Executive Director
Ms Minah Nabirye
Directors
Mr Aussie Mutalya, Ms Juliet Musoke Nazziwa, Ms Nite Tanzarn
Additional staff at the head office
Mr Deo Kawalya
E-mail: adminkd@menhapublishers.com
Additional staff at the branch office
Mr Gilles-Maurice de Schryver
How the company was formed
Menha Publishers (U) Ltd began operating in 2008. The birth of this company was triggered by the need to publish a Lusoga dictionary manuscript, a dictionary for a language which existing publishing companies did not consider worthy of an investment. Lusoga, although spoken by over two million people in the Eastern part of Uganda, had no reputable language reference works and this manuscript was the very first proper record of the language.
With the business realities clear in our minds we chose to focus on the need to have this rare but very valuable manuscript of a mostly oral language turned into print. Since none of the so-called ‘reputable’ publishing companies shared the same sentiment, a new publishing company, Menha Publishers, had to be created to realize the publication of the very first monolingual Lusoga dictionary.
In doing so we were able to contribute to the language policy in Uganda, which urgently requires the production of monolingual reference works to facilitate the teaching and learning of the nine indigenous languages currently used as the mediums of instruction in Lower Primary.
The company has now created two major publication series as the main focus for future publications. The first is the “Dictionary Series”, which focuses on the publication of rare but valuable dictionaries; the second is the “Linguistics Series”, which focuses on research studies in linguistics. One book in each series is now available, i.e. the Eiwanika ly’Olusoga (Nabirye 2009), and A Way with Words (De Schryver 2010).