Ugandan journalists have paid tribute to one of President Yoweri Museveni’s longest serving Press Secretaries Hope Kivengere, who has passed on today at Nakasero Hospital.
On several social media platforms for journalists the late Kivengere was praised for being accommodative and respectful to the media practitioners back in the day when she served as President Yoweri Museveni s PRESS Secretary from 1986 to 2001 when newsrooms used fax machines to receive and transmit information .
Former Daily Monitor Journalist and now the Current Presidential Press Secretary Linda Nabusayi, eulogized the late Kivengere as a “great civil servant”. “She always checked in on the Press whenever she was back home. We have lost a great civil servant. RIP Hope Kivengere,” Nabusayi sated in a brief press release.
The late Hope Kivengere is also credited for having used her room at Institute of Public Administration (IPA) now UMI -to aid the escape of Generals Jim Muhwezi and Henry Tumunkunde from the Jinja Road Police cells where they had been locked up by the Late President Milton Obote’s soldiers . This was during the early stages of Museveni’s NRA liberation bush war.
The late Kivengere was a French teacher at IPA and an established media person who after serving at State House took several roles at the African Union and the United Nations as an advisor on the information support team.
She was also a member of the COMESA Committee of Elders from Uganda and led the COMESA Observer team to monitor the Egyptian presidential elections in March 2018.
Kivengere also worked in peace keeping missions in Somalia and Sudan as a strategic communications officer countering war propaganda . Kivengere served as Chief of Party for the Intergovernmental Authority on Development-IGAD based in Djibouti and studied Foreign Languages and Literature at the Chatham University in the United States of America.
The late Hope Kivengere believed to have been in her late 60s was the eldest daughter of the late Bishop Festo Kivengere, a celebrated evangelist hailing from Kigezi region .
Others who have served as Press Secretaries at State House after Kivengere include former journalists Mary Karoro Okurut, Onapito Ekomuloit, Joseph Tamale Mirundi and Don Wanyama – now the CEO at The New Vision .
