Kanye West's 2018 Visit to Uganda and the Yeezys He Gave Museveni

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West traveled to Uganda in October 2018, arriving the preceding Friday to spend several days filming in Murchison Falls National Park before the trip’s most publicized moment: a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni and his wife, Janet Museveni, at State House in Entebbe. Kanye’s father, Raymond West, accompanied the couple to the meeting.

The exchange of gifts at that meeting drew the most attention. Kanye presented Museveni with an autographed pair of Yeezy sneakers, the shoe line produced through his partnership with Adidas, a gift that read to many observers as an unusual fit for a head of state known for a long, often controversial record in office rather than for sneaker culture. Museveni reciprocated with a book titled “Uganda, Gifted by Nature,” focused on the country’s tourism and natural resources, and the two sides discussed ways to promote Ugandan tourism and the arts during their conversation.

Museveni marked the visit with a ceremonial gesture of his own, giving both Kanye and Kim Kardashian West Ugandan names: Kanye received “Kanyesigye,” meaning roughly “I trust,” while Kim was given “Kemigisha,” translated as “the one with blessings from God.” The naming, along with the broader visit, was covered extensively across both American entertainment outlets and African news organizations, generating a wave of commentary in both directions.

The visit drew criticism from some quarters specifically because of who was hosting it: Museveni, in power since 1986, has a documented record of cracking down on political opposition and dispersing rallies critical of his government, and critics argued that a high-profile celebrity visit risked lending him a friendly international photo opportunity without engaging with that record. The trip nonetheless became one of the more widely circulated instances of an American celebrity’s direct engagement with an African head of state that year, generating attention for Uganda’s tourism sector alongside the controversy over the optics of the meeting itself.