Former Kenya CJ to Deliver Media & Politics Lecture in Kampala

Former Kenya Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga will grace this year's lecture on Media and Politics in Africa, to be held next month in Kampala.

The lecture, organized by the African Centre for Media Excellence –ACME seeks to explore the relationship between media and politics amidst changing technological, demographic, and political conditions on the continent. It will be held on November 8, 2017, at the Golf Course Hotel in Kampala.

Dr Mutunga's lecture titled, “Politics, Media and Judicial Independence in Africa” will draw on his own experience while at the judiciary to offer insight into how the cutthroat worlds of media and politics affect judicial independence on the continent.

“We are honoured to have him in a year when the Supreme Court of Kenya made history by annulling the presidential election held on 8 August,” Dr Peter Mwesige, ACME's executive director said in a statement issued this afternoon.

Dr Mutunga was Kenya's Chief Justice and President of the Supreme Court from 2011 to 2016. He recently served as the Commonwealth secretary general's special envoy to the Maldives and as a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City.

Before becoming Chief Justice, Dr Mutunga headed Ford Foundation's East Africa office based in Nairobi.

“Given the involving political debates taking place in East Africa, especially in Uganda and Kenya, we could not have had a better speaker that Dr Mutunga — lawyer, thinker and reform leader,” Bernard Tabaire, ACME's director of programmes said.

Dr Mutunga's lecture follows three others presented over the last three years by Trevor Ncube, the Zimbabwean owner of South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper, Fatuma Abdulahi, the Somali feminist and Broadcaster; and Eric Chinje, the Cameroonian communications expert heading the Nairobi-based African Media Initiative.

The lectures are funded by the Democratic Governance Facility, a basket fund that supports state and non-state partners to strengthen democratization, protect human rights, improve access to justice and enhance accountability in Uganda.