Kari Blackburn

Kari Boto née Blackburn (30 March 1954 – 27 June 2007) was a BBC reporter and senior executive who specialised in Africa. Blackburn was born in Somerset on 30 March 1954 to Irish educationist Robert Blackburn and Esther Archer. She took her A-levels at United World College of the Atlantic and later studied in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge and graduated with First Class Honours. Afterwards, she travelled to Africa to teach in a primary school in Tanzania, returning to Europe in 1977. Blackburn met Tom Boto, her future husband, in London. Boto had fled Uganda to escape the regime of Idi Amin, who came to power through a coup d'état in 1971 (see 1971 Ugandan coup d'état). Blackburn and Boto were married in 1981, and had two children: a daughter and a son. They also adopted a nephew of Boto's as their third child. Blackburn joined the BBC in 1977 as a news trainee, and continued to work for the broadcasting corporation until her death. In...