Ignoring death threats, Betty Bigombe threw herself into the deep and dangerous end of peace-making in her bid to end the war in Uganda between Joseph Kony’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Yoweri Museveni.
Born into a poor community in 1950s Uganda, the eighth of eleven children, Betty Bigombe seemed to be destined to a life of carrying water and fetching wood. But her talent as a natural ‘problem solver’ was spotted while she was still at school. At that time, she says, ‘You finished education; the next thing was to get married, be a good housewife.’ However, she was determined to continue her studies, getting to and graduating from Harvard Kennedy School, the public-policy wing of Harvard University, in 1979.
