Last Sunday, Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi celebrated his 71st birthday. As normally happens with his birthday celebrations, the kingdom organised the Kabaka birthday run, which brings together thousands of Baganda and non-Baganda and, most importantly, members of the royal family. While royals like Richard Ssemakookiro and his stepsister, Katrina Ssangalyambogo, are visible figures, the royal twins are rarely seen in public. They were revealed to the public only in 2023 though they were born in 2010. Sixteen years on, questions about them that no one seems able—or willing—to answer are being raised.
What is public knowledge
In March 2023, a quiet revelation from Buganda’s kingdom took Ugandans by surprise: Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi’s wife, Sylvia Nagginda, disclosed—for the first time—in a book that she had been blessed with twins. The public knew nothing about the twin girls: Jade Nakato and Jasmine Babirye.
Ugandans knew Nagginda was a mother of one daughter, Katrina Ssangalyambogo. But they did not know that for 13 years she had carried the title Nnalongo—Luganda for mother of twins. The twins are arguably Buganda’s best kept secret.
What Nagginda wrote (verbatim) about the twins:
On December 6, 2010, I was blessed with two more girls Jade Nakato and Jasmine Babirye, born in Kampala Women’s International Hospital—twins with completely different personalities. They’re two amazing kids who are mostly happy and are passionate about people which, at their age, I find astounding.
A break from a precedent
Royal births in Buganda are not typically private affairs. They are moments of public interest. When Nagginda gave birth to Ssangalyambogo in 2001, the entire Uganda got to know—or at least those who care about news from Buganda. The kingdom officially announced her birth. When Ssemakookiro was born, outside formal marriage, his birth was public knowledge. A photograph of the king holding the prince circulated on social media. By contrast, old photos of Jade and Jasmine got into public domain only in 2023. New photos of them are not common. That means cameras do not get close enough to the twins. It is not merely that they are private; it is that their existence itself was private for over a decade—and their lives remain so even after the 2023 disclosure.
What could explain the silence?
There is no official explanation. That leaves only possibilities, each of which must be treated as is. One is deliberate privacy. Some royal families have chosen to shield children from public life, especially in their early years. In an age of intrusive media and social platforms, that instinct is understandable.
But that explanation raises its own question: why reveal their existence publicly in 2023, only to maintain near invisibility afterward?
Another possibility lies in personal or family considerations. These circumstances, by their nature, are not publicly discussed. Responsible reporting stops short of speculation here. Without evidence, such explanations remain just that: possibilities.
A more grounded explanation may lie in how information flows from the Buganda Kingdom to the public. Much of what is reported about the royal family depends on access to official events, sanctioned appearances and approved communication channels. If the twins are not presented through those channels, they effectively do not exist in the public domain.
In that sense, their invisibility may not be accidental. It may be structured.
Media’s hands-off approach
If the twins’ privacy is unusual, so too is the lack of sustained curiosity about it. Since the 2023 revelation, there has been little visible effort by the media to pursue the story further. Part of the reason is that some journalists think stories about the royal family are taboo. But it may also point to something else: the limits of reporting on institutions that tightly control access. A scarcity of information can easily make silence the default.
The lingering question
The twins’ absence from public view is not a scandal. But it reflects a gap between what is known and what is not. And that gap is unusually wide.
The twins are not rumoured figures or distant relatives. They are acknowledged members of one of Uganda’s most prominent cultural institutions. And yet, beyond their existence, little is publicly known about them.
For media professionals at least, that is what makes the question difficult to ignore: Why are Sylvia Nagginda’s daughters rarely seen in public?
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CORRECTION | Updated April 14, 2026, 17:19: An earlier version of this article stated, in the headline, that Sylvia Nagginda’s twins were “never seen in public”. We have updated the headline and made some edits to reflect the fact that there are some photos of the twins in public view. The substance of the article—that the twins were kept out of public view for 13 years and remain far less visible than other members of the royal family—remains unchanged.
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