Whilst his father had served in the Egyptian Army, it was actually largely due to his mother than Latif was able to rise into the emerging middle class, commonly referred to as the effendiyya.

When Latif moved from Ed Dueim to Khartoum c.1900, he was able to find support from his maternal uncle, Rihan Abd Allah, who his mother had connected him with.

Latif graduated from the Khartoum Military School in 1913, and was awarded the Sirdar's Medal for best cadet of the year, and was commissioned as a Mulazim Tani in the Sudanese XI Battalion.

[4] Latif's background, as both a soldier and a member of Sudan's black African community, meant he was able to reach out, through personal contacts, with a massive swath of the population, particularly the segments needed to for a political struggle.

Latif's arrest and subsequent exile in Egypt sparked a mutiny by a Sudanese army battalion, the suppression of which succeeded in temporarily crippling the nationalist movement.