Nima Elbagir moved with her family to United Kingdom when she was 3 years old, and she moved back to Sudan when she was 8 years-old. In 1992 she moved back once again to United Kingdom. Having received her instruction between Sudan and United Kingdom, she is fluent in Arabic and English. Nima Elbagir graduated from the “London School of Economics” with a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy. She had always aspired to become a journalist. Her father is a newspaper publisher in Sudan, he had been jailed before her birth, and her mother, Ibtisam Affan, is the first woman publisher in the history of Sudan. She was trained for her broadcasting career from her father’s newsroom.

Elbagir’s broadcasting career started when she joined Reuters in 2002. She reported from Sudan, covering the war of the torn Darfur region of the country. She also reported for Radio France International, FT, and Economist. She left Reuters in 2005, and she later joined “More4News”, where she reported on critical cases like the rape allegations against the Darfur African Union. She also did the first interview with the whistleblower in Aegis Security Company on the Trophy Videos in Iraq. In 2011 Nima Elbagir joined CNN as their international correspondent based in Johannesburg, South Africa, before moving to Nairobi, Kenya, and finally in London, United Kingdom.

In Nima Elbagir’s first documentary titled “Meet the Janjaweed”, she gained access to the unreported world, and interviewed Mohammed Hamdan Dogolo, also known as “Hemeti”, one of the main Arab Janjaweed Commanders responsible for the war in Darfur. The documentary revealed the link between the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed commanders, with China’s involvement, with the supplying of weapons facilitating the continuation of the war.

Nima Elbagir was the only reporter to be given permission to interview Jacob Zuma, the ANC deputy president before his trial in 2006 for rape. She was part of the panel of journalists led by BBC anchor Lyse Douchet during the launch of the stories collection, “No Woman’s Land” that dealt with stories and advice given by female war correspondents and published by the INSI-the International News Safety Institute.

Nima Elbagir has been honored in 2008 with two “Foreign Press Association” awards, as “TV News Story of the Year”, and as “Broadcast Journalist of the Year”. She was also nominated for the “Amnesty Award” that is given for Human Rights Journalism for her coverage of the 2007 US bombing in Somalia. She was the only western journalist allowed to access the area. In 2016 she’s been named by the Royal Television Society as “Specialist Journalist of the Year” for her covering of the passage of migrants from the Nile Delta to Italy. In 2018 she won, with the producer Raja Razek, the “George Polk Award” for “Foreign Television Reporting” for uncovering a hidden modern-day slave auction of African refugees in Libya.