I was trying to run for the presidency in Uganda – yet men still found the audacity to call me ‘baby, sweetheart, darling’ | Yvonne Mpambara

I was bruised by my experience of being kept out of an exclusively male political club – now my focus is on getting women into power in Africa

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t’s six weeks since the electoral commission of Uganda announced the eight candidates for the country’s 2026 presidential election. The fact that they are all men is an outrage – and entirely unsurprising.

Of the 221 people who expressed an interest in running for president, 15 were women; and of those, only three of us gained enough voter support to be considered for nomination.

Men in politics argue that the all-male ballot is the result of a fair and neutral electoral system. But how can women, who do not have access to the same resources and who have always been disenfranchised, compete on a level playing field? Far from being fair, neutrality maintains an environment where women are continually shoved out of the top power structures under the guise of competition.