Lucy Muyoyeta
Lucy Mutumba Muyoyeta is a Zambian women's rights activist, social development consultant and writer. She has worked at Zambian organisations including Women for Change, Opportunity Zambia and the Non-Governmental Co-ordinating Committee, and for international organisations including the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, Oxfam, Action Aid International and Comic Relief.
Background
Muoyeta is a Zambian women's rights activist and social development consultant. She is polylingual and speaks Lozi, Tonga, Tumbuka and English. She holds a bachelor's degree in political science and government from the University of Zambia and a master's degree in rural sociology from the University of Reading in England.Career
From 1994 to 1998, Muoyeta worked as Oxfam's Zambian representative. During this employment she travelled to a meeting of the International Monetary Fund to deliver over 1,500 letters to Kenneth Clarke MP, then the British chancellor of the exchequer, and call for debt relief for African nations.Muoyeta then worked as executive director at Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa from 1999 to 2004. She also served as the chair of Women for Change in Zambia and on the board of the Non-Governmental Coordinating Committee. She has also worked as Oasis Forum spokesperson and with the Women's Development Network.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Muoyeta condemned the United States and Britain's unilateral decision to take military action against Iraq without a United Nations sanction in place. That year, she also criticised then President of Zambia Levy Mwanawasa's comments that women's attitudes hindered gender equality.
In 2006, Muoyeta criticised how the number of women in decision-making positions was very low in Zambia, as well as how both the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and Zambian gender and development declaration targets had not been met. She also spoke about the need for social sectors to be improved in Zambia, to support a sustained reduction in poverty alongside the country's economic growth and urged local journalists to fight the marginalisation of women.
From 2006 to 2010 Muoyeta was country director at Action Aid International. From 2012 to 2016, she held the position of project director at the Norwegian Disability Consortium/Opportunity Zambia.
Since 2022, Muoyeta has worked as a Project Lead at Comic Relief.