Some people have an uncanny ability to complicate their own lives. Offer them the safe road, and they will somehow find the rougher one. Give them certainty, and they will start wondering what is on the other side of uncertainty. They do not do it because they enjoy suffering, but have a strong conviction that difficult things are worth doing.
Alaa Salih Hamadto, the founder and CEO of SolarFoods, a Sudanese agritech startup that preserves agricultural produce using solar-powered drying technology, appears to be one of those people.
Last Thursday, we met over Google Meet. She is currently based in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, where she has been living since Sudan’s civil war forced her to flee with her daughters.
She tells me about driving back into Sudan while drones flew overhead. About travelling for 36 hours without food or water because the roads were too dangerous to stop. About arriving at her factory only to find that almost everything worth stealing had been stolen. She says all this with remarkable calm.
Alaa Hamadto surrounded by debris of her destroyed factory at Khartoum. Image source: Alaa Hamadto
