01
Counsel
Boutique legal practice through Nabasa & Co. Advocates: public law, corporate governance and compliance, real estate, commercial disputes, arbitration, and high-stakes transactions.
Advocate · Governance Architect · Leadership Steward
Pheona Nabasa Wall
Senior Counsel. Managing Partner of Nabasa & Co. Advocates. Executive Director of the Fidelis Leadership Institute. Past President of the Uganda Law Society. Building institutions, defending the rule of law, and raising ethical leaders for Africa.
Faithful
Available
Teachable
SCRank of Senior Counsel, 2022
17thPresident, Uganda Law Society
216m €High-value contract negotiation
23Legal aid clinics grown from 11
Profile
A Lawyer Who Builds Institutions, Not Only Arguments.
Pheona Nabasa Gladys Wall was born and raised in Jinja, first-born of three. A Uganda Commercial Bank scholarship took her to Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga after she emerged as the best PLE student in the Eastern Region. She read Law at Makerere University on government scholarship, completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice at the Law Development Centre, and earned a Master in Management at Makerere.
She is an Advocate of the High Court of Uganda, a Commissioner for Oaths, a Chartered Mediator and Arbitrator (MCIArb), and one of the relatively few Ugandan advocates elevated to the rank of Senior Counsel. She combines a corporate legal practice with board-level governance work and a public vocation: access to justice, ethical leadership, and the rule of law.
She now leads two complementary platforms: Nabasa & Co. Advocates and the Fidelis Leadership Institute. The record of how she arrived there is below.
She is a Christian, a wife, and a mother of three. Her working mantra — Faithful, Available, Teachable — is both a personal ethic and the operating system of the institutions she builds.
Senior Counsel
MCIArb
Chartered Mediator
Commissioner for Oaths
Executive Coach
ESG & Governance Advisor
How the work is organised
Three Public Pillars. One Standard of Character.
Counsel. Leadership. Impact. That is how the market already meets her.
02
Leadership
Executive coaching, board training, and the Fidelis Leadership Institute — raising a critical mass of ethical, visionary leaders under the F.A.T. ethic.
03
Impact
Access to justice, legal aid expansion, public interest litigation, youth and women leadership, and board service that protects the vulnerable and strengthens institutions.
Services
What Clients, Boards and Institutions Retain Her For.
Work is delivered through Nabasa & Co. Advocates (Plot 61 Kanjokya Street, Kamwokya) and the Fidelis Leadership Institute. Engagements are confidential, commercially literate, and ethically anchored.
Legal Counsel & Transactions
Technically rigorous advice that still has to work in a boardroom and on a construction site.
- Infrastructure, construction and PPP advisory
- Banking, financial services and insurance risk
- Mergers, acquisitions and company secretarial work
- Public law, regulatory compliance and labour
- Real estate, business and company registration
- Commercial litigation, arbitration and ADR
Board Governance & ESG
Training and advisory for boards that must hold risk, reputation and purpose at the same time.
- Board induction, evaluation and governance audits
- Risk committee design and oversight
- ESG integration for African institutions
- Policy, regulatory and stakeholder strategy
- Change management in public institutions
Executive Coaching & Teaching
Through Fidelis: F.A.T. Fellowship, masterclasses, executive coaching and bespoke legal programmes.
- F.A.T. Leadership Fellowship
- Executive coaching for directors and counsel
- Masterclasses on leadership and governance
- Competition law, arbitration, legislative drafting
- Data protection, privacy and cyber modules
Speaking & Public Leadership
Keynotes and panels on the rule of law, women in leadership, business continuity, and ethical power.
- Rule of law and access to justice
- Women lawyers, power and purpose
- Election-period business continuity
- Youth advocacy and civic leadership
- Institution-building in turbulent times
Professional record
Selected Achievements, in Sequence.
Compiled from public records, her firm, the Uganda Law Society, PALU, Fidelis Leadership Institute, and contemporaneous reporting. Dates reflect the best available public sources.
Formative
Jinja to Namagunga to Makerere
Best PLE student in the Eastern Region; UCB scholarship to Mount Saint Mary’s College Namagunga; government scholarship for LLB at Makerere; early service as Outreach Secretary of the Law School Fellowship and volunteer at the LDC Legal Aid Clinic.
2009–14
In-House Counsel and Public Relations
Head of Public Relations and legal member of the Contracts Committee at NWSC, including loan negotiations and infrastructure work. Later Head of Public Relations at Airtel Uganda during the Warid merger, Cranes sponsorship, Airtel Rising Stars and Arsenal partnership. Returned to NWSC as Senior Manager, Legal Services from June 2014. Earlier private practice at Tumusiime Kabega and Beyaraza Wagabaza.
2016–20
ULS Officer and Legal Aid Builder
Honorary Secretary of the Uganda Law Society (2016), then Vice President and Chair of the Legal Aid and Pro Bono Project. Lecturer of Law at Kampala International University; Patron of the KIU Law Society. Clinic growth and legal-aid outcomes are set out under Advocacy.
2020–22
17th President, Uganda Law Society
Elected 13 September 2020 with 441 votes. Led the Bar through COVID-19, argued for lawyers as essential workers, defended those detained under pandemic directives, began construction of the ULS House, observed elections, and worked to place lawyers in underserved rural areas. Fourth woman to hold the presidency.
2021–
Fidelis Leadership Institute
Founded and serves as Executive Director of FLI, a training institute whose mission is to raise ethical and visionary leaders. Programmes include the F.A.T. Fellowship, executive coaching, youth empowerment, and partnerships such as the Public Interest Litigation Compendium with KAS Uganda and youth advocacy training with the French Embassy.
2022–
Senior Counsel and Continental Office
Conferred the rank of Senior Counsel. Served as Secretary General of the Pan African Lawyers Union (2022–2025 term). Continues as Managing Partner of Nabasa & Co. Advocates.
2023–24
League of East African Directors
Appointed first CEO of LEAD in March 2023. Public accounts record that membership was tripled before she stepped down in December 2024 to concentrate on private practice and Fidelis.
HiiL Talent to WatchHague Institute for Innovation of Law, 2018
New Vision 40 Under 402018 and 2020
Élysées Peace AwardFrench-German award for rule-of-law work, 2021
Africa’s Top 50 LeadersAfrican Law Tech Festival, 2020
ICGU recognitionQuality Assurance Expert, 2022
EALS In-house CounselFirst Trend-setter Award, 2023
Boards & affiliations
Where the Fiduciary Work Sits Today.
Current and recent appointments drawn from public biographies, LinkedIn, firm materials and institutional pages. Always confirm live mandates before publication on letterhead.
Current
Nabasa & Co. Advocates
Managing Partner / Senior Partner
Current
Fidelis Leadership Institute
Founder & Executive Director
Current
UWEAL
Vice Chairperson; Audit & Risk Committee
Current
Guaranty Trust Bank
Chair, Risk Committee
Current
Liberty General Insurance
Non-Executive Director
Current
SOS Children’s Villages
Member, Board of Directors
Current
East African Business Council
Non-Executive Director / Goodwill Ambassador
Recent
Pan African Lawyers Union
Secretary General, 2022–2025
Recent
Judiciary Council
Council Member
Also served on or with: Zamara Retirement Fund (Registered Trustee), ICAMEK, CADER, JLOS Steering Committee, East African Law Society Governing Council, Public Relations Association of Uganda, Teach for Uganda, Fields of Life, Water FC, Future Investments Group, East African Young Water Professionals, Efficacy Methodology Advisory Council, and FIDA, IBA, ICGU, PRAU memberships.
Skills
A Dual Fluency: Law and Stewardship.
LawPublic law, commercial contracts, labour, infrastructure and construction, oil and gas adjacency, litigation strategy
DisputesArbitration, mediation, ADR design, high-value negotiation including a 216 million euro mandate
GovernanceBoard training, company secretarial practice, risk committees, regulatory compliance
LeadershipInstitutional turnaround, crisis leadership, executive coaching, change management
Public voicePublic relations, stakeholder management, media rights advocacy, policy commentary
ESGBoardroom ESG integration, ethical leadership systems, sustainability governance
AccessLegal aid architecture, SGBV response, rural lawyer deployment, public interest litigation
TeachingUniversity lecturing, fellowship design, masterclasses, youth leadership programmes
Advocacy impact
Get Lawyers to the People Who Cannot Pay. Keep Lawyers Free Enough to Speak.
The public brief runs from the LDC Legal Aid Clinic as a student (2003–2006) through the Legal Aid Project of ULS, a pandemic presidency, and the 2025 public-interest litigation compendium. What can be counted is listed first. What remains unfinished is listed last.
11 → 23Legal aid clinics while she chaired the Legal Aid Project
517,921People reached by LAP, 2018–2023 (ULS annual report)
82,099Beneficiaries in 2023 — 46,187 of them directly represented or advised
24Landmark PIL cases collected in the 2025 constitutional compendium
01 · Access
Legal Aid as National Infrastructure
As Vice President and Chair of the Legal Aid and Pro Bono Project (2018–2020) she grew the clinic map from eleven towns to twenty-three, stood up an SGBV call centre, and regionalised Pro Bono Day so the free-lawyers calendar was no longer a Kampala event.
ULS still operates that network. In 2023 the project reached 82,099 people — 46,187 through representation, advice or mediation; 35,912 through rights awareness. Across 2018–2023 the cumulative figure is 517,921.
IDLO’s Community Justice Programme, working through a subset of the clinics, recorded 10,423 vulnerable clients in 2022, including land recoveries of 154 acres for 34 complainants and family-maintenance settlements that kept children housed.
KampalaLuziraJinjaLuweroMasindiKabaleKabaroleMbararaGuluPaderKitgumAruaYumbeMoyoAmuriaKaberamaidoSorotiAbimKotidoMorotoNakapiripiritNabilatukAmudat
02 · Crisis
The Pandemic Bar
In April 2020, still Vice President, she argued on camera that advocates were essential workers — not as a guild privilege, but because lockdown produced illegal detention, unpaid bail, a collapse of family-law process and a spike in gender-based violence while clinic staff could not travel.
As President she put a task force around people arrested for violating pandemic directives, advised government on the legal side of the emergency, and tried to hold a divided profession together long enough to do that work. The French and German embassies gave her the 2021 Élysées Peace and Reconciliation Award for rule-of-law work in those months.
She has never claimed the gap closed. With about 2,800 lawyers doing some free work, the ratio was still one lawyer to roughly 19,000 people. Hiil’s figure that only about five percent of Ugandans could reach court sat next to court arrears she put at Shs 8 trillion then — later described as Shs 20–22 trillion.
03 · Defenders
Defending Defenders, and the People They Defend
In the Commonwealth Lawyers Association essay Forged by fire she listed the institutional work of the presidency: a task force to protect members from persecution; rescues of members from wrongful imprisonment; ULS as an election observer; and new working relationships with CID, PSFU, UPDF and the Kingdom of Buganda to push legal services beyond Kampala.
- ULS represented Kakwenza Rukirabashaija in court.
- She said the Society was, at that moment, the only institutional statement on torture, and sent a briefing paper to the new Minister of Justice.
- When families brought names of the disappeared, “we found them and we defended them.”
- On Bugoma Forest and a health matter, ULS went to court once the public brought facts that could support a pleading.
The method is deliberate: take instructions the Bar can actually plead, spend members’ money only on cases that can survive, and treat public-interest litigation as a craft, not a slogan.
04 · Civic space
Media Houses and the Right to Be Heard
ULS records among her professional roles that she advocated for the reopening of Nation Media Group’s NTV and KFM. The same brief appears in the Nile Post interview titled with her line: “You can’t be democratic when you silence people.”
Lawyers as essential in a crackdown. Journalists as people who need a Bar that will show up. A refusal of the claim that a state can close stations and still call itself a process state.
05 · Constitution
Public Interest Litigation as Culture
As President she used the Society as plaintiff or intervener when the facts were good enough. After the presidency, through Fidelis and partners including Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, she helped produce a compendium of 24 landmark PIL cases, launched on 7 October 2025 on the eve of the Constitution’s thirtieth anniversary.
The point she gave CEPA was pedagogical: Uganda does not lack precedents. It lacks a shared tutorial of which cases actually moved the constitutional needle. That is advocacy aimed at the next generation of pleaders, not at a single respondent.
06 · The profession
The Bar as Legal Infrastructure
If the Society is divided, rural, unpaid and afraid, clinics do not hold. Interior reforms were therefore part of the advocacy, not a distraction from it.
- First in-house / government lawyer elected ULS President in Africa — changing who the Society thought it represented.
- An executive she later described as fifty-fifty women.
- Mentorship series for young lawyers; medical insurance, vaccination, office-space and mental-health work during COVID.
- Start of the ULS House.
- Anti-sexual-harassment policy and a rule-of-law symposium on sexual misconduct in the profession.
- The campaign promise that ULS would be a “defender of defenders” for young lawyers delayed at enrolment, harassed, or falsely charged.
Limits of the record
What This Page Does Not Claim
Legal aid remains donor-fragile. After the Democratic Governance Facility wound down, ULS itself warned that clinic staff and services were at risk. Expansion under her chairmanship is real; permanence is not guaranteed.
Rural scarcity of advocates was a stated priority. Encouraging Kampala firms “upcountry” is policy, not a completed redistribution. PIL wins are episodic; she has said ULS should not sue on thin air, which means some public demands never become cases. Court backlog and the five-percent access figure were not reversed by any one presidency.
Her later High Court challenge to ULS over the Judicial Service Commission nomination — quashed as an unfair hearing — is advocacy for due process inside the profession. It is not a substitute for structural justice reform.
Through-line. From the LDC clinic as a student to chairing LAP, to the presidency in a pandemic election year, to the PIL compendium in 2025: get lawyers to the people who cannot pay, keep lawyers free enough to speak, and use public-interest cases only when they can actually move the Constitution. The Élysées award, the Hiil “Talent to Watch” citation and Senior Counsel in 2022 recognise that brief. The twenty-three clinics and the half-million people through LAP between 2018 and 2023 are the part you can count.
Gallery
Activity Photographs as Testimony.
Public moments from the work — the Bar, legal education, awards, boards and civic training. Captions describe the occasion, not a pose.
CSR & public purpose
Impact Is Not a Side Page. It Is Part of the Practice.
CSR sits beside the practice: Fidelis, UWEAL and SOS Children’s Villages. The legal-aid and PIL record lives under Advocacy.
Ethical Leadership Pipeline
Fidelis Leadership Institute grows Faithful, Available and Teachable leaders — from school-age programmes to executive coaching. Partners have included the French Embassy and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Legal-aid and rule-of-law work is told on the Advocacy page, not repeated here.
Women, Children and Enterprise
Board service at UWEAL and SOS Children’s Villages, and membership of FIDA. The public brief is the economic and legal empowerment of women and the protection of children.
News & writing
LinkedIn Articles and Public Notes.
Long-form pieces published on LinkedIn, with companion essays on the Fidelis Leadership Institute site. Open any card to read the original.
The Board’s Critical Role in Promoting Talent, Succession, and Leadership Development in East Africa
On how East African boards should treat talent, succession and leadership development as fiduciary work in a region shaped by integration and digital disruption.
Read on LinkedIn →Uganda’s FY 2026/27 Budget: Time for Honest Reforms
A Fidelis-framed reading of the national budget: what the numbers imply for governance, honesty in public finance, and the quality of leadership required to deliver them.
Read on LinkedIn →EBA Lowers the ESG Burden with Simplified Guidelines — Game Changer for African Banks?
The European Banking Authority’s final ESG-risk guidelines, and what a lighter, clearer European standard could mean for African banks and boards that already sit in correspondent-banking chains.
Read the Pulse article →Your Pain Point Is Your Leadership Platform
A leadership essay arguing that the difficulty a leader would rather hide is often the mandate from which authority, teaching and reform actually grow.
Read on LinkedIn →Leadership: A Factor of Production
Treats leadership the way economics treats land, labour and capital — as an input that either multiplies or wastes every other resource an institution holds.
Read on LinkedIn →When the World Stood Still, She Stood Up
Institute for African Women in Law profile of her Uganda Law Society presidency — pandemic leadership, a divided Bar, and access to justice — which she shared from her own feed.
See the LinkedIn share →Competition Law and Consumer Protection for Women Lawyers
Preview of her FIDA Uganda CLE on competition and consumer protection as tools of economic justice for women-led businesses and vulnerable consumers.
Open the LinkedIn post →Chief Guest, Makerere Law Society Sports Gala
Notes from serving as Chief Guest as the 54th and 55th law classes met the alumni side — sport as wellness, grit and a shared Makerere legacy.
Open the LinkedIn post →Seven Days to the JSC Polls
Public note of her candidacy for the Uganda Law Society seat on the Judicial Service Commission, with voting on 18 October 2025.
Open the LinkedIn post →Uganda Hosts EALS 2024
Welcome as conference co-chair to the East Africa Law Society gathering at Speke Resort Munyonyo on AI, sustainability and cross-border practice.
Open the LinkedIn post →Why ESG Is the New Boardroom Imperative for Africa
Full-length companion essay published through Fidelis: ESG as strategy and risk, not philanthropy, in Lagos, Kampala, Nairobi and Johannesburg boardrooms.
Read on Fidelis →YouTube
Interviews and Clips from Her Own Channel.
Interviews and working remarks — not campaign films. Drawn from youtube.com/@PheonaWall and from broadcast interviews in which she speaks in her own voice.
Crystal 1 on 1 — Origin, Name, Scholarship and the Making of a Bar President
The fullest personal interview on tape: Jinja, Namagunga, the Wall name, radio, law and why she ran.
The Journey of Being Faithful, Available, Teachable
Monica Amoding hosts the then President Emeritus through the F.A.T. ethic that now names Fidelis.
Uganda’s Three Decades of Public Interest Litigation
Reflections on PIL, legal aid reach and what it still costs ordinary Ugandans to get into court.
The President’s Journey, Part One
How she moved from Secretary to Vice President to the presidency because the Bar needed a different face and a different heart.
First Television Interview as ULS President
On an all-female executive, lost glory after 2005, and a Bar that must speak for people without a voice.
Vice President on COVID-19
The April 2020 appeal for lawyers as essential workers — bail, GBV and legal aid clinics that could not move.
African Bar Association Congress, Malawi
Address as ULS President to the continental Bar.
Why Governance Matters Inside a Law Firm
Client accounts, data protection, tax and the sellability of a practice that is properly built.
Urban Today, Part B — Women, PIL and the Rule of Law
Checkpoint conversation on women in the profession, public interest litigation and whether judgments are implemented.
Talking to Youth About Leadership
October 2022 ABLI Youth Forum: mentorship, purpose and what you already have in your hands.