Zeinab Badawi Net Worth

Background and career

Zeinab Mohammed-Khair Badawi (Arabic: زينب محمد-خير بدوي; born 3 October 1959) is a Sudanese-British television and radio journalist, educator, civic activist, and writer. She was the first presenter of the ITV Morning News (later known as ITV News at 5:30), and co-presented Channel 4 News with Jon Snow from 1989 to 1998 before joining BBC News. Badawi was the presenter of World News Today broadcast on both BBC Four and BBC World News, and Reporters, a weekly showcase of reports from the BBC. In 2021, Badawi was appointed as president of SOAS University of London. Badawi serves on several civic boards and published her first book, An African History of Africa, in 2024.

Badawi was born on 3 October 1959 in Khartoum, to a family of Arab and Ethiopian descent. Her great-grandfather, Babikr Bedri, fought against Kitchener's British forces at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and pioneered women's education in Sudan. Badawi's father, Mohammed-Khair El Badawi, was a newspaper editor in Sudan committed to social reform who, when the family moved to the UK, joined the BBC's Arabic Service. Having grown up with an Arabic-speaking family, Badawi speaks both Arabic and English fluently.

At age two, Badawi began living in the UK. She was educated at Hornsey High School for Girls in North London, before studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at St Hilda's College, Oxford. At Oxford, Badawi was a member of the Oxford University Broadcasting Society. In 1988, she moved back to London to pursue a full-time one-year MA degree in Middle East History and Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (her professors were P. J. Vatikiotis for politics, Malcolm Yapp for history and Richard Tapper and Nancy Tapper for anthropology), graduating with distinction in 1989.