I am a Ugandan journalist and rights defender. I came to my activism work through my journalism, traveling across Uganda and experiencing various inequalities and issues that persisted among everyday Ugandans. I worked on stories on justice after the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) war in northern Uganda, the peace talks between the LRA and government, covered stories from health to political prisoners before going into my masters. That’s what informed my struggle and understanding how our struggles are linked and the various oppressions we face both as women, a country or as a continent.

I have always been opinionated even as a child. I was always curious and learning beyond the limits. So when I worked as a journalist I noticed earlier in the career that my voice was not that present in the mainstream way of covering stories. I always felt I had a story, an observation, a question that would not end up in the paper on in a TV story. So I started to blog as a way to make my own stances, lessons, journeys out from various trips, encounters and experiences. It was from documenting my own thoughts that led me to really learn more about the issues I was covering and why the situation was the way it is beyond official explanations. I was able to learn more for people that have long theorized issues that I was trying to understand or thought I understood.

It’s a collaborative platform of African feminist writers who document their own journeys and experiences of women in their communities, countries to be able to share them on the same platform for us to learn from each other and about each other. The coverage of African women in the mainstream media continues to be lacking and often times problematic. Most Africans still learn about the continent through information produced via western media. We thought this would be a platform aided by social media for us to understand our collective struggles and achievements as African women on the continent and in the diaspora. We welcome feminist writing from all women on the continent. We also notice that we have great feminist academic work but still lacking in bringing this down to ordinary women to relate with their experiences to the larger systems in which we live.

Digital platforms are not inherently good or bad, they come into a world that already has its own politics, its own marginalization and its own violence. This is what plays out often online but also, we have seen many groups use the platforms to bring out perspectives long marginalized and silenced. Young women are increasingly exerting pressure on societies that never guaranteed their grandmothers, mothers certain rights and the online world has helped give them a collective sense that you are here, you are human enough, rights should not be cordoned off or a preserve of anyone based on their gender. Our own dominant popular histories erase women’s work and women’s brilliance and achievements, with the digital we can in time seek out the stories both past and present and take part in writing our herstories. We see being connected for grandchildren of women who were only expected to stay in the house, a new opportunity to take on the world in ways that were not possible for our ancestors. While also battling the violence that the internet has enabled and amplified. So technology has enabled the kind of connectedness and also redefined the ideas of belonging and kinship.

We must not stop at online presence, we must meet, we must emote in person, we must mobilize together offline too. We must be able to visit Dr. Nyanzi in jail or show up for solidarity in court. We can’t only remain as online figures. We can use these spaces to know each other and support each other beyond the click. We have an opportunity to express ourselves, mobilize online but we must be aware of the inequalities of the societies we live in. So then our fight must be constantly expanded, for those whose voices are yet to be heard. The income divides, gender digital divides are real so it is only through the physical world in which we can try to enrich ourselves and educate ourselves of realities of those whose lives we don’t live. Then go back and check how can we bring those lessons to those already privileged to be online.

This is not clear. I volunteer as the editor for the platform and so do the writers. So we seek other paid jobs outside the platform. I do write for various other media outlets, train on media and its intersection with other issues in society.

That I do not know that much, that I have to be open to difference, I must strive to go beyond acceptance of the other. I have the duty to embrace and understand other lives, perspectives however difference. No room for bigotry and hate of any form.

I am currently still reading Nanjala Nyabola’s Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya. There’s just so much to take in in terms of how the digital world is shaping and not shaping our lives. And the feminists in Kenya give me joy. Am reading something else, not feminist but something as a feminist I find imperative Human Archipelago by writer Teju Cole and photographer Fazal Sheikh. A collection of photos with Teju’s writing, it is just too moving on displacement, home and kinship. How the world omits historically marginalized peoples as humans worth our hospitality. In these cruel times against migrants, it is an important voice.

A feminist life is one that requires self-reflection, knowing your privilege and constantly trying to make room for others to come to the table whichever you access. I think beyond just identifying oneself, for me it is important to ask questions about justice and fairness in my everyday work. It is not easy to achieve this in all societies because we live in systems where you are either victim one moment and perpetrator in another. It’s important to remember one’s privilege and using these privileges to break the chains that might still holder others.

Take time to sleep—I get over 10-hours of rest. I travel and spend time with friends. Read books. Must say, I need to do more self-care especially learning to say no in terms of how much work I take on.