By Mulengera Reporters
Over the weekend, December UCC Executive Director Nyombi Thembo presided over the end of year party for the young people and online warriors operating under the #Golden Posts Initiative.
In his speech as chief guest, Nyombi Thembo looked back to February, beginning of the year 2025, when the whole thing of #Golden Posts started. The idea was mooted during a tour he took young people on around the country to see for themselves first hand the agricultural revolution that continues to evolve in the Ugandan countryside.
Today, 11 months later, the UCC ED made it clear that he wasn’t regretting his decision to partner with hundreds of young people who previously had concentrated on negativity and daily taking to social media to only rant about what their government wasn’t doing right. In close collaboration with their team leader Cde Bruce Musementa, Thembo engaged group members more closely in the days and weeks subsequent to the agricultural tour.
In those earlier discussions, he made it clear to them that it was their right to be critical and angry about poor service delivery but he impressed it on them that there was a lot of good work that was being done and accomplished by public officials at the numerous government MDAs, across the country.
He also told them about key accomplishments by the private sector whose leaders and members had taken advantage of the political stability and the good regulatory environment in the country and the liberal government policies to thrive. The more he interacted with them, the more he realized that many of them had seldom travelled beyond the greater Kampala neighborhoods where they stay. This was limiting their scope and understanding of the broader Uganda.
Nyombi Thembo suggested, and they gratefully accepted, to facilitate their tour across the whole country whose beauty, potential and transformation they ended up appreciating more. Musementa says that upon being taken to different parts of the country, hundreds of his members, who happen to be very active and outspoken influencers on social media, began to have a totally different view of their country Uganda.
They realized the natural beauty of the country and began concurring with one-time British Premier Sir Winston Churchill who christened Uganda the Pearl of Africa many decades ago. The UCC boss arranged for them to visit the national game parks and in the process, as they travelled there, they were able to see the full extent of the grand road and other infrastructure projects, which their leader Gen Museveni has accomplished in the last 40 years of his Presidency.
That’s how, says Musementa, many of them realized the need to contribute to the building, growth and transformation of their country by leveraging their powerful online platforms to communicate and publicize the great potential and positive things about Uganda.
The UCC ED made them realize that when they consistently do this, Uganda’s positive image abroad as a good travel destination gets enhanced with positive visibility and thereby causing more tourists to book coming to visit. While here, such tourists invest thousands of dollars just to visit and see the country’s beauty-which is how the government gets money to remunerate civil servants, teachers and medics better besides constructing more beautiful roads, ferries, dams, bridges, Hoima-like stadia and even revamp the country’s railway network. The revamped railway network will improve on the durability of Uganda’s roads network, diminish traffic jams on our roads and also generally bring down the cost of transport for everyone.
Since that time, the group members have been active deliberately and intentionally generating positive online visibility and content for Uganda; and thereby helping foreigners and potential tourists out there to realize that besides the NUP negativity, there is the other more hopeful and less belligerent version of Uganda.
The young people belonging to the #Golden Posts Initiative have gradually learnt from frequent mentoring interactions with Nyombi Thembo that there is need for ‘responsible digital citizenship,’ which is synonymous with deliberate patriotism and defending the good image of Uganda globally, while at the same time pushing back against misinformation about project Uganda and its leaders.
Through this pro-Uganda online activism by Golden Posts members, the online narrative about Uganda has significantly been impacted. This explains why the UCC top leadership considered it right and prudent to participate in the organizing of the end of year 2025 party for the group, with their ED Nyombi Thembo presiding over.
In his speech, Nyombi Thembo (who the Golden Posts young people fondly refer to as Papa) thanked the group for their patriotism and voluntary activism in defence of brand Uganda and said to them that there is nothing to regret about the ongoing collaboration between Golden Posts Initiative members/promoters on one hand and the UCC on the other. He looked forward to better work and better outcomes during the new year 2026.
He thanked them for being intentional about using online communication capabilities to build and strengthen brand Uganda as opposed to weakening it. He called on the young people to appreciate the leadership of his boss Gen YK Museveni because, as he put it, it has been under his leadership over Uganda that owning a mobile phone, which was a luxury for the privileged few in the late 1990s, had now become a necessity that no single Ugandan can afford not to have.
On their part, the young people operating under Golden Posts Initiative (GPI) thanked the UCC ED for the time and resources he has deliberately dedicated to inspire and mentor them while generously sharing words of wisdom which they confessed to have greatly transformed them from negative energy into the ‘responsible digital citizens’ they have since become.
They also appreciated Thembo for the resultant mindset change they have undergone and also appreciated UCC for collaborating to ensure that the #Golden Posts Initiative continues being the platform through which young people come together and get to know each while collectively working towards the promotion and sustainability of their country.
One of the members going by the online name Carol Primah asserted that despite the inevitable personal struggles she endured, 2025 had ended up being a very good year for her and many of her peers because of the fact that she has been part of the #Golden Posts Initiative and activities. Members vowed to continue countering cyberbullying and misinformation that is rampant online. They also thanked Nyombi Thembo, who they christened the CEO of the year, for demonstrating to them how internet can be demonstrated to be “a force for good.”
The GPI team leader Bruce Musementa spoke about #Golden Posts members being prepared to go into the new year ready to continue with their agenda of promoting responsible digital citizenship, digital literacy and intentional content creation while prioritizing positive storytelling about brand Uganda.
He read out names of the year’s ‘smartest golden posters’ who had excelled coming up with digital voices and videos demonstrating exceptional positivity about Uganda. To these, Nyombi Thembo, the Papa who is also the patron of #Golden Posts Initiative, handed awards of recognition while calling on them to keep up the good work while inspiring others to do the same. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
