7 Ugandan Journalists and Broadcasters Who Outgrew the Studio

On any given evening, Ugandans tuning into NBS Television’s Luganda bulletin watch Bulasio Mukasa read Amasengejje. On any sitting day of Uganda’s 12th Parliament, the same face appears on the opposition benches under the National Unity Platform colours, representing Nansana Municipality in Wakiso District. Two audiences. One person. Two institutions that are not supposed to overlap.

Uganda’s media has always produced journalists who did more than report the news. A specific group of them eventually became part of it: elected to parliament, elevated to executive offices at national institutions, or creating entirely new platforms that the mainstream wouldn’t build for them. This list covers seven of them. The criterion for inclusion is simple: they began in a newsroom or a broadcast studio, and they ended up somewhere else significant. Every claim here is verifiable from their public records.

#7. James Onen: The FM Voice That Chose the Uncomfortable Questions

James Onen, known professionally as Fatboy, became one of the most recognizable voices in Ugandan broadcasting. What kept him distinctive over the long run was not format but position. He became publicly known for his atheist views and for his efforts to combat superstition and mysticism in Uganda, a country where both subjects sit at the centre of everyday life and where mainstream broadcasters tend to give religion a very wide berth.

He now hosts The Fat Boy Show from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM on RX Radio, an online station. The shift from terrestrial FM to online broadcasting is partly about geography (listeners anywhere can tune in), but it’s also about editorial latitude. Online radio in Uganda operates without the regulatory and commercial pressures that shape what a traditional FM station will broadcast. For a presenter whose brand is built on asking the questions mainstream media sidesteps, that matters.

Fatboy didn’t cross into parliament or build a conglomerate. His form of “outgrowing the studio” is subtler: he redefined what a Ugandan radio voice was allowed to say, and he found the platform that let him keep saying it.

#6. Simon Kaggwa Njala: The Journalist Whose 2012 Interview Went Global

Most journalists go their whole careers without a single moment that travels beyond national borders. Simon Kaggwa Njala, born in 1976, had one by the time he was in his mid-thirties.

Njala is a Ugandan journalist and media personality, and he is best known internationally for his 2012 interview in which he placed LGBTQ activist Pepe Julian Onziema and anti-LGBTQ pastor Martin Ssempa in the same conversation. The clip became a viral video at precisely the moment when Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill was attracting serious international scrutiny, and the footage circulated across news networks and social media platforms far outside Uganda.

What the clip shows, more than anything, is an interviewer who kept his composure while managing two antagonists with diametrically opposed positions on the most politically charged subject in the country at that time. That’s a specific professional skill, and it’s one that Njala demonstrated in a moment when the stakes were unusually high. The interview didn’t make him famous in the way that politicians or musicians become famous. It made him the kind of journalist other journalists cite when they talk about the craft.

#5. Maurice Mugisha: The Reporter Who Moved Into the Building Itself

Maurice Mugisha built a career as a journalist and broadcaster before making the move that most working journalists consider from a distance: crossing to the executive side of the industry he’d been reporting on.

Since October 2018, Mugisha has served as the Deputy Managing Director of Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC), the government-owned media company that is Uganda’s national broadcast institution. It’s a significant step. The deputy MD of UBC sits above the editorial process and below the very top of the organisation, overseeing the infrastructure through which Uganda’s public broadcasting is produced, distributed, and managed nationally.

The shift from journalist to executive is not unusual in global media. In Uganda, where the relationship between government, public media, and editorial independence is actively debated, holding a senior position at UBC carries a specific weight. Mugisha made that transition having earned his credentials in the field first.

#4. Edwin Musiime: From Daily Monitor to Uganda’s First National Christian TV Show

Edwin Musiime‘s media career began in 2001 at Daily Monitor, where he worked as a features writer. He then moved to Kampala FM as a radio presenter, and from there to Uganda Television, which was later rebranded as Uganda Broadcasting Corporation.

Within UBC, Musiime rose through the institution’s internal ranks: from news anchor to Head of Religious Programming to Quality Assurance Manager. That trajectory alone would be a career. But the thing that makes his story unusual is what he created while at UBC: The Christian Voice, which is documented as Uganda’s first national Christian television show. That’s not a niche achievement in a country where Christian programming draws some of the largest audiences in broadcasting.

Musiime has since moved into entrepreneurship, pastoral work, and authorship. The full arc, journalist to broadcaster to pioneer TV producer to entrepreneur and pastor, is the kind of career that resists a single line description. He is currently operating well outside the studio where he started, and the distance between those two points is considerable.

#3. Bashir Kazibwe: Journalist, Entrepreneur, and One-Term MP

Bashir Kazibwe, also known as Kazibwe Bashir Mbaziira, is a Ugandan journalist and entrepreneur who served as the Member of Parliament for Kawempe South constituency in Kampala District through the 11th Parliament of Uganda from 2021 to 2026.

He did not seek re-election in the 2026 general elections, meaning his time in parliament was a defined chapter rather than a permanent career pivot. Madina Nsereko was elected to represent Kawempe South in the 12th Parliament. Kazibwe’s decision not to run again is as informative as the decision to run in the first place: it suggests parliament was a specific phase of public service, not an end destination.

What’s notable about his arc is the combination: journalist, then entrepreneur, then MP, with the entrepreneurial work continuing alongside his political term. Uganda has produced journalists who became politicians and stayed there. Kazibwe’s one-term decision suggests a different kind of ambition, one that doesn’t measure success by how long you hold a seat.

#2. Agnes Nandutu: From Bududa’s Stories to Bududa’s Voice in Parliament

Agnes Nandutu‘s transition from journalism to politics followed a specific logic. She had covered Uganda’s communities as a journalist. Then she stood to represent one.

Her political career includes a period as State Minister for Karamoja Affairs, a ministry covering one of Uganda’s most historically underrepresented regions. In 2020, she entered the NRM primaries for Bududa District and lost. She ran again in the 2021 general elections as an independent candidate and won, being elected Women’s Representative for Bududa District.

Losing once and running again as an independent is not the path of someone who drifted into politics. It’s the path of someone with a specific constituency in mind. The journalism career gave Nandutu a framework: how to identify what a community needs, what it’s missing, and what story it’s not yet telling loudly enough. The political career is what she did with that framework. That combination of reporter’s instinct and representative’s mandate is unusual enough to deserve its place near the top of this list.

#1. Bulasio Mukasa: Luganda News Anchor and Opposition MP, Simultaneously

The first position goes to Bulasio Mukasa not because his career arc is the most dramatic but because his current situation is the most unusual. He is doing both things at once.

Zambaali Bulasio Mukasa anchors Amasengejje, NBS Television’s Luganda news programme, and hosts Barometer (Akasameeme), a Luganda talk show on NBS. He was also elected Member of Parliament for Nansana Municipality, Wakiso District, in the 12th Parliament of Uganda under the National Unity Platform.

NUP is Robert Kyagulanyi’s opposition party. Mukasa is not a former journalist who went into politics. He is, at time of writing, an active TV news anchor and a sitting opposition MP at the same time. That’s not a career transition. That’s a career collision that Uganda’s political moment made possible.

The traditional assumption in broadcast journalism is that the newsreader stays neutral. In Mukasa’s case, the newsreader is simultaneously a member of the main opposition in the national legislature. Whether you find that inspiring or complicated probably depends on your views about what journalism is for. What’s not debatable is that it’s genuinely unprecedented in how explicitly it tests the boundary between reporting and participating.

The institutions around him, NBS and the NUP bench in parliament, are not the same institution. He belongs to both. That’s the story, and right now, he is living it.

Seven Paths, One Profession

Uganda’s journalism and broadcasting industry is not large. The number of working journalists who have managed to cross into parliament, national broadcast executive roles, religious media, or internationally viral moments is small enough to fit on one list. These seven did it from different directions and for different reasons, which makes the pattern worth noting: journalism here is not always a destination. For some people, it’s where the journey starts.

If you want more on Ugandan media, you can read about the eight media personalities who became Uganda’s household names, the six entertainers who made the stage-to-politics crossing, and the six Ugandans who built their careers outside Kampala’s orbit.

All the Wolokoso pieces live at kampalaindex.com/wolokoso.