ZAM Reporter

World Press Photo | The Activist Poet

His name is Mohamed Yousif and he lives in Khartum, Sudan. Maral Noshad Sharifi traced the guy on the winning picture, made by Yasuyoshi Chiba, of this years World Press Photo Award.

The picture shows multiple powers, Sharifi writes in her article in Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad: of protest, of youth, of art. Yousif is one of thousands who last year stood up against the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir. Only 15 years old he joined the revolution that ended decades of brutal repression. 'I couldn't keep my eyes off of him', the photographer told Sharifi. 'He's so strong, so charismatic'.

 And Mohamed Yousif  is not the only one who inspired the Sudanese masses with poetry; a picture of Alaa Saleh, a student reading a poem standing on a white car, also went viral in 2019.