Janet Museveni

Janet Museveni ("née" Keinembabazi, born August 15, 1949) is the First Lady of Uganda since May 1986. She is married to Yoweri Museveni, whom she has four children with.

Janet Keinembabazi Kataha Museveni was born in Bwongyera village in Kajara county, Ntungamo district, Uganda to Mr and Mrs Edward Kataha. She attended Kyamate primary school and Bweranyagye Girls Secondary School. After secondary school, she lived with a cousin, John Wycliffe Kazzora, who financed her overseas studies. She attended a secretarial course in Wales, and on returning to Uganda got a job as a ground hostess with the then East African Airways.

When Idi Amin's regime fell from power in April 1979, she moved back to Uganda from Tanzania where she had been living in exile with her husband Yoweri Museveni. A daughter, Natasha was born in 1976 and another daughter Patience, was born to the couple in 1980 and their last child, Diana, was born in 1981.

In February 1981 when Yoweri Museveni launched his guerrilla war against the government of President Milton Obote, Janet Museveni and her children re-located to Nairobi, Kenya, where they lived with family friends until 1983. In 1983, they moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, and stayed there until May 1986, four months after Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army had seized power in Kampala.

Janet Museveni founded the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO), a private relief agency in late 1986 which she said was shaped by her experience as a refugee. She became involved with the HIV/AIDS campaigns in Uganda all through the 1990s.

In November 2005, she announced that she would seek the parliamentary seat of Ruhama in the February 2006 Ugandan general elections. She contested the seat against the candidate for Forum for Democratic Change, Augustine Ruzindana, and won overwhelmingly.

External links

* [http://iisd.ca:8080/ramgen/linkages/sd/ifpri/3museveni.rm Janet Museveni speech] given at IISD conference in Kampala, April 2004.