Winnie Byanyima was the first female Ugandan to receive a degree in aeronautical engineering, from the University of Manchester, and later received a Masters degree from Cranfield University. When the National Resistance Army, led by Yoweri Museveni, launched a guerilla war in 1981 to overthrow the Ugandan government, Ms. Byanyima and her husband, Kizza Besigye, became combatants. Following the overthrow of the Ugandan government in 1986, Ms. Byanyima served as Uganda's ambassador to France. She then returned home in 1994 and served as a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1995 Ugandan Constitution. She next served for 11 years as a Member of Parliament. In 2004 she was appointed Director of Women, Gender and Development at the African Union in Addis Ababa. In 2006, Ms. Byanyima was appointed as the Director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at the United Nations Development Programme in New York City.

In 2013, Ms. Byanyima became the executive director of Oxfam International, and has since then become a globally-recognized figure in the struggle for women's rights, social equality, democratic governance and peace-building. In July 2014,The Guardian named Ms. Byanyima one of the five people to follow on Twitter in the fight for equality. When she co-chaired the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2015, she used the forum to demand action to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

Location: Market Hall

For more information please contact alisonscholl@trentu.ca

Posted on Monday, June 22, 2015.