Bashir Abbadi served as a Minister of Transport and Communications, appointed May 10, 1973.
Education
Educated first at Omdurman then at Wadi Sayedna Secondary School, he graduated with first class honours in science at Khartoum University in 1961. With an American scholarship he went to Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois, where he gained his master’s degree in 1963. Three years later there he was awarded his doctorate in mechanical engineering and space science.
Career
On his return home in 1966 he became a lecturer in engineering at Khartoum University. He set out guidelines for higher education in a research paper in 1966 entitled “Technical Education in the Sudan”. In 1968 he was appointed a member of the Sudan Railways Board. The following year he became chairman of Sudan Airways.
In 1970 he returned to academic life as head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khartoum University. At the same time he was head of the African Air Transport Association and delivered a research paper to the Arab Engineers’ Association in Damascus on “Training of Working Power in the Industrial Sector of Sudan”. He was drawn straight from the university to the cabinet as Minister of Communications in October 1971. In the streamlined Cabinet formed on May 10, 1973, he was given enlarged authority with Transport and Communications.
Personality
Engineer with a brilliant academic record and a sound head for administration. A rare combination of a theorist capable of giving lucid lectures to students and a practical man absorbed in improving techniques of transport by air and rail.