graduated in 1978 from the School of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum and obtained a scholarship to travel to Spain, where he graduated in painting and engraving from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1991, he obtained his doctorate on traditional and contemporary art in Sudan. In the 1970s, his works began to be acquired by museums, libraries and private collectors. Recently, by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Nairobi and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF). In 1999, he returned to Khartoum and in 2005 he opened the Rashid Diab Art Centre, a non-profit organisation dedicated to eradicating cultural illiteracy, which offered courses for children, artist residencies and exhibitions by Sudanese artists. The war that broke out in Sudan in 2023 forced Diab to return to Spain. In 2013, he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Civil Merit by the then King of Spain, Juan Carlos I.