Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye

By Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye Breaking the Blade:  Spotlight on Beatrice Chelan g at A SEED PLANTED IN THE HILLS   In 1976, deep in the mist-veiled hills of the Sabiny region in Eastern Uganda — where the mountains huddle together like ancient, brooding elders — a young girl named Beatrice Chelangat first heard whispers of female circumcision. It was a Sunday morning, and the air smelled of damp earth and wood smoke. Millet fields bowed gently to the wind, and children’s laughter floated faintly between the ridges. Inside the small Anglican Church — a modest building of sunbaked bricks and timber, worn smooth by the hands of generations — the villagers had gathered, their bare feet dusting the earthen floor. The archdeacon, a towering man in a heavy black robe, stood before the congregation. His voice, usually firm and commanding, trembled with something raw that morning — a wound too fresh to hide. Tears clung stubbornly to the corners of his eyes as he confessed: his own ...

T he Unseen Struggles Of Uganda’s Female Journalists During The COVID-19 Lockdown By Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye Being a journalist in Uganda is already complex,for female journalists, especially freelancers, the challenges multiply. When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a nationwide lockdown in 2020, the cracks in Uganda’s media industry widened—revealing the harsh realities of gender inequality, economic uncertainty and policy-driven exclusion. As the world turned to media for timely updates, facts, and survival information, Uganda’s female journalists found themselves at the margins of both the newsroom and society. This piece, part of the Defending the Defenders series, documents the lived experiences of five Ugandan women journalists. Their voices expose how a global health emergency deepened existing inequalities in the media industry. The movement permit Crisis: Who Gets to Tell the Story? Uganda’s COVID-19 lockdown included a total suspension of public transport and non-es...

  By Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye A Mother Caught in Endless Conflict ZA mZam Mohammed Khater is not just a journalist; she is a relentless warrior against the shadows of war that have plagued Darfur for over two decades. At 38, she is a single mother of two—a 14-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter—trapped in a land where fear dictates every sunrise and sorrow lingers in the air like an unshakable curse. Zamzam inspects one of the homes burnt down in 2019  She has seen the unspeakable. Massacres that leave villages lifeless, women brutalized beyond recognition, children reduced to silent witnesses of carnage. She has fled through the darkness, gripping her children’s hands as gunfire echoed behind them, the night air thick with terror. And yet, through it all, she dares to dream. " I dream of a Sudan where my children wake up to the sound of birds, not bombs. Where a mother can send her daughter to school without fearing she may never return." — ZamZam, her voice trem...

By Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye  Yvonne Moka never imagined that reporting on femicide and violence against women and girls (VAWG) would mean reliving her own nightmares. Each story she tells is not just a battle for justice but also a fight for her own sanity. In a chilling interview, she reveals the haunting weight of being both a journalist and a survivor. Yvonne Moka’s Fight for Justice Begins with a Tear-Stained Story Yvonne Moka, a passionate social justice journalist from Botswana, never anticipated that her first major social justice story would be the one that shattered her heart. "My home girl, we grew up together. We shared everything—church, music, village life. She was like my sister. When I left for university, she stayed behind. Over time, she began dating a gangster from the village, and I was not pleased," Moka recalls. "But she made her choices. Then, one fateful day, I received a call from her neighbor: ‘She’s dead. The boyfriend has killed her.’"...