Member Spotlight; Do you know Rtn Joachim Buwembo?
Joachim Buwembo joined the Rotary Club of Kampala Naalya in March 2022 and continues to serve the club in different roles. He is the current Boy Child Ambassador championing a theme by the District Governor Edward Kakembo Nsubuga to uplift the Boy Child. He has previously served as the Officer in Charge of the Basic Education and Literacy Enhancement Programme- also known as BELEP.
Rtn Joachim is the Chairman Board of Directors at Uganda Printing and Publishing Corporation, a public corporation mandated to provide printing and publishing facilities to government ministries, departments and agencies.
He is a veteran Journalist whose journalism journey started in 1989 as a reporter-trainee at the now defunct Weekly Topic Newspaper of Uganda before undertaking professional graduate studies in Mass Communication at the University of Nairobi’s School of Journalism. He subsequently became the Deputy Editor of the Weekly Topic.
Joachim has also served the profession as the Uganda Bureau Chief of the East African newspaper under Nation Media Group (NMG), and supported the growth of its circulation by addressing local interests over what had initially been a rather Kenya-centric media.
He was also in charge of Vision Group’s Sunday paper and supported the growth of its circulation from 17,000 copy sales to 45,000 in two years. More than the numbers, Joachim’s greatest qualitative contribution to the Ugandan media scene happened during his time at Sunday Vision between 1997 and 2004, a time of transition to computerization, internet based communication and digital photography.
Joachim oversaw the re-orientation of journalists at the media house to ‘humanizing’ content and outgrow the ‘civil service’ approach to reporting from putting the authorities at the centre, focusing on the people, the affected.
In 2005, Joachim crossed back to Nation Media and opened their operations in Tanzania, with the launch of The Citizen newspaper at a time when the country was emerging from Socialism then, from protest-driven sensationalism on one hand and for very official pronouncements on the other, to professional and appealing people centered reporting. The Citizen is still Tanzania’s premier media.
He briefly returned to Uganda as Managing Editor of the Daily Monitor before he was asked by the Washington-based International Center for Journalists -ICFJ to return to Tanzania and promote developmental journalism through the Knight International Fellowship. This he did from 2009 to 2011, and resulted in the Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First) supplements for the coverage and promotion of Agriculture.
Joachim was later appointed to head the editorial training team for the Africa Climate Change Adaptation Programme of the UNDP, based in Nairobi. His role was sensitizing and training journalists in different countries in West, East, Central and South Africa from 2012 to 2013. He also had to engage media owners in the different countries where he taught to secure their buy-in to prioritize coverage of climate change issues.
He continues to mentor journalists in developmental matters, mostly online, in different parts of the world. This he has done for the ICFJ (in Health) and the African Media Initiative (Energy and Environment matters). He also continues to train and mentor in-service journalists to date, as well as working as editor for Uganda Radio Network, the largest news agency in the country.
He speaks English, French, Swahili and Luganda.