Fellowship programme Fellow

Audi Ahmed

MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy

SOAS University of London

Support for the Fellowship can help Audi deepen expertise in strategy and investment while continuing to strengthen founder capacity and economic inclusion.

About the Fellow

Meet Audi Ahmed

Audi’s background is in civil engineering, which he studied in Khartoum through several years of financial hardship. Engineering taught him to think in systems, and he began to notice that the problems around him went well beyond buildings and infrastructure; when he graduated, he turned down well-paid jobs abroad because he wanted to stay and build something in Sudan. He is now completing his MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy at SOAS, aiming to equip future under-represented entrepreneurs with the skills and capital access they need to reach their full potential.

Professional & academic background

Experience shaped by service

As a teenager, Audi wanted to play football professionally, the one thing he says he knew everything about, until a severe back injury at fourteen ended that path and left him with chronic pain and a walking stick for a year. He fell into depression over the lost dream before realising football had only ever been one route to what he actually wanted, which was to build something useful for the people around him. That same resolve carried him through to April 2023, when war reached Khartoum and he lost his home and Tagga, the community initiative he had spent years building, within days. He could not pay his staff or provide for his own family, and applied for donations just to cover his team’s wages before he had to leave the country himself.

Impact journey

Founder capacity and economic inclusion

Practical training, venture support and community-building that connect Sudanese entrepreneurs with knowledge, networks and opportunity.

Sudanese Business Community (SBC) started in 2019 with Audi’s own savings, connecting home-based cooks, mostly women supporting their households, directly with customers. Fifteen of those women broke the cycle of poverty: their incomes rose by 25%, enough to cover school fees and medical care they could not previously afford. By the time war reached Khartoum, Tagga had grown to a team of thirty, three-quarters of them women, working with embassies and NGOs across the city. In Cairo, Audi co-founded 117 Business Talk, which has since run twelve sessions for more than 700 people, helped secure 200 mental health support sessions and training for 150 job-seekers rebuilding their careers, and led to three investment opportunities. He is now building the Sudanese Business Community from London, the latest evolution of the work he began in Khartoum, supporting Sudanese small businesses in Sudan and the UK with visibility, capacity-building, and access to capital.

Practical founder skills

Training and mentoring focus on the operational knowledge founders need to move forward.

Community after displacement

Support helps displaced entrepreneurs reconnect with peers, networks and opportunities.

Inclusive opportunity

The wider journey aims to make entrepreneurial knowledge and economic networks more accessible.

Support the Fellowship

Support Audi's professional pathway

Support for the Fellowship can help Audi deepen expertise in strategy and investment while continuing to strengthen founder capacity and economic inclusion.