Stella Nyanzi was born in Masaka District, Buganda Kingdom in Uganda on 16 June 1974. She is a Ugandan human rights activist, woman human rights defender, poet, medical anthropologist, feminist academic, queer rights activist, and scholar of sexuality, family planning, and public health. She uses her research and writing to inform, influence, alter and advance Uganda’s views on healthcare and women’s rights.
Stella Nyanzi received her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Literature at Makerere University where she studied from 1993 to 1996. She received her Master of Science in Medical Anthropology at University College London, where she studied from 1999 to 2000. She received her PhD in Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she studied social anthropology, sexuality, and youth and health policy from 2003 to 2008. She has conducted research on youth sexuality in Uganda, and also in The Gambia in 2005.
Dr. Nyanzi is most known for her outspoken criticism of Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has led a dictatorship for more than 30 years. This led to her subsequent imprisonment in 2017 and has brought issues of freedom of speech and political oppression to the surface in Uganda.
Dr. Nyanzi’s defiance of being the “conventional woman” has put her at risk. But despite the injustices she has faced, she has also been met with international praise and respect and has become a source of inspiration for activists and women’s human rights defenders across Africa and the world. While she was in prison, she received both an award from Solidarity Uganda for being “a consistent human rights defender” and the Oxfam Novib/PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression for her work in academia, writing, and activism.
While in prison, Nyanzi released a poetry collection, No Roses from My Mouth, made up of 158 poems she wrote behind bars. With sections dedicated to prison, feminism and Uganda, the collection includes poems as explicit as the piece of writing for which she was imprisoned. She has been described as employing “radical rudeness” – an activist tactic with roots in Uganda’s anti-colonial resistance movement, which uses public insult and naked protest to disrupt social norms and criticise those in power. She was released on February 20, 2020, after serving over a year in detention on charges of misuse of a computer and cyberbullying.
Dr. Nyanzi speaks openly, and colourfully, about sex, genitalia and politics. For this, she is adored by many of her fellow citizens but viewed with distaste by some of Uganda’s more conservative elements.
