Wanja Muguongo
"AFRICA’S OUT! goes beyond the often told story of woe and oppression, and instead both celebrates our resilience as queer Africans and also joins us in raising the resources our movements so desperately require. The opportunities that UHAI EASHRI is now enjoying because of the doors Wangechi Mutu and AFRICA’S OUT! has opened are amazing. It is exactly these kinds of interconnections that affirm our essence, our humanness."
Wanja Muguongo is the founding Executive Director of UHAI EASHRI, an organization that addresses the structural and systemic discrimination and marginalization that people of non-conforming sexual orientation, sexual expression, and gender identity continue to face in Africa.
Founded in 2009, UHAI EASHRI is Africa’s first indigenous, activist led and managed fund supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) and sex worker activism in Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya. Over the past 6 years, UHAI has granted over $3,000,000 to more than 150 organisations and earned widespread respect for proactive, diverse and effective investments.
A feminist and social justice activist, Ms. Muguongo has spent her entire professional career working in human rights and social justice activism, mostly within the East African civil society sector but also branching out to work in India and Pakistan. Ms. Muguongo has edited and collaborated on many publications and papers, is a Yale World Fellow 2012 and Synergos Senior Fellow 2014.