News of the demise of environmentalist Frank Muramuzi on August 11, 2025, found me when I was still in bed recuperating from an illness. I had not heard that he was sick.

All the time I was involved in environmental struggles in Uganda, East Africa, Nile Basin and the World, I never saw him sick. He was always active defending the environment in all its dimensions against national and international political and corporate schemes against the environment.

I did not know Frank Muramuzi until Ms Byaruhanga, formally in the faculty of agriculture and forestry at Makerere University took me to his office where he taught refugees English, etc. That was in 1998. Martin Musumba and I had formed a civic crusade called Save Bujagali Crusade (SBC).

We wanted to link our effort to a fearless, environmentally focused civil society organisation (CSO) adequately committed to environmental conservation in all the dimensions of the environment (ecological-biological, socioeconomic, sociocultural temporal). Muramuzi was the director of an environmental NGO called National Association of Professional Environmentalists.

The reality now is that of all three people who combated destructive development with reference to Bujagali Dam, I am the only one still alive. Martin Musumba died in 2013.

Now, Frank Muramuzi died today (August 11, 2025)!

As William Shakespeare once said, the world is a stage where we all come, play our different roles and then exit. It was not easy to fight environmental causes in Uganda, because the leaders of Uganda were in love with building a money economy at the expense of nature, people and the environment. Frank Muramuzi was a very courageous and effective leader of the environmental struggles in Uganda Africa and the world.

He quickly agrees that for the struggle against big dams in Uganda, Save Bujagali dam should operate as a project under the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE). Under NAPE, Save Bujagali Crusade became very effective, not only in Uganda but also in the whole world.

Under Muramuzi’s leadership, NAPE extended its influence all over the world as the NGO in Uganda that co fronted political and corporate forces with alternative to destroying nature and the environment.

Here are some of the struggles that Muramuzi led.

• Struggle against Bujagali and other dams.
• Struggle against the use dangerous chemicals to remove the waterweed, water hyacinth from Lake Victoria
• Struggle against destruction of Mabira Rainforest for sugarcane growing
• Struggle against destruction of freshwater resources in western Uganda by oil development
• Struggle against oil palm growing in Kalangala and the rest of Uganda
• Struggle against genetically modified organism
• Struggle against the use of DDT to combat the anopheles mosquito and malaria
• Struggle against the destruction of indigenous agro-ecological systems.
• Struggle against desertification by embracing analogue forestry.
• Struggle to popularise alternative energy resources (biogas, solar, geothermal) in Uganda.

Uganda and the environmental fraternity has lost a fearless, courageous leader who believed that words, environmental knowledge, awareness and  concern alone will not save the environment but ACTION will.

In all the struggles, Frank Muramuzi recognised that the world was now a global village, necessitating that environmental issues generated locally can manifest themselves globally and therefore, all humanity should unite in resolving them. This way he maintained an array of civil society organisations such as Friends of the Earth and International Rivers.

He believed in building a viable network of civil society organisation for the environment. We shall miss his environmental leadership, wisdom and courage.

May Frank Muramuzi’s soul rest in eternal peace!

For God and My Country