How Uganda influenced Zohran Mamdani agenda for New York

From newsrooms in Kampala to a political agenda in New York

How Uganda influenced Zohran Mamdani agenda for New York is a story that stretches from the newsrooms of Kampala to the political battlegrounds of Albany. For Mamdani, a rising figure in New York progressive politics, the core issues that define his platform were forged not in the United States, but during his formative years in Uganda. His resolutely progressive message, focused on lowering the cost of living and addressing deep-seated inequalities through direct government action, carries distinct echoes of conversations and observations from his youth.

Echoes from a Kampala newsroom

When Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a platform of tackling inequality and corruption, Joseph Beyanga, a media manager at Uganda Daily Monitor newspaper, heard a familiar refrain. It took him back almost two decades to conversations with a teenage Mamdani, who was then an intern on the newspaper sports desk.

“Mamdani would sit with me in the production room. He would always ask me, ‘So who is affected by this one? Who pays the price?'” Beyanga recalled in an interview. “He was always interested in how the big picture affects the everyday person.”

That persistent line of questioning, mentors say, revealed an early and fierce interest in economic justice that was rooted in his experiences living in Uganda. Despite a childhood that he himself has described as “privileged,” living in an affluent suburb of Kampala, Mamdani was drawn to understanding the realities of the broader city.

A ground-level perspective

Mark Namanya, a former sports editor at the Daily Monitor, believes that simply living in Uganda left an indelible mark. “Living in Uganda, where we have problems of inequality and corruption – that must have made an impression on him,” Namanya said.

This was not a theoretical interest. Beyanga described a young man who actively sought out authentic experiences. He would eat lunch at a makeshift canteen that served steamed plantains and maize meal porridge to the city working classes and preferred to ride bodas, or motorbike taxis, around Kampala. “He liked life in a simple way, nothing exaggerated,” Beyanga noted.

This grounding gave him a direct understanding of the harsh realities for many. Hannington Muhumuza, a music producer who worked with Mamdani, observed this firsthand. “He has been to all the places, the ghettos, he knows how real life is and how really the average Ugandan is living,” Muhumuza said. “For him, it was always about… how can he uplift them.”

A skeptical worldview and a family history

The influence of Uganda on Mamdani politics extends beyond observational learning to a more profound, structural skepticism of power. Despite his youth, colleagues remembered him having strong, well-formed opinions on major geopolitical topics.

Namanya recalled one specific conversation about foreign aid, a subject Mamdani viewed with deep suspicion. “Zohran was the first person, which is odd because I was older than him, to explain to me how aid to African countries was a sham,” Namanya said, referencing leftist critiques that such systems often benefit donor countries more than their purported beneficiaries.

This perspective is also deeply personal. Mamdani father, the acclaimed academic Mahmood Mamdani, was directly affected by state power. In 1972, his family was among the tens of thousands of people of Asian descent expelled from Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin. This family history of being uprooted by a corrupt and authoritarian regime provides a foundational narrative that informs the younger Mamdani distrust of concentrated power and his focus on protecting the vulnerable from systemic abuse.

From Kampala to a New York agenda

The throughline from his Ugandan experiences to his New York political agenda is clear. His advocacy for policies like universal rent control and social housing mirrors his concern for who “pays the price” in a city with a severe affordability crisis. His relentless focus on economic inequality and a political platform that challenges established power structures reflects the skeptical, ground-level worldview he developed years ago.

The questions he posed in a Kampala newsroom—about cost, consequence, and equity—are the same questions he now brings to the New York State Assembly. For Zohran Mamdani, the journey to defining a progressive vision for New York was fundamentally shaped by the lessons learned and the perspectives gained during his time in Uganda.

Reuters