Alice kayigamba is the Managing Partner of Probity Partners, East Africa . With 15 years of experience, Alice’s journey began within Rwanda’s Criminal Investigation Department, where she served as Legal Advisor at a formative period in the country’s justice reconstruction. There, she ensured that investigations, interrogations, and arrests met constitutional and international human rights standards embedding due process within law enforcement practice.
She later took on one of the most sensitive mandates in Rwanda’s prosecutorial history: as part of a team coordinating the Genocide Fugitive Tracking Unit at the National Public Prosecution Authority. In that role, she worked across borders to facilitate arrests, extraditions, and cooperation with international justice mechanisms, contributing to global accountability efforts for genocide crimes.
But it is in her sustained defense of the vulnerable that her influence is most deeply felt.
For over a decade, she has represented refugees, journalists, activists, and human rights defenders often in politically sensitive and high-risk cases. As one of a select group of human rights defenders in East Africa, she is trusted with complex litigation involving freedom of expression, preventive detention, minority rights, and access to justice. Her partnership with legal aid institutions and collaboration with UNHCR have ensured that displaced persons and marginalized communities are not left voiceless within the legal system.
A member of the leadership council of the Rwanda Bar Association and a founding member of the Young Lawyers Association of Rwanda (AJAR), she contributes actively to legal reform, professional standards, and Rwanda’s Universal Periodic Review processes. Her work reflects a rare combination of courtroom excellence, policy engagement, and regional human rights advocacy.
Alice Umulisa Kayigamba represents a generation of African women lawyers who are not only practicing law but shaping its moral direction. Her influence lies not merely in positions held, but in lives defended, institutions strengthened, and justice pursued with principled resolve.
