Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, has finally addressed a viral image that sparked speculation that she's a smoker.
"😂😂😂 I’ve never been a smoker and never will be—I just have a sense of humour," she responded to a post by an X user suggesting that she smokes. "You, on the other hand, are just pathetic!"
Who is Winnie Byanyima?
Winifred Byanyima, born January 13, 1959, is a Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician, human rights activist, feminist, and diplomat. She has been the executive director of UNAIDS since November 2019.
Before that, she served as the executive director of Oxfam International from May 2013 to November 2019. She was also the director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2006.
Byanyima hails from Mbarara District in western Uganda, which was under British protectorate rule at the time of her birth. She is the daughter of the late Boniface Byanyima, a former national chairman of Uganda’s Democratic Party, and the late Gertrude Byanyima, a former schoolteacher who passed away in November 2008.
She studied at Mount Saint Mary's College Namagunga in Mukono District before obtaining a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Manchester, making history as Uganda's first female aeronautical engineer. She later earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering, specialising in energy conservation, from Cranfield University.
Byanyima worked as a flight engineer for Uganda Airlines before joining the bush war that led to Yoweri Museveni's presidency.
Her diplomatic career saw her serve as Uganda's ambassador to France from 1989 to 1994 before she returned home to engage in Ugandan politics. She played a crucial role as a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1995 Ugandan Constitution. Byanyima was then elected to represent Mbarara Municipality in parliament, serving two consecutive terms from 1994 to 2004.
She later took up leadership roles beyond Uganda, serving as the director of the Directorate of Women, Gender and Development at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In November 2006, she was appointed director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP.