A Conversation with Agather Atuhaire, Executive Team Lead at Agora Discourse

How have you used your journalism career and training as a lawyer to inform your work in digital activism and as executive director of Agora Discourse?  

Well, I think my journalism and legal training are mainly what has set me apart in terms of my digital activism because I approach it from that perspective to give the evidence, the proof, and the substantiation that not many people on social media do. Social media before was littered with people who just wrote whatever they wanted, and no one trusted social media as a source of information. But as a digital activist, and later, when we formed Agora, we made sure that we fact-checked and put proof in terms of documentation in our posts. We put documentary evidence, facts, figures, and details into the posting. And I think that’s because of journalism and the legal training that I have since both professions rely heavily on this type of fact-checking.  

From this training, Agora has become a resource people can trust and know we are not misinforming. People have seen that most times, whatever I post, I have proof for it. When you look at the Parliament exhibition—an online campaign to highlight corruption and lack of accountability in Parliament—when I would write about money that is spent on travel, I would put receipts, and I would document money that is wired to the accounts of the subordinates of the speaker. I started by attaching documents about vehicles purchased at an inflated price in 2022. So, with time, people knew that I speak with proof. Whenever someone says something is happening in Parliament, people will say they will not trust it until Agather confirms it. Since that happened, even if I don’t have documentation and post something, people would believe it because of my reputation and track record. So, of course, the disinformation is still there, but people know how to see and know that when Agather writes something, it’s true, it’s not sensational, it’s not guesswork, and it’s something that has been investigated.   

How has digital activism in the digital public square reached the public and empowered change in ways that conventional processes have been unable to?   

So, the main reason I started publishing on social media instead of the conventional newsroom I was in for about ten years is that Ugandan’s population is over 70 percent young people. The young people do not read newspapers—I think the highest selling newspaper sells about ten thousand copies a day. Many surveys have shown that young people say that they find news on social media. Because of that, I thought it was better to meet the audience where they were. Also, social media comes with instant feedback and response, so you can tell you are reaching people. Even though Uganda does not have more than three million people on social media, the reach of social media is wider than that of the newspaper.   

When I was starting, I thought that if we could reach two million people, that would be good enough. But later, when we did these exhibitions, particularly the Parliament exhibition, they reached everywhere in Uganda because we didn’t know it would happen, but it was being picked up in the mainstream media. Especially radio, which is still the widest-reaching medium, so even my mother and everyone from the remotest area knew about the exhibition. We also have a strategy to share this information on WhatsApp groups from different places to reach a wider range of users. 

Another example of using unconventional processes to inform people about complex problems is the “Cartooning for Human Rights” program. The objective is really that you put out information in a humorous way that people will laugh about, and even your enemies will pay attention. So cartooning is just another different, more creative, and maybe more fun way of putting that information right there to show these people what you’re doing.  

What specific challenges exist for Agora to function in Uganda under President Museveni and his legislation restricting freedom of expression online? Given the rise in disinformation, how do you approach your goal of providing reliable information?  

Another thing that contributed to my decision to leave mainstream media and start publishing on social media is censorship. Media here is highly censored. For example, media houses have been closed before and have been stripped of advertising revenue from the government, and journalists have been arrested and detained. So, there was a lot of walking on the edge because even if you write a story, the media house can just refuse to air it because of potential trouble. The government has still tried to control social media similarly. In 2022, they came up with the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act. Among other things, the act criminalizes the use of social media to spread false news or bring a malicious or disreputable image of the government or officials. We realized that if you publish authorized information, there would be a clampdown. I am among the people who challenged this law in court, but we still have not settled for a hearing two years later, so there are many people being charged under it. Luckily, I have not, and no one at Agora has been yet, but it is problematic.   

Another challenge is the shutdown of social media and blocking X, where we do most of our work. It wouldn’t be the first time because in 2021, during the elections, Facebook was shut down and remains closed. The internet was also entirely shut down in 2021. That is a threat as we get close to the next election in 2026. The government has further tried to discredit us by using disinformation and paying people to attack us. For the last two months, we have been in the eye of the storm. They distributed information that we were paying people with money from the United States to go to the streets and protest. This was absolutely false, and some of the protesters who were enraged to hear this took to their X handles and said they had never received any funding and that they did not need any funding to see how corruption was affecting the country. They also claimed we received funding from USAID that we did not account for. We know that this is how corruption fights back, with the people we are exposing trying to discredit us. It has taken a toll on our mental health since these constant attacks and threats are draining and distract us from what we’re doing. So, we’ve been trying to maneuver all that.   

What results have come out of your campaigns and activism, particularly the #March2Parliament demonstrations, Uganda Parliament Exhibition, and Health Exhibition?    

The first result is sensitizing people and raising consciousness. We came onto the scene at a time when many people were apathetic and thought nothing could be done. Social media was for fun and banter, but when we came on and started posting content to educate and inform, people started to engage with it. When we started the exhibitions, especially the Parliament exhibition, people took over and it became massive. It has not stopped and has taken a life on its own, with people continuing to demand answers and explanations. For example, politicians that we had mentioned in that campaign have continued to be asked to account for this money whenever they appear on television and radio shows. The movement has gone on and on, and it has reached everywhere.  

The second result is that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom even imposed sanctions on some of the people involved in corruption. That was, for us, a big win because we know that our government will never take any action against the corrupt.  

The third result has been the protests. When we showed the implications of corruption, people saw what is lost for an entire country when just one, two, or three people are stealing money that is supposed to benefit all. For example, if money hadn’t been misappropriated, a hospital with no beds and no equipment would have been equipped. If money hadn’t been misappropriated, these doctors who haven’t been deployed for two years would have been deployed. So that’s how the #March2Parliament began, and it was the first time that Uganda had protests of that nature. Before, such as in 2020, protests took place by fanbases after political opposition politicians were arrested. But this time, people across professions and from every part of the country, including the part where the current president and many people in government come from, protested. Rarely do you see people from that part of the country as enraged about corruption, abuse, and deprivation as the others, so it was the one thing Ugandans did without feeling like this was an opposition thing or a certain tribe or a certain class.   

What issues do you hope to expose and challenge in the future?  

We have looked at and exposed many other issues across sectors. For example, we’ve had a continuous campaign about the release of political prisoners since supporters of the National Unity platform were arrested in 2021 and have been in jail since. We’ve made a short film about the mothers and wives of these people, both those in jail but also those who have been missing for the last four years, who have probably been murdered.   

We’ve focused on forceful land evictions in western Uganda and the abuse by security forces involved in those evictions. We have also done issues around the National Water and Sewerage Corporation. Now, we are working on an investigation into the landfill that collapsed and killed about two hundred people. We had already posted content about it, but I thought it was haphazard, so we are doing a new investigation. We support initiatives that address not just corruption but also human rights, the rule of law, and democracy.   

We have been turning to discuss transition after we were recently told by his son, who had also declared a presidential bid, that the president will run again in 2026. We are overly ambitious, but those are really the main critical issues here.  

What types of collaboration do you seek, and what is the international community’s role in supporting missions like Agora Discourse?  

We seek collaborations both nationally and internationally. We would like to work with other like-minded organizations because the workload is too much. Since Agora is the most visible platform, everyone sends suggestions or problems they want us to take on, but we cannot take on everything. It is challenging to find partners where civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations look at themselves as competition fighting for resources, but we have found a few. We’ve been trying to see if we can work with some people by giving them the lead and only coming in to amplify their work. Internationally, we want to work with people to share experiences and see what has worked for them. In Kenya, for example, a nonprofit and news publication investigates similar issues, and we have been in talks with them about collaborating for cross-border investigations.  

For the international community, we look to them for resources because the same government we are exposing and criticizing cannot fund us or facilitate our work. This work requires a lot of resources, and it can only be provided by the international community as we try to encourage and appeal to the locals to fund activism. We also need to make sure that people working feel comfortable and secure, can pay the bills, and can look after their families. We need security to address the frequent threats and backlash from these politicians and their agents. What’s ironic is that it’s the same police and security personnel that are meant to protect us that threaten, arrest, torture, and kidnap us. Although they brand us “agents of imperialists,” when the government knows that you have some international backing, it adds a layer of protection on you. I guess they find themselves having to first weigh the consequences of harming you and the backlash from the international community they might get. 

I think that international governments should speak out about these things. The European Union and the United States recognize that people like me are doing this risky work. It looks rather odd if they do not call out the people that we are trying to fight against. Sometimes, we wonder why the international community, which funds Ugandan’s budget, does not say we are not giving you more money until you account for money we have given you before or until the people involved in corruption, some of which we have clearly documented, are prosecuted. That would be very important because, for us, we are often ignored. But people who give the government money cannot be ignored. We are thankful for the international sanctions, but even those were not enough because the government has continued to go about their businesses the same way. So, we would like to see the international community doing more.