Shock as Businesswoman Is Found Dead in Bed Hours After Going to Sleep Healthy

Lucy Kalanzi, a young Kampala businesswoman, died peacefully in her sleep on Sunday. Her family confirmed the death, calling it sudden and deeply painful.

Kalanzi had gone to bed in an upstairs room at her Kampala home on Saturday night with no signs of illness. Her children found her unresponsive the following morning. She was buried Wednesday at her ancestral home in Gomba, Sembabule district.

Mourners at her funeral remembered a bold and quietly influential woman whose business reach extended far beyond what most people around her knew. Former Electoral Commission Secretary Sam Rwakojo said Kalanzi once travelled alone to South Sudan to execute a supply deal and, when payment stalled, secured a personal audience with President Salva Kiir to recover her money.

“Lucy managed to meet the president of South Sudan and she got paid,” Rwakojo said. “The president of South Sudan was her friend somehow.”

He said she kept most of her dealings private, even from close family. “She was an entrepreneur of an amazing capacity,” he said, adding that she regularly dealt with senior military officials without telling her mother.

Kalanzi was also an active Phaneroo ministry member who joined early morning street preaching sessions, sometimes leaving home at 5 a.m. When Rwakojo raised concerns, she gave him a straight choice.

“She told me, ‘you have a choice, I can go through a window to a nightclub and you won’t know, or I can go quietly to the streets and preach,'” he recalled. “I thought the streets were safer than a nightclub, so I said let it be.”

Rwakojo remembered her as a friend as much as a daughter. “Lucy was my friend. She was my child but she was also my friend.”