Nationality Ugandan Education Makerere University Role Journalist | Name Jackee Batanda Alma mater Makerere University | |
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Women and Power: Jackie Batanda, Accomplished journalist and entrepreneur
Jackee Budesta Batanda is a Ugandan journalist, writer and entrepreneur. She is a senior managing partner with Success Spark Brand Limited, a communications and educational company, and a co-founder of Mastermind Africa Group Limited, a business-networking group. In 2006, Batanda worked as a peace writer at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego. She was later awarded a research fellowship at the highly competitive Justice in Africa fellowship Programme with the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town in 2008. Batanda was International Writer-in-Residence at the Housing Authors and Literature Denmark in 2010 where she commenced work on her novel, A Lesson in Forgetting. In 2012, she was also featured in The Times alongside 19 young women shaping the future of Africa. That same year she was also a finalist in the 2012 Trust Women journalism Awards. She has been writer-in-residence at Lancaster University in the UK. She was selected by the International Women's Media Foundation as the 2011–12 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow. During the fellowship, she studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies and other Boston-area universities, and worked at The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
Contents
- Women and Power Jackie Batanda Accomplished journalist and entrepreneur
- Early life and education
- Writing
- Non fiction
- Short stories
- Awards and recognition
- References
She is a recipient of the 2010 Uganda Young Achievers Awards in the Corporate and Professionals category and a Justice in Africa program fellowship. She has worked as a freelance journalist with the Global Press Institute, an online newswire, and was previously a senior Communications Officer with the Refugee Law Project of the Faculty of Law at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. She is one of the 39 African writers announced as part of the Africa39 project unveiled by Rainbow, Hay Festival and Bloomsbury Publishing at the London Book Fair in April 2014. It is a list of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40.
Early life and education
Batanda is a Samia from the eastern part of Uganda. She studied at Mary Hill High School in Mbarara, Bweranyangi Girls' Secondary School in Bushenyi and St. Paul's College in Mbale. She holds a master's degree in forced migration studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an undergraduate degree in communications from Makerere University in Uganda.
Writing
Batanda has been writing professionally for over ten years both as a freelance journalist for national papers–The Sunday Vision and Sunday Monitor–and as a writer of fiction. Among her numerous awards for fiction writing is winning the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, 2003, and being shortlisted for the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa, 2003. Her work has been performed on the BBC World Service, BBC 3 and other radio stations around the Commonwealth. Batanda has written numerous short stories that have been published in various anthologies, including the titles "The Thing That Ate Your Brain", "Holding onto the Memories" and "Dora's Turn", among others. She has written for Transitions on the Foreign Policy magazine website, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Latitude News, the Global Post, The Star, the Mail&Guardian, the Sunday Vision and Sunday Monitor.
Jackee Budesta Batanda is a member of the Uganda Women Writers Association FEMRITE, she has been Writer-in-Residence at Lancaster University where she worked on The Big Picture, a collaborative book with three writers from the north west. She has been fellow on the British Council's Crossing Borders programme. She was regional winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Short Story Competition and has been highly commended for the Caine Prize for African Writing and shortlisted for the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa. She has published a children's book, The Blue Marble, in conjunction with UNESCO-Paris and Sub-Saharan publishers (Ghana). Her stories have been published in various journals and short story anthologies, including Farafina, Edinburgh Review, Moving Worlds, Gifts of Harvest, The Spirit of the Commonwealth, Wasafiri, Jazz, Miracles and Dreams, among others. She has completed two projects, Everyday People, a collection of short stories, and Our Time of Sorrow, a novel.