Awut Dut Paul: Building, Learning, and Laughing Along the Way

If you ask Awut Dut Paul what she does, she'll probably tell you she's an Information Technology student, a cybersecurity enthusiast, or the Founder and CEO of Mall24 Technologies Ltd.

All of those are true.

What she might not tell you is that somewhere between debugging software, mentoring young women, and planning the future of artificial intelligence in South Sudan, she has also built a reputation for holding some of the most entertaining football grudges known to mankind.

Awut is the kind of person who can spend the morning discussing system administration, the afternoon explaining phishing attacks, and the evening passionately supporting whichever football team happens to be playing against South Africa. She openly admits she isn't even a huge football fan. She simply supports Chelsea and enjoys watching Manchester United fans suffer. Logic has never been invited to this conversation.

Her entrepreneurial journey began with an idea that would eventually become Mall24 Technologies Ltd., a registered South Sudanese technology company focused on building digital solutions for commerce. What started as a university project gradually became a real business. She spent countless evenings configuring servers, implementing Google Sign-In, setting up Firebase notifications, integrating OTP authentication, testing categories, improving the user experience, and recruiting internal testers.

Some people build websites.

Awut built a company.

Mall24 represents more than an online marketplace. It reflects her belief that South Sudan deserves technology built specifically for its people instead of relying entirely on products designed elsewhere.

That belief extends beyond commerce.

She has mentored young women in technology, organized developer activities, taught artificial intelligence and machine learning, and helped introduce students to practical technology skills. As a former Google Developer Group student leader, she discovered that leadership is less about titles and more about helping others believe they belong in technology.

Her curiosity has never been limited to one field.

Cybersecurity drew her in because she wanted to understand not only how systems work but also how they fail. She has spent hours analyzing malware, competing in Capture the Flag challenges, automating tasks with Python, exploring Linux, and learning how attackers think so she can build stronger defences.

Ironically, while learning how to protect people from phishing attacks, she also became interested in demonstrating phishing techniques during awareness sessions, convinced that people learn best by seeing an attack happen rather than simply hearing about it.