schools sought to reclaim the African dimension, such as the “Forest and Desert” school, which attempted to reconcile Arab and African components. Thinkers such as Al-Nour Abkar and others moved towards more explicitly Africanist visions, presenting Africanness as an expression of Sudan’s historical and cultural specificity.
Yet reducing Sudan solely to this binary overlooks a deeper historical reality embedded in Sudanese society itself. By virtue of its geography and history, Sudan was never oriented in any single direction. It was always formed at the intersection between Arab and African worlds. Perhaps this explains why Sudanese intellectuals have remained especially sensitive to questions of identity and belonging, and more inclined to view plurality and civilisational hybridity not merely as a crisis, but also as a source of richness and distinction.
For this reason, Amani Al-Taweel’s question regarding “inspiration and hegemony” cannot be answered in black-and-white terms. Egypt undoubtedly inspired Sudan and influenced its cultural consciousness, elites, and expressive tools, yet it never succeeded in erasing Sudan’s uniqueness or dissolving its civilisational complexity. Likewise, Sudan was never merely a cultural subordinate. Rather, it remained a space capable of absorbing external influences and reshaping them within a highly layered local experience.
Consequently, the relationship between the two countries — culturally and intellectually — is not simply one of centre and periphery in the conventional sense. It is instead a long historical interaction between two deeply interconnected spaces: one with stronger tools of cultural production, and the other with an exceptional ability to absorb, reinterpret, and recreate influences within its own distinctive civilisational framework.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=14053