Norah Owaraga

Managing Director, CPAR Uganda Ltd.

Inspired by the ALI-East Africa Fellowship Programme, Norah Owaraga is a social entrepreneur who established Alinga Farms, as her ALI-East Africa project. She established Alinga Farms in order to promote among households of active smallholder farmers in rural Uganda the growing, consumption and sale of culturally acceptable and environmentally friendly crops that have high nutrition value. Her Alinga Farms products include organically grown, sundried and packaged fruits, vegetables and cereals for your good health. With effect from January 2019 she has added a philanthropic dimension to Alinga Farms and is donating four percent of sales income from her Alinga Farms flagship product - Atorot (dried calyces of hibiscus sabdariffa fruit) - to support mentoring of disadvantaged student interns in Uganda. Owaraga is a politically active citizen of Uganda. Since January 2017, she is the first and currently (as of January 2019) the only female political radio talk show host in Uganda, hosting “Spectrum Extra” on Radio One FM90, a popular and influential prime time show that airs live every Friday from 7-9 p.m., offering her a platform through which she is holding Uganda's leaders to account. She is a humanist blogger who through her blog on wordpress, “The Humanist View”, regularly shares her opinions on a wide range of issues, most especially those affecting Uganda. Owaraga is a cultural anthropologist and a practitioner who holds a Master of Science Degree in Development Management from The Open University, UK and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication Studies from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK. Her professional experience spans since 1992, during which time, through academia, civil society organisations and governmental bodies, she has contributed her expertise, among others, on human centred policy development, on programmes implementation, on social accountability, on civic education, on wealth creation, on poverty reduction, on land justice and on healthcare services provision in Uganda. Since 1992, she has worked as a senior executive of civil society organisations operating in Uganda, of which since April 2012 to date, she is the Managing Director of CPAR Uganda Ltd, a nonprofit Ugandan development organisation. She is a Fellow of the second class of the Africa Leadership Initiative-East Africa and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.