Uganda

—Ugandan, adj., n.

/yooh gan"deuh, ooh gahn"-/, n.

an independent state in E Africa, between the NE Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya: member of the Commonwealth of Nations; formerly a British protectorate. 20,604,874; 91,065 sq. mi. (241,068 sq. km). Cap.: Kampala.

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Uganda

Introduction Uganda -
Background: Uganda achieved independence from the UK in 1962. The dictatorial regime of Idi AMIN (1971-79) was responsible for the deaths of some 300,000 opponents; guerrilla war and human rights abuses under Milton OBOTE (1980-85) claimed another 100,000 lives. During the 1990s the government promulgated non-party presidential and legislative elections. Geography Uganda
Location: Eastern Africa, west of Kenya
Geographic coordinates: 1 00 N, 32 00 E
Map references: Africa
Area: total: 236,040 sq km water: 36,330 sq km land: 199,710 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly smaller than Oregon
Land boundaries: total: 2,698 km border countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo 765 km, Kenya 933 km, Rwanda 169 km, Sudan 435 km, Tanzania 396 km
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)
Maritime claims: none (landlocked)
Climate: tropical; generally rainy with two dry seasons (December to February, June to August); semiarid in northeast
Terrain: mostly plateau with rim of mountains
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Lake Albert 621 m highest point: Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley 5,110 m
Natural resources: copper, cobalt, hydropower, limestone, salt, arable land
Land use: arable land: 25.34% permanent crops: 8.77% other: 65.89% (1998 est.)
Irrigated land: 90 sq km (1998 est.)
Natural hazards: NA Environment - current issues: draining of wetlands for agricultural use; deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; water hyacinth infestation in Lake Victoria; poaching is widespread Environment - international party to: Biodiversity, Climate
agreements: Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Life Conservation, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands signed, but not ratified: Environmental Modification
Geography - note: landlocked; fertile, well-watered country with many lakes and rivers People Uganda -
Population: 24,699,073 note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2002 est.)
Age structure: 0-14 years: 50.9% (male 6,314,371; female 6,265,681) 15-64 years: 47% (male 5,803,430; female 5,789,713) 65 years and over: 2.1% (male 247,798; female 278,080) (2002 est.)
Population growth rate: 2.94% (2002 est.)
Birth rate: 47.15 births/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Death rate: 17.53 deaths/1,000 population (2002 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.28 migrant(s)/1,000 population note: according to the UNHCR, by the end of 2001, Uganda was host to 178,815 refugees from a number of neighboring countries, including: Sudan 155,996, Rwanda 14,375, and Democratic Republic of the Congo 7,459 (2002 est.)
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.89 male(s)/ female total population: 1 male(s)/female (2002 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 89.35 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.) Life expectancy at birth: total population: 43.81 years female: 44.67 years (2002 est.) male: 42.97 years
Total fertility rate: 6.8 children born/woman (2002 est.) HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: 6.1% (2001 est.) HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/ 1.1 million (2001 est.)
AIDS:
HIV/AIDS - deaths: 110,000 (1999 est.)
Nationality: noun: Ugandan(s) adjective: Ugandan
Ethnic groups: Baganda 17%, Ankole 8%, Basoga 8%, Iteso 8%, Bakiga 7%, Langi 6%, Rwanda 6%, Bagisu 5%, Acholi 4%, Lugbara 4%, Batoro 3%, Bunyoro 3%, Alur 2%, Bagwere 2%, Bakonjo 2%, Jopodhola 2%, Karamojong 2%, Rundi 2%, non-African (European, Asian, Arab) 1%, other 8%
Religions: Roman Catholic 33%, Protestant 33%, Muslim 16%, indigenous beliefs 18%
Languages: English (official national language, taught in grade schools, used in courts of law and by most newspapers and some radio broadcasts), Ganda or Luganda (most widely used of the Niger-Congo languages, preferred for native language publications in the capital and may be taught in school), other Niger-Congo languages, Nilo-Saharan languages, Swahili, Arabic
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 62.7% male: 74% female: 54% (2000 est.) Government Uganda -
Country name: conventional long form: Republic of Uganda conventional short form: Uganda
Government type: republic
Capital: Kampala Administrative divisions: 45 districts; Adjumani, Apac, Arua, Bugiri, Bundibugyo, Bushenyi, Busia, Gulu, Hoima, Iganga, Jinja, Kabale, Kabarole, Kalangala, Kampala, Kamuli, Kapchorwa, Kasese, Katakwi, Kibale, Kiboga, Kisoro, Kitgum, Kotido, Kumi, Lira, Luwero, Masaka, Masindi, Mbale, Mbarara, Moroto, Moyo, Mpigi, Mubende, Mukono, Nakasongola, Nebbi, Ntungamo, Pallisa, Rakai, Rukungiri, Sembabule, Soroti, Tororo note: there may be eleven more districts: Kaberamaido, Kamwenge, Kanungu, Kayunga, Kyenjojo, Mayngc, Nakapiripiti, Pader, Sironko, Wakiso, Yumbe
Independence: 9 October 1962 (from UK)
National holiday: Independence Day, 9 October (1962)
Constitution: 8 October 1995; adopted by the interim, 284-member Constituent Assembly, charged with debating the draft constitution that had been proposed in May 1993; the Constituent Assembly was dissolved upon the promulgation of the constitution in October 1995
Legal system: in 1995, the government restored the legal system to one based on English common law and customary law; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations
Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal
Executive branch: chief of state: President Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta MUSEVENI (since seizing power 29 January 1986); note - the president is both chief of state and head of government head of government: President Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta MUSEVENI (since seizing power 29 January 1986); Prime Minister Apollo NSIBAMBI (since 5 April 1999); note - the president is both chief of state and head of government; the prime minister assists the president in the supervision of the cabinet cabinet: Cabinet appointed by the president from among elected legislators election results: Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta MUSEVENI elected president; percent of vote - Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta MUSEVENI 69.3%, Kizza BESIGYE 27.8% elections: president reelected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 12 March 2001 (next to be held NA 2006); note - first popular election for president since independence in 1962 was held in 1996; prime minister appointed by the president
Legislative branch: unicameral National Assembly (303 members - 214 directly elected by popular vote, 81 nominated by legally established special interest groups [women 56, army 10, disabled 5, youth 5, labor 5], 8 ex officio members; members serve five-year terms) election results: percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - NA; note - election campaigning by party was not permitted elections: last held 26 June 2001 (next to be held May or June 2006);
Judicial branch: Court of Appeal (judges are appointed by the president and approved by the legislature); High Court (judges are appointed by the president) Political parties and leaders: only one political organization, the National Resistance Movement or NRM [President MUSEVENI, chairman] is allowed to operate unfettered; note - the president maintains that the NRM is not a political party, but a movement which claims the loyalty of all Ugandans note: the new constitution requires the suspension of political parties while the Movement organization is in governance; of the political parties that exist but are prohibited from sponsoring candidates, the most important are the Ugandan People's Congress or UPC [Milton OBOTE]; Democratic Party or DP [Paul SSEMOGERERE]; Conservative Party or CP [Joshua S. MAYANJA- NKANGI]; Justice Forum [Muhammad Kibirige MAYANJA]; and National Democrats Forum [Chapaa KARUHANGA] Political pressure groups and NA
leaders: International organization ACP, AfDB, C, CCC, EADB, ECA, FAO,
participation: G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICFTU, ICRM, IDA, IDB, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, IGAD, ILO, IMF, Interpol, IOC, IOM, ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OAU, OIC, OPCW, PCA, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO Diplomatic representation in the US: chief of mission: Ambassador Edith Grace SSEMPALA FAX: [1] [phone] telephone: [1] [phone] through 7102, 0416 chancery: 5911 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20011 Diplomatic representation from the chief of mission: Ambassador Martin
US: G. BRENNAN embassy: Ggaba, Plot 1577, Kampala mailing address: P. O. Box 7007, Kampala telephone: [256] (41) 259791 through 259795 FAX: [256] (41) 259794
Flag description: six equal horizontal bands of black (top), yellow, red, black, yellow, and red; a white disk is superimposed at the center and depicts a red-crested crane (the national symbol) facing the hoist side Economy Uganda
Economy - overview: Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper and cobalt. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing over 80% of the work force. Coffee is the major export crop and accounts for the bulk of export revenues. Since 1986, the government - with the support of foreign countries and international agencies - has acted to rehabilitate and stabilize the economy by undertaking currency reform, raising producer prices on export crops, increasing prices of petroleum products, and improving civil service wages. The policy changes are especially aimed at dampening inflation and boosting production and export earnings. During 1990- 2001, the economy turned in a solid performance based on continued investment in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, improved incentives for production and exports, reduced inflation, gradually improved domestic security, and the return of exiled Indian-Ugandan entrepreneurs. Ongoing Ugandan involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, corruption within the government, and slippage in the government's determination to press reforms raise doubts about the continuation of strong growth. In 2000, Uganda qualified for enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief worth $1.3 billion and Paris Club debt relief worth $145 million. These amounts combined with the original HIPC debt relief added up to about $2 billion. Growth for 2001 was held back because of a continued decline in the price of coffee, Uganda's principal export.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $29 billion (2001 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 5.1% (2001 est.)
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $1,200 (2001 est.) GDP - composition by sector: agriculture: 44% industry: 18% services: 38% (2000 est.) Population below poverty line: 35% (2001 est.) Household income or consumption by lowest 10%: 4%
percentage share: highest 10%: 21% (2000) Distribution of family income - Gini 37.4 (1996)
index: Inflation rate (consumer prices): 3.5% (2001 est.)
Labor force: 12 million (2001 est.) Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 82%, industry 5%, services 13% (1999 est.)
Unemployment rate: NA%
Budget: revenues: $959 million expenditures: $1.04 billion, including capital expenditures of $NA (FY98/99 est.)
Industries: sugar, brewing, tobacco, cotton textiles, cement Industrial production growth rate: 7% (1999) Electricity - production: 1.599 billion kWh (2000) Electricity - production by source: fossil fuel: 0.94% hydro: 99.06% other: 0% (2000) nuclear: 0% Electricity - consumption: 1.314 billion kWh (2000)
Electricity - exports: 174 million kWh (2000)
Electricity - imports: 1 million kWh (2000)
Agriculture - products: coffee, tea, cotton, tobacco, cassava (tapioca), potatoes, corn, millet, pulses; beef, goat meat, milk, poultry, cut flowers
Exports: $367 million (f.o.b., 2001)
Exports - commodities: coffee, fish and fish products, tea; gold, cotton, flowers, horticultural products
Exports - partners: Germany 12.0%, Netherlands 10.2%, US 8.7%, Spain 8.0%, Belgium 7.1% (2000)
Imports: $1.26 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
Imports - commodities: capital equipment, vehicles, petroleum, medical supplies; cereals
Imports - partners: Kenya 43.1%, US 7.0%, India 6.8%, South Africa 6.1%, Japan 3.4% (2000)
Debt - external: $3.4 billion (2001 est.) Economic aid - recipient: $1.4 billion (2000)
Currency: Ugandan shilling (UGX)
Currency code: UGX
Exchange rates: Ugandan shillings per US dollar - 1,738.7 (January 2002), 1,755.7 (2001), 1,644.5 (2000), 1,454.8 (1999), 1,240.2 (1998), 1,083.0 (1997)
Fiscal year: 1 July - 30 June Communications Uganda - Telephones - main lines in use: 50,074; however, 80,868 main lines have been installed (1998) Telephones - mobile cellular: 9,000 (1998)
Telephone system: general assessment: seriously inadequate; two cellular systems have been introduced, but a sharp increase in the number of main lines is essential; e-mail and Internet services are available domestic: intercity traffic by wire, microwave radio relay, and radiotelephone communication stations, fixed and mobile cellular systems for short range traffic international: satellite earth stations - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean) and 1 Inmarsat; analog links to Kenya and Tanzania Radio broadcast stations: AM 7, FM 33, shortwave 2 (2001)
Radios: 5 million (2001) Television broadcast stations: 8 (plus one low-power repeater) (2001)
Televisions: 500,000 (2001)
Internet country code: .ug Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 2 (2000)
Internet users: 25,000 (2000) Transportation Uganda -
Railways: total: 1,241 km narrow gauge: 1,241 km 1.000-m gauge note: a program to rehabilitate the railroad is underway (2001)
Highways: total: 27,000 km paved: 1,800 km unpaved: 25,200 km (of which about 4,200 km are all-weather roads) (1990)
Waterways: Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, Lake Kyoga, Lake George, Lake Edward, Victoria Nile, Albert Nile
Ports and harbors: Entebbe, Jinja, Port Bell
Merchant marine: total: 3 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 5,091 GRT/8,229 DWT ships by type: roll on/roll off 3 note: these ships are in cargo and passenger (ferry) service on Uganda's inland waterways (2002 est.)
Airports: 27 (2001) Airports - with paved runways: total: 4 over 3,047 m: 3 1,524 to 2,437 m: 1 (2001) Airports - with unpaved runways: total: 23 2,438 to 3,047 m: 1 1,524 to 2,437 m: 6 914 to 1,523 m: 9 under 914 m: 7 (2001) Military Uganda -
Military branches: Ugandan Peoples' Defense Force (including Army, Marine unit, Air Wing) Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 5,302,787 (2002 est.) Military manpower - fit for military males age 15-49: 2,879,083 (2002
service: est.) Military expenditures - dollar $121.3 million (FY01)
figure: Military expenditures - percent of 2.1% (FY01)
GDP: Transnational Issues Uganda - Disputes - international: Tutsi, Hutu, and other ethnic groups, political rebels, and various government forces continue fighting in Great Lakes region, transcending the boundaries of Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda

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officially Republic of Uganda

Country, eastern Africa.

Area: 93,070 sq mi (241,040 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 23,301,000. Capital: Kampala. Uganda is home to dozens of African ethnic groups, as well as a small Asian community. Languages: English (official), Swahili. Religions: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and traditional religions. Currency: Ugandan shilling. A landlocked country on the Equator, Uganda is largely situated on a plateau, with volcanic mountains edging its eastern and western borders; Mount Elgon is the highest peak. Part of Lake Victoria occupies virtually all of southeastern Uganda; other major lakes are Lakes Albert, Kyoga, Edward, George, and Bisina. The Nile River traverses it. Huge tracts of land are devoted to national parks and game reserves. The economy is based largely on agriculture and food processing. Livestock raising and fishing are also important, and there is some manufacturing and mining. Uganda is a republic with one legislative house; its head of state and government is the president. By the 19th century the region comprised several separate kingdoms inhabited by various Bantu-and Nilotic-speaking peoples. Arab traders reached the area in the 1840s. The native kingdom of Buganda was visited by the first European explorers in 1862. Protestant and Catholic missionaries arrived in the 1870s, and the development of religious factions led to persecution and civil strife. In 1894 Buganda was formally proclaimed a British protectorate. As Uganda, it gained its independence in 1962, and in 1967 it adopted a republican constitution. The civilian government was overthrown in 1971 and replaced by a military regime under Idi Amin. His invasion of Tanzania in late 1978 resulted in the collapse of his regime. The civilian government was again deposed by the military in 1985, but the military government was in turn overthrown in 1986. A constituent assembly enacted a new constitution in 1995.

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▪ 2009

Area:

241,551 sq km (93,263 sq mi)

Population

(2008 est.): 29,166,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      January 2008 saw streams of Kenyans— refugees from the killings that followed the disputed 2007 presidential election—pour across Uganda's southeastern border. The violence in Kenya ruptured transportation links from the port of Mombasa, prompting the Ugandan government to seek an alternative source of petroleum in Tanzania. The influx of homeless people imposed an additional burden on Ugandan aid agencies, which were already heavily committed to supplying food to thousands of people in the northeastern districts of Karamoja, Teso, and Lango affected by floods followed by prolonged drought.

      In the northwest any prospect of an end to the civil war waged by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) appeared as elusive as ever. Discussions between representatives of the government and the LRA recommenced on January 31 in Juba, Sudan, but soon afterward an LRA spokesman said that its leader, Joseph Kony, would sign no final agreement until the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity brought against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had been withdrawn. Nevertheless, it was reported that Kony was prepared to sign an agreement on April 10. Again the signing did not take place, and in an attempt to allay Kony's fear of prosecution by the ICC or, failing that, execution by President Museveni, the Ugandan judiciary created its own war crimes tribunal as part of the High Court to try the leading LRA commanders. This did not prove sufficient inducement to Kony, and another promised deadline, this time in July, also passed without an agreement's having been signed. So too did another date at the end of November.

      Another unresolved problem concerned the controversial bill to amend the 1998 Land Act that the government introduced in Parliament in February. Ostensibly aimed at protecting tenants from unfair eviction in any part of the country, the land act (amendment) bill caused confusion in all quarters and in particular led to a growing dispute between the central government and the government of the traditional Buganda kingdom, in south-central Uganda. Fears that the objective of the bill was to enable senior officials to acquire land for their own purposes appeared to have been confirmed when it was revealed that land that belonged to a hospital and was intended to be developed for medical purposes had been irregularly sold to government officials and that the Uganda Land Commission had taken no action to prevent the sale.

      Pres. Yoweri Museveni's insistence that he was not and could not be a dictator was challenged in January when the Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) criticized a proposal by the governing party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), that would prevent its own members from challenging motions brought before Parliament by the NRM. The NRM replied that the UJCC was not a member of the NRM and therefore had no grounds for complaint. This issue coincided with a ruling by the police that the opposition Democratic Party could not hold a meeting in Kampala because it had not given seven days' prior notice of the event. In May, after a number of clashes with an extremely vocal independent press, the government began to draft amendments to laws aimed at controlling inconvenient criticism.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2008

Area:

241,551 sq km (93,263 sq mi)

Population

(2007 est.): 30,263,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      The government's deadline for the people displaced by the Lords Resistance Army's (LRA's) rebellion to return to their homes by the end of 2006 was not met, and by the middle of 2007 more than one million were still living in refugee camps. A precarious cease-fire prevailed, and intermittent negotiations took place between the government and the LRA under rebel leader Joseph Kony (Kony, Joseph ). The talks were mediated by Riek Machar, the vice president of the government of Southern Sudan, who was actively assisted by UN envoy Joaquim Chissano (the former president of Mozambique). Although from time to time there were encouraging signs of progress, in May the LRA suddenly announced that it would resume its military campaign regardless of any agreement signed if the International Criminal Court persisted with the charges of war crimes against Kony and other LRA leaders. The Ugandan government remained conciliatory, however, and the talks continued.

      In Karamoja district, in the northeast, there was an acute shortage of food throughout the year, and cattle rustling remained endemic. In April the army was accused of using excessive force in a controversial attempt to disarm the pastoralists while, simultaneously, the government tried to return Karamojong women and children who had been found begging in Kampala to their own district.

      In the less-turbulent central region, and particularly in Teso district, nature took a hand. Starting in July, continuous heavy rains led to serious flooding, which displaced many thousands of people. Along the western border, news of oil reserves remained good, but in August there was a dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo over a joint border. Even the more prosperous south had its problems. While the government won the approval of the U.S. government by sending troops to Somalia in March as the vanguard of an African Union peacekeeping force, another venture, although long contemplated and launched with the support of a World Bank loan of $360 million, proved more contentious. This scheme envisaged the construction of a third dam on the Nile River, 10 km (6 mi) north of the two existing dams located where the river leaves Lake Victoria. The aim was to remedy Uganda's chronic need for more electricity, but critics pointed out that the dangerously low water level in Lake Victoria was already due as much to the excessive demands of the existing generators as to the persistent drought.

      Shadows, too, were cast over the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (held in Kampala in November) by two disturbances in the capital earlier in the year. On March 5 the judiciary suspended business for four days, after which lawyers went on strike, because security forces had violently rearrested—on the High Court's premises—suspected members of the People's Redemption Army, to whom the court had just granted bail. The Uganda Law Society also suspended the attorney general and four other high-ranking officials. This serious contretemps was followed in April by rioting in Kampala over the allocation of forest land to an Indian-owned sugar company. Pres. Yoweri Museveni hastened to reassure Commonwealth members that he would ensure their security at the meeting. Apart from a demonstration in Kampala that was dispersed by baton-wielding police, the event went off smoothly.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2007

Area:

241,551 sq km (93,263 sq mi)

Population

(2006 est.): 28,196,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      On Jan. 2, 2006, Kizza Besigye, the leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda's opposition party, was released from prison on the ruling of a High Court judge, who said the authority of the military tribunal that had kept him in jail had expired a month earlier. Besigye still faced a variety of charges that his supporters said had been brought against him to prevent him from standing as a candidate for the presidency in the elections to be held on February 23. Seventy percent of the 10.4 million registered voters took part in the elections. Pres. Yoweri Museveni gained 59% of the votes cast—mainly in the centre and west of the country—to Besigye's 37%—mainly in Kampala and the north. In the parliamentary elections the results were similar: the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) triumphed in the centre and west and the FDC in the north. EU observers said that while the voting had been for the most part transparent, the NRM had made extensive use of state resources to promote its campaign. After his victory Museveni said his government's emphasis would be on the expansion of the country's infrastructure, the encouragement of subsistence agriculture, the introduction of commercial farming, the building up of local industry, and the political unification under one president of the three East African states—Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

      In May the government launched a new plan to deal with the long-running civil war in the north, though Museveni firmly rejected any negotiated settlement with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader, Joseph Kony, who, along with four of his generals, had, at the government's request, been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. Kony responded by offering to talk with the government, and his offer was accepted. In June the government of south Sudan offered to act as mediator in the talks, and on July 4 the Ugandan government proposed the granting of a total amnesty to the rebels if they renounced the rebellion.

      Talks began on July 14 in Juba, the south Sudanese capital. Kony himself did not immediately take part because he feared he would be arrested, and the insistence by the ICC that Kony and his four comrades had to be tried at The Hague proved to be a serious obstacle to any successful conclusion to the talks. The elders of the Acholi people of the district most seriously affected by the civil war, together with the Roman Catholic archbishop of northern Uganda, argued that the intervention of the ICC did not serve the cause of their people who, tired of the war, were eager to return to their homes and wanted reconciliation rather than retribution. The Ugandan army's announcement early in August that Raska Lukwiya, a prominent leader in the LRA, had been shot and killed led Kony to demand that a general cease-fire be imposed before full discussions could take place. An agreement on cessation of hostilities was indeed signed on August 26, but each side regularly accused the other of violating it. The cease-fire was renewed for a month on November 1 to allow the LRA forces to assemble at two sites in south Sudan. Towards the end of the month, however, the LRA suspended the talks, claiming that the Ugandan army had violated the cease-fire by attacking LRA fighters making their way to one of the assembly points. The Ugandan army denied the charge.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2006

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2005 est.): 27,269,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      Some sectors of the international community continued to lavish praise on the government of Uganda for its achievements, especially after it was announced in July 2005 that the government had reached its target six months early for the number of HIV-positive people having access to antiretroviral treatment. Another significant advance was the completion in May in Kampala of a 50-MW thermal electricity plant, which would lessen the demands on the water supply provided by Lake Victoria, the main source of the country's hydroelectric power. Meanwhile, the World Bank gave $4.2 million to help resettle an estimated 11,000 former rebels in the north, and the U.S. was gratified by the government's agreement to grant U.S. personnel in Uganda immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

      There were signs, however, that several foreign donors were beginning to have doubts about the goodwill they had consistently shown Pres. Yoweri Museveni. The change in attitude occurred for two main and several subsidiary reasons. There were growing concerns over the government's ability to deal with the long-running rebellion of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north, despite Kampala's heavy defense expenditures. Though there were several limited cease-fire agreements made early in the year between the government and the LRA and government forces claimed occasional successes against the rebels, the LRA's attacks continued unabated, and 1.6 million displaced persons, many of them ill-fed and troubled by disease, looked in vain for protection even when located in refugee camps.

      The second troubling issue was the uncertainty surrounding the country's constitutional future. The U.K., a longtime generous aid donor to Uganda, decided in July to freeze a portion of its financial assistance because it lacked confidence in the long-promised transition to a multiparty political system. Ireland followed suit, and Norway also contemplated taking similar action. The concerns were reinforced when the Ugandan Parliament amended the constitution so that President Museveni could stand for reelection for an additional term, despite the fact that by the time elections took place, he would have held office for 20 years. When Museveni did launch a national referendum on July 28 and urged voters to support the introduction of a multiparty system, his action was received with suspicion rather than satisfaction, because for 19 years he had rejected the system, which he said encouraged ethnic divisions.

      In November rioting broke out in Kampala when Kizza Besigye was arrested and charged with treason, among other offenses. After returning from voluntary exile in South Africa, Besigye had mounted a powerful political campaign for the 2006 presidential elections, which government critics believed led to his arrest. Tensions rose when his trial was transferred from the civilian court to a closed court martial.

      In addition, there was a growing lack of confidence in the government's ability to control its finances. Economic growth no longer reached the high levels it had achieved in the 1990s, and despite having been the first beneficiary of the IMF and World Bank's debt-relief program to assist poorer countries, Uganda's foreign debt had soared 50% over the previous 10 years. On October 10 former president Milton Obote died in exile. (See Obituaries.)

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2005

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2004 est.): 26,335,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      Long before 2004 began, Uganda had become virtually two countries. In the south, bolstered by vast sums of external aid, the economy remained on a sound basis, and the government's campaign to control the spread of HIV/AIDS continued to meet with remarkable success and acclaim; the U.S. in June provided an additional grant of $51 million to assist in the work. In the north, although the Ugandan army was no longer engaged in promoting civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the population still suffered the ravages of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony; at the beginning of the year, there were still more than one million people living in refugee camps. On February 21 the LRA attacked one of the camps near Lira, in Lango district, killing nearly 200 people. After visiting the camp, Pres. Yoweri Museveni blamed mistakes by the army for the massacre and recalled the officer in command. Shortly afterward, a protest march in Lira, in which accusers charged the government with inaction and with having failed to protect civilians, was broken up by police and soldiers who fired on the marchers and killed at least eight of them. In their frustration some of the protesters then attacked property owned by Acholi businessmen resident in the town because, they said, the LRA was made up of Acholi.

      Later in the year the army claimed successes against the LRA, killing a number of the rebels and inducing others to surrender. Kony narrowly escaped capture in July. Nevertheless, LRA attacks on unprotected civilians continued, and in August an advance team from the International Criminal Court arrived in the country to prepare for an investigation into crimes committed in the course of the conflict. A cease-fire in November in a restricted area did not last, and in December part of the Ugandan army was deployed once more on the border of the DRC.

      There were conflicting developments on the constitutional front. On June 24 the government announced that it would relax the restrictions imposed by the ruling National Resistance Movement on the activities of other political parties and that it would hold a referendum in February to determine whether the country should revert to full multiparty politics in preparation for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in February or March 2006. It was also stated, however, that the referendum would decide whether the president could serve another term. The following day the opposition, which resisted any extension of the president's rule, won an important victory when the Constitutional Court ruled null and void the referendum in 2000 that had prolonged “nonparty” government and stated that any future referendum would be illegal. Museveni, desperate to stay in office, responded angrily that the courts would not be allowed to usurp the power of the people and appealed to the Supreme Court to overrule the judgment of the Constitutional Court.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2004

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2003 est.): 25,437,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      Throughout 2003 Pres. Yoweri Museveni's Uganda remained the darling of the Western powers, drawing half its revenue from external aid. The World Bank continued to call Uganda Africa's most consistently good performer. The immediate economic outlook was less favourable, however. The world price for unprocessed coffee, at about 34% of total export income Uganda's best foreign-currency earner, remained at a very low level, and vigorous attempts to diversify exports were slow to make an impact.

      There was also some muted criticism from international financial institutions that saw that money intended for social services had been diverted to the defense budget. Most of it had been spent on the lengthy invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from which Ugandan troops were finally withdrawn only on May 6. Meanwhile, in the north more than a quarter of Uganda itself was being ravaged by Joseph Kony's anarchic Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and such military forces as were made available proved incapable of halting the devastation. So long as the rebels remained at a distance from the more affluent south, international observers seemed prepared to turn a blind eye.

      When it was learned that U.S. Pres. George W. Bush was to visit the country on July 11, Ugandan religious leaders urged him to raise with President Museveni their concern over the huge numbers of children being kidnapped by the LRA. President Bush, however, praised both Uganda's free-trade policy and the remarkable success that it had achieved in its campaign to combat HIV/AIDS. As a further boost to that success, trials had been started in February on a vaccine specially designed to resist the A strain of the HIV virus, the type most common in East Africa.

      Uncertainty continued regarding the country's political future. A number of supporters of opposition leader Kizza Besigye were arrested early in the year. Besigye himself had fled the country, and two senior army officers who were Besigye sympathizers had taken refuge in Rwanda. There, it was claimed, they were training a force to try to overthrow Museveni. Both the officers and Rwandan Pres. Paul Kagame denied the accusations.

      In March in response to a petition by Paul Ssemogerere, the leader of the Democratic Party, the country's constitutional court ruled that parts of the Political Parties and Organisations Act of 2002 had imposed unjustifiable restrictions on the activities of political parties. On a number of occasions, Museveni himself raised the idea of removing the ban on all political party activities that he had imposed in 1986, but he linked it with the proposal to amend the constitution so as to allow the president to serve an unlimited number of terms in office.

      The death of former president Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia in August (see Obituaries (Amin, Idi )) caused little reaction in Uganda, although one of his sons, Taban Amin, who had for some time been trying to recruit fighters from the Congo to invade the northwest of Uganda, showed no sign of abandoning his efforts. In November, following a complaint from President Musaveni, the government of the Congo rejected any suggestion that Ugandan troops should be allowed to pursue rebels said to be operating from within the Congo.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2003

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2002 est.): 24,378,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      On Jan. 12, 2002, a public meeting arranged in Kampala by the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) without the government's consent was broken up by police using tear gas and live ammunition. A student journalist was killed, and several other people were injured. In April the government threatened to ban the UPC, but on May 9 Parliament instead passed a bill restricting the activities of political parties. Concerned international donor agencies said that the new law did not appear to advance the process of transition to democracy and urged the government to hold a more positive dialogue with those advocating greater freedom for political parties. Nevertheless, Pres. Yoweri Museveni gave his assent to the bill on June 2.

      On two later occasions Museveni challenged donor agencies. Speaking at a meeting of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in Kampala on August 6, he accused the agencies of undue interference in the affairs of African states, and at the Earth Summit meeting in Johannesburg, S.Af., in September, he charged the IMF and nongovernmental organizations with inhibiting environmental improvements to Uganda.

      These attempts to assert his country's sovereignty came at a time of difficulty for Uganda. The world price for coffee, the country's chief export commodity, had fallen so low that it was estimated that earnings from that source fell from about $400 million in 1994–95 to $90 million in 2001–02. Many farmers abandoned coffee in favour of the more profitable cocoa or vanilla, while many local exporters went out of business, the trade falling into the hands of foreigners. The Neumann Kaffee Gruppe began to plant a 2,512-ha (6,280-ac) coffee farm that would employ 6,000 workers. Attempts were made to increase profits from coffee sales by processing the beans before export and by seeking new markets in China and the Middle East. To boost cocoa production the government provided planting materials to farmers.

      Operations by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north caused grave concern. In March the government launched Operation Iron Fist, aimed at putting an end to the rebellion. After The Sudan had given Uganda permission for its troops to pursue the LRA into southern Sudan, the two countries agreed that neither government would support rebels against the other. By the middle of the year, however, the LRA was once more operating in strength inside Uganda, and the need to divert troops to resist the incursion meant that cattle raiders in the northeastern district of Karamoja were able to range freely.

      Uganda's military operations against the Democratic Republic of the Congo, already considerably reduced, came nearer to a conclusion when Pres. José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola chaired discussions between the presidents of Uganda and Congo. In September Uganda withdrew more than 2,000 of its troops, with the rest—1,000 in all—remaining until its western border was secure.

      An appeal by the family and friends of Idi Amin for the former president to be allowed to return in peace to Uganda was flatly rejected by the government in May.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2002

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2001 est.): 23,986,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      The last victim of the Ebola virus, which had ravaged northern districts of Uganda in the previous year, recovered in January 2001. A month later the epidemic was officially declared to be at an end; of the 426 people infected, 224 of them had died.

      A presidential election was held on March 12. Though there were six candidates, including Pres. Yoweri Museveni, only one, Kiiza Besigye, a founding member of Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) and a former close associate of the president, appeared to offer a serious challenge. Prior to the election Besigye's supporters underwent considerable harassment, and independent observers reported numerous cases of irregularities in the conduct of the election. Nevertheless, they concluded that these instances did not have any significant impact on the election outcome. Museveni captured 69.3% of the votes to Besigye's 27.8%. Relations between Uganda and Rwanda, its former ally in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), worsened after allegations were made that Besigye's campaign had been financed by Rwanda, an accusation that was vehemently denied. In November, after President Museveni had accused Rwanda of setting up military training camps for dissident Ugandans, Museveni and Rwandan Pres. Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London in an unsuccessful attempt to improve relations between the two countries.

      On April 16 a UN panel appointed to inquire into the illegal exploitation of the DRC's natural resources called upon the UN Security Council to use “strong measures, including sanctions” against Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi for looting the DRC's mineral reserves. These charges appeared to carry no weight with aid donors.

      Approval of Uganda's campaign against HIV/AIDS was reflected in the decision to locate an international treatment and training centre in Kampala. The work there would be overseen by a coalition consisting of the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa, Uganda's Makerere University, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

      Minister of Finance Gerald Sendawula presented his budget on June 14. His aim was to remedy the decline in Uganda's economic growth rate, which in 2000 had fallen below the estimated 7% owing to a rise in oil prices and a fall in the price of coffee, Uganda's chief export earner. A timely boost to Uganda's economic prospects was provided by the announcement that a consortium known as Eagle Drill, led by Canada's Heritage Oil Corp., had carried out a four-year study of the Semliki River Valley on the western border and had found indications that significant reserves of oil were located there. The consortium planned to carry out tests until January 2002 and to start drilling in Lake Albert in March of that year.

      On June 26 parliamentary elections were held. Once again, with all the resources of the government at its disposal and with opposition groups forbidden to operate as parties, Museveni's “no-party” NRM won an overwhelming victory, claiming 230 of the 292 seats, including those to which candidates were indirectly elected by the army, by women, and by other selected groups.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2001

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(2000 est.): 23,318,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi

      The effect of the agreement signed in Nairobi, Kenya, on Dec. 8, 1999, by the presidents of Uganda and The Sudan and aimed at ending the support each country was alleged to be giving to rebels challenging their respective governments was short-lived. Although invaders from The Sudan were the first to breach the agreement in 2000, Uganda's foreign affairs minister, Eriya Kategaya, publicly affirmed his skepticism regarding negotiations with the rebels. Critics of the government also firmly believed that a cessation of hostilities would have run counter to the aim of one of Pres. Yoweri Museveni's most active supporters, the U.S., to destabilize the Sudanese government.

      The government's military activities on a wider front led to the raising of a series of questions regarding the purpose of external aid, of which Uganda was a leading beneficiary, and the government's use of it. The French newspaper La Libération revealed in January that 55% of Uganda's military budget came as “development aid” from external donors. In May the Paris Club of creditor nations delayed debt relief because Ugandan forces had become involved in fighting with their former Rwandan allies in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on June 30 Amnesty International appealed to President Museveni and to Pres. Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame of Rwanda to end the atrocities by their forces in northeastern Congo.

      The leading opposition parties' boycott of the referendum held on June 29 to determine whether the existing system of “no-party” government should continue contributed to the low turnout of only 47.2% of the electorate. Although the opposition claimed a moral victory because less than half the electorate had voted, the result was, in effect, a practical triumph for the government. On August 10, however, the nation's constitutional court threw out one of the two laws that validated the referendum. Museveni warned that the ruling could create a crisis in the country and charged the judges with “insensitiveness.”

      When the bodies of at least 500 members of a religious cult were found on March 17 in the southwest of the county, it was thought to have been a case of mass suicide. When several more mass graves were discovered, however, it was realized that murder had been committed on a vast scale. There was speculation that the leaders of the cult, having required the members to sell their possessions and hand over their money upon joining, had carried out the killings and escaped with the proceeds after a promised apocalypse did not occur and members wanted their money returned.

      In October it was reported that at least 43 people had died in northern Uganda after having contracted the Ebola virus, and that a World Health Organization team of experts had been sent to advise local authorities on how to control the outbreak. Hospitals in the area were said to be overwhelmed. By early December the number of deaths had risen to 156.

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 2000

Area:

241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

Population

(1999 est.): 22,805,000

Capital:

Kampala

Head of state and government:

President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Ministers Kintu Musoke and, from April 5, Apolo Nsibambi

      The desire to justify the role they had formulated for Uganda as Africa's most progressive state led some donors in December 1998 to pledge an additional $2.2 billion in aid over the following three years. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seemed happy with this arrangement, other donors were beginning to express misgivings at the rampant corruption that had accompanied privatization in Uganda and dismay at the heavy expenditure on military operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and against The Sudan. Their concern was aggravated by news of fighting between Ugandan and Rwandan troops who were supporting rival rebel factions in Congo. In Uganda itself, in January, Christian and Muslim leaders called upon the government to put an end to the fruitless military operations against rebels in the north and to start negotiations.

      International awareness of the ineffectiveness of the government's efforts to protect its borders was heightened in March when rebels from Rwanda abducted and killed eight tourists from Bwinbi National Park in western Uganda. Although the government promised stern action against those responsible for the killings, opposition spokesmen were becoming increasingly critical of the government's policy. In August, Aggrey Awori, an opposition member in the national legislature, called for the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from Congo within 90 days, while the British high commissioner in Kampala, Michael Cook, also urged the government to negotiate a withdrawal. At the same time, the government's motives for being involved in Congo were questioned as a result of reports that prominent businessmen and military leaders in Uganda were making vast profits from smuggling diamonds and gold from that nation. On October 12 the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch criticized Uganda's “no-party” political system, claiming that it harassed independent political activity.

      Pres. Yoweri Museveni's offer in May of an amnesty to Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, seemed to suggest that even the government's campaign against the rebels had not been going as well as the government had earlier claimed. The IMF remained optimistic, however, and in June praised the government for its promise to reduce defense spending to $177 billion in fiscal year 1999–2000, in spite of Uganda's overspending on the defense budget by more than $36 billion in the previous fiscal year and an announced budget deficit of 1.16% for the year ahead.

      The Ministry of Health, long at the forefront of Africa's fight against AIDS, announced its intention of launching a nationwide door-to-door voluntary HIV-screening program. This followed a successful pilot scheme in two of the country's 40 districts and was aimed at capitalizing on the remarkable reduction in the incidence of the disease achieved during the previous decade. There were still no grounds for complacency, however, since 10% of the population was still estimated to be HIV-positive. (See Special Report: AIDS in Africa (Africa's Struggle Against AIDS ).)

Kenneth Ingham

▪ 1999

      Area: 241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

      Population (1998 est.): 22,167,000

      Capital: Kampala

      Head of state and government: President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Kintu Musoke

      In 1998 Uganda and Pres. Yoweri Museveni, in particular, enjoyed widespread international attention and approval. In January Museveni was host of a World Bank meeting attended by the heads of a number of other African nations, and later in the month Pres. Nelson Mandela of South Africa was a guest at the 12th-anniversary celebrations of the ruling National Resistance Movement. On March 24-25 U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton paid a visit to Uganda, during which he lavished praise on Museveni. (See President Clinton's Africa Trip. (President Clinton's Africa Trip: Seeing Things as They are ))

      Uganda's record continued to be impressive in many respects. Inflation was down, and the budget deficit was reduced in 1996-97 to 1.9% of gross domestic product. The privatization program was also making progress, the most striking development being an agreement with MTN Uganda, a consortium combining South African, Swedish, Ugandan, and Rwandan interests, to buy a license covering the full range of telecommunications services. The government hoped that this arrangement would lead to a rapid expansion in the service. It also planned to improve feeder roads and to reform the land laws in order to provide greater security of tenure and thereby reduce poverty. In response to these efforts, donors continued to give generous support, and on April 8, as part of the Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund agreed that Uganda was eligible to receive debt relief from external donors equivalent to 20% of its external debt.

      Despite this progress, the country remained dependent upon external aid for 80% of its development capital and 45% of its recurrent expenditures. Two-thirds of the population remained below the absolute poverty level, defined as having an income less than $1 a day.

      Torrential rains in late 1997 and early 1998 severely damaged the cotton and coffee crops and also the country's main export routes, the roads to the coast at Mombasa, Kenya. An additional drain on Uganda's resources resulted from the continued problem of rebels in parts of the north and west. So effective were the incursions of the Lords Resistance Army into the Acholi region of northern Uganda that the government decided that it was necessary to confine virtually the whole population of that area to protected villages. This not only inhibited farming but also proved increasingly ineffective as the rebels grew bolder while the Acholi themselves grew steadily more discontented with the government's intervention. The cost of military action also increased the cost of defense well beyond the government's budgeted figure.

      Uganda's involvement in the warfare in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo led to reprisals in the shape of attacks in June and again in August by another group of rebels, calling themselves the Allied Democratic Forces. Although these raids, in the Kabarole district in the west, were on a limited scale, they posed further unwelcome problems for the nation's security forces.

KENNETH INGHAM

▪ 1998

      Area: 241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi)

      Population (1997 est.): 20,605,000

      Capital: Kampala

      Head of state and government: President Yoweri Museveni, assisted by Prime Minister Kintu Musoke

      Uganda's record of economic reform, backed by generous assistance from donor countries, resulted in the nation's becoming the first to qualify for help under a World Bank project to ease the burden of debt of the 20 most heavily indebted countries. The terms appeared generous, but satisfaction turned to dismay when it was learned that aid would not be received until April 1998. Consequently, plans to provide universal primary education with the help of the money saved by the debt-relief measures had to be postponed.

      Drought in the eastern part of the country early in the year was followed by famine. In March, as the first consignment of relief food was distributed in Kumi district, the most severely affected region, the district agricultural officer said that people were starving in 8 of the district's 16 counties. The Ministry of Labour and Social Services estimated that $24 million would be needed to combat the famine, which by June was affecting half of Uganda's population. This was a particularly serious setback for a country where food was normally plentiful.

      Throughout the year attempts at mediation by Iran, by Pres. Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, and by Pres. Nelson Mandela of South Africa testified to the obstinate nature of the long-running dispute between Uganda and its neighbour, The Sudan, with each side offering assistance to rebel movements challenging the authority of their respective governments. The bitterness of the campaign was highlighted in a report, published in June, by an Amnesty International team that spent two weeks in northern Uganda. The team claimed to have been shocked by the systematic nature of the gross abuses perpetrated by the rebels but added that the Ugandan army, though not nearly so culpable, was not wholly innocent of human rights abuses.

      Sporadic fighting also disturbed the western borderland. Insurgents of the Allied Democratic Forces, having enlisted additional recruits from armed groups in eastern Zaire, posed an increasing threat both to the villagers living on the slopes of the Ruwenzori Mountains and to plans to extract valuable cobalt from the waste dumps from the Kilembe mines. Uganda's favourable standing in the eyes of donor countries was illustrated by the fact that funds for the cobalt-processing plant were being provided by a French-Australian mining company, LaSource, and grants and loans were made by the European Union and North Korea to set up a hydroelectric power station, a foundry to supply spare parts for the whole western region, and a limestone quarry.

      Because of the role played by Pres. Yoweri Museveni in the campaigns against The Sudan and against Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, the U.S. was particularly well-disposed toward Uganda, supplying arms and military training. A less-beneficial result of the government's military activities, however, was revealed in the annual budget, in which 20% of the nation's revenue was revealed to have been allocated to defense spending. Further concern was aroused by the news that the growth rate, which had peaked at 10% in 1995, was expected to fall to 5% in 1997.

KENNETH INGHAM

      This article updates Uganda, history of (Uganda).

▪ 1997

      A landlocked republic and member of the Commonwealth, Uganda is located in eastern Africa. Area: 241,040 sq km (93,070 sq mi), including 44,000 sq km of inland water. Pop. (1996 est.): 20,158,000. Cap.: Kampala. Monetary unit: Uganda shilling, with (Oct. 11, 1996) an interbank rate of 1,080 shillings to U.S. $1 (1,701 shillings = £1 sterling). President in 1996, Yoweri Museveni; prime minister, Kintu Musoke.

      The long-standing mutual mistrust between the governments of Uganda and Kenya, which had manifested itself as recently as late 1995, was set aside in January 1996 when the presidents of the two countries met and agreed to work together to revive the East African economic community. Uganda badly needed a wider market for its produce. In spite of 10 years' rule by Pres. Yoweri Museveni and an average annual growth of 6% in gross domestic product over the last five years, the annual per capita income had reached only $200, one of the lowest in the world. The possibility of opening up a wider market for Uganda's coffee and cotton was announced by Museveni on his return from a visit to China in February. At the same time, he affirmed that the privatization of government-operated enterprises and the arrest of corrupt army officers had significantly reduced the incidence of corruption. In addition, an agreement with Iran paved the way for Iranian planes to land at the Entebbe airport.

      Donor institutions, however, which poured in $800 million a year in aid, remained less than enthusiastic about the president's insistence upon maintaining restrictions on the activities of political parties. This was particularly significant because a presidential election was scheduled for May 9 and legislative elections in June.

      Relations with The Sudan remained strained, a situation made worse by regular incursions into northern Uganda by members of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. Based in The Sudan, these troops inflicted casualties among the Acholi villagers and made travel in the region hazardous. The villagers were critical of the government's failure to maintain law and order and of the absence of any of the benefits that Uganda had received from overseas aid.

      Nevertheless, with strong support in the south and by reviving fears of a return to insecurity and economic decline, Museveni won a resounding electoral victory over his nearest rival, Paul K. Ssemogerere. In the parliamentary elections that followed, only about 20 known opposition candidates were among the 214 deputies elected as individuals. International observers determined that the elections were free and fair, and so in August the parliament was readmitted as a member of the Commonwealth club of parliaments. It had been excluded when Pres. Milton Obote's government was overthrown by the military in 1985.

      Even before the legislative elections took place, the European Union granted Uganda $300 million under the terms of the Lome Convention, adding that the EU was satisfied with the country's commitment to respecting human rights and to the pursuit of democratic principles. Less than a month later, Amnesty International reported that despite human rights improvements, civilians continued to be tortured.

      (KENNETH INGHAM)

      This article updates Uganda, history of (Uganda).

▪ 1996

      A landlocked republic and member of the Commonwealth, Uganda is located in eastern Africa. Area: 241,040 sq km (93,070 sq mi), including 44,000 sq km of inland water. Pop. (1995 est.): 18,659,000. Cap.: Kampala. Monetary unit: Uganda shilling, with (Oct. 6, 1995) a priority rate of 995 shillings to U.S. $1 (1,573 shillings = £1 sterling). President in 1995, Yoweri Museveni; prime minister, Kintu Musoke.

      In October 1995 the International Monetary Fund granted $175 million to Uganda to assist in implementing the country's program of economic reform over the next three years. The offer reflected the growing confidence of donor countries and institutions in the government's ability to maintain its economic stability. Earlier in the year donor countries canceled 67% of Uganda's official bilateral debt and rescheduled the remaining 33%. In July creditor countries meeting in Paris agreed to further increases in funding.

      This favourable climate of opinion was due to a number of factors. Inflation had fallen during the previous 12 months from 16% to 5%, largely as a result of a decline in food prices after the ending of a period of drought. Moreover, although the income from coffee, the country's main export earner, was less than expected because of the collapse of world prices in July, gross domestic product was expected to grow by 5%. The government had also shown its determination to reduce unnecessary expenditure by making cuts in the civil service and the armed forces. Encouraged by these indicators, foreign investors brought new capital to the country, and there was a marked increase in business activity. Tourism, too, was beginning to revive, at least in the south and west, and three new hotels opened in 1995; also, Entebbe airport was being rehabilitated in an effort to attract more international airlines.

      These developments could not disguise the fact that a country generously endowed with natural resources remained one of the poorest, dependent for the foreseeable future on external aid and with no immediate prospect of reducing the poverty of the majority of the population. The U.S. also had misgivings about the way in which Pres. Yoweri Museveni had set his face against reintroducing multiparty democracy, but other Western nations, which had pressed for multiparty elections elsewhere in Africa, appeared to accept the president's claim that a multiplicity of political parties would encourage tribal divisions.

      Support for Museveni's stand on that issue came from Uganda's Constituent Assembly in June when it voted 199 to 68 to prolong the existing system for an additional five years. The 68 votes came primarily from representatives of the eastern and northern parts of the country. The new constitution announced by the Constituent Assembly on October 8 legalized the ban on parties but called for nonparty parliamentary and presidential elections in 1996. Among those opposed to a multiparty system were some, particularly among the inhabitants of the kingdoms of the south and west, who preferred a federal form of government.

      More extreme opposition to the government persisted in the north, particularly from a group calling itself the Lord's Resistance Army, which, the government maintained, was aided and abetted by The Sudan. In April a Sudanese diplomat's house in Kampala was searched for weapons, and although nothing of significance was found, it was announced that diplomatic relations with The Sudan would be severed. Museveni further promised to pursue relentlessly any rebels attempting to prolong their armed struggle in the north. He later also affirmed that there would be no pardon for the former dictator, Idi Amin, still living in exile in Saudi Arabia. Under Amin, the president said, hundreds of thousands of Ugandans had lost their lives.

      (KENNETH INGHAM)

      This updates the article Uganda, history of (Uganda).

▪ 1995

      A landlocked republic and member of the Commonwealth, Uganda is located in eastern Africa. Area: 241,040 sq km (93,070 sq mi), including 44,000 sq km of inland water. Pop. (1994 est.): 18,194,000. Cap.: Kampala. Monetary unit: Uganda shilling, with (Oct. 7, 1994) a priority rate of 921 shillings to U.S. $1 (1,465 shillings = £1 sterling). President in 1994, Yoweri Museveni; prime ministers, George Cosmas Adyebo and, from November 18, Kintu Musoke.

      Elections for members of a constituent assembly to consider a draft constitution were held on March 28, 1994, with some 1,500 candidates competing for 214 elected seats. In addition, Pres. Yoweri Museveni would nominate 10 members, and approximately 56 others would be appointed by special groups and 8 by the four main political parties. Although the elections officially took place on a nonparty basis, voting was very much along party lines, as was implied, though unintentionally, by the official announcement that the president's supporters had won more than half the seats. Other observers were of the opinion that members of the Uganda People's Congress and the Democratic Party together outnumbered the president's supporters among the successful candidates. Nonetheless, even if the opposition parties had been prepared to cooperate, their majority was whittled away when the nominated and appointed members joined the assembly.

      The president had no intention of encouraging the return of party politics to Uganda in the foreseeable future. The draft constitution before the assembly contemplated the suspension of all political party activity for at least five more years. Changing that would require a two-thirds majority in the assembly. In a Cabinet reshuffle on November 18, Museveni appointed a new prime minister, Kintu Musoke.

      Assisted by fears of a marked decline in the production of coffee in South America, by the political instability in some other African coffee-producing countries, and by the plan to hold back exportable production introduced by a large number of coffee-growing countries in 1993, Uganda increased its exports of coffee in 1994. Thus, its main foreign-currency earner gave a strong boost to an economy that was already showing a marked upturn as a result of generous foreign aid and a strict adherence to a structural-reform program advocated by the International Monetary Fund. The main thrust of the program had been to establish a liberal economic environment that would encourage private enterprise while at the same time severely reducing government expenditure. Defense, which in 1993 accounted for 30% of the government's budget, was one obvious target, and in April 10,000 members of the armed forces were pensioned off, bringing the total reduction to 33,000, with more to follow. The number of civil servants also continued to be cut, and as a result of these initiatives, the value of the Uganda shilling rose steadily on the foreign-exchange market, reflecting the growing confidence in the country's economic performance. Nevertheless, much remained to be done to improve educational and health standards.

      In February Museveni, with the support of their tribal elders, called upon Karamojong rebels in the northeast to hand in their arms in return for the promise of an amnesty. The rebels had harassed the region intermittently since the overthrow of Pres. Idi Amin in 1979. Trouble arose elsewhere in May when three districts on the shore of Lake Victoria had to be declared disaster areas because of the pollution caused by thousands of bodies floating down the Kagera River from neighbouring war-torn Rwanda. Farther north there was rejoicing among the Nyoro people when the office of mukama (king) was restored in June and the son of the previous mukama was crowned, though without the powers formerly enjoyed by the holder of that office. (KENNETH INGHAM)

      This updates the article Uganda, history of (Uganda).

▪ 1994

      A landlocked republic and member of the Commonwealth, Uganda is located in eastern Africa. Area: 241,040 sq km (93,070 sq mi), including 44,000 sq km of inland water. Pop. (1993 est.): 17,741,000. Cap.: Kampala. Monetary unit: Uganda shilling, with (Oct. 4, 1993) a priority rate of 1,171 shillings to U.S. $1 (1,774 shillings = £1 sterling). President in 1993, Yoweri Museveni; prime minister, George Cosmas Adyebo.

      External support for Uganda's economic development remained strong in response to what was seen to be the government's adherence to the structural adjustment program approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In its annual report, published on March 9, the UN Conference on Trade and Development listed Uganda among those of the poorest less developed countries that, as a result of their comparatively stable economies, had achieved higher growth rates and had increased their per capita incomes.

      Japan led the way in offering aid to Uganda in 1993 with a loan of $50 million, repayable over 30 years, and soon afterward the Consultative Group for Uganda pledged financial support to the tune of $825 million in the 1993-94 financial year. Still later, the minister of state for finance, Moses Kintu, signed an agreement with the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Uganda under the terms of which $25 million would be spent over a six-year period in an attempt to increase and diversify nontraditional agricultural exports. Germany offered DM 20 million in addition to the DM 50 million already granted for road maintenance.

      Another promising sign for Uganda's economy was the increase noted in the future price of coffee. Since the breakdown of the international quota system in 1989, Uganda, along with other coffee-producing countries, had suffered heavy losses in its earnings from the export of coffee. At a meeting in Kampala in August, African coffee producers agreed to join a scheme inaugurated earlier in the year by Latin-American growers to withhold 20% of their output from the world market. Although the scheme would not take effect until October 1, the result of the announcement was instantaneous; future prices rose immediately by 19%. In July the minister of finance, Joshua Mayanja-Nkangi, demonstrated his confidence in the country's future by announcing in his budget the proposed expenditure of 430 billion shillings on recurrent costs and more than 400 billion on development.

      The approval of Western countries was surprising in view of Pres. Yoweri Museveni's continued rejection of a multiparty political system, although he tolerated the existence of political parties provided they did not campaign in the pursuit of office. On February 16 hopes of a change were raised when the government announced a plan to elect, on the basis of universal adult suffrage, a constituent assembly of 180 members to draft a new constitution. Yet on May 24 Museveni again made clear his opposition to any multiparty system. In late November, March 28, 1994, was selected as the date for the legislative elections.

      In July another important step was taken when the constitution was amended to allow for the restoration of traditional rulers in the four former kingdoms of the south and southwest. On July 31, in one of the more potentially controversial of the responses to the government's measure, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi was officially installed as kabaka of Buganda. It had been Buganda's attempt to insist upon its separate identity that had been at the root of many of the country's troubles in the years immediately following independence and, although Museveni insisted that the traditional rulers had only a cultural role to play, many observers were concerned that ethnic loyalties might once again come into conflict with loyalty to Uganda.

      Early in February, Pope John Paul II visited Uganda and aroused criticism by maintaining that abstinence from sexual intercourse was the sole solution to the country's AIDS problem. Although the spread of AIDS was Uganda's most serious concern, the government was also aware that, as in many other African countries, university education was facing a crisis. Low salaries and a lack of resources for research were among the main reasons for this.

      (KENNETH INGHAM)

      This updates the article Uganda, history of (Uganda).

* * *

Introduction

Uganda, flag of  country in east-central Africa. About the size of Great Britain, Uganda is populated by dozens of ethnic groups. The English language and Christianity help unite these diverse peoples, who come together in the cosmopolitan capital of Kampala, a verdant city whose plan includes dozens of small parks and public gardens and a scenic promenade along the shore of Lake Victoria (Victoria, Lake), Africa's largest freshwater lake. The Swahili language unites the country with its East African neighbours of Kenya and Tanzania.

 “Uganda is a fairy-tale. You climb up a railway instead of a beanstalk, and at the end there is a wonderful new world,” wrote Sir Winston Churchill (Churchill, Sir Winston), who visited the country during its years under British rule and who called it “the pearl of Africa.” Indeed, Uganda embraces many ecosystems, from the tall volcanic mountains of the eastern and western frontiers to the densely forested swamps of the Albert Nile River (Albert Nile) and the rainforests of the country's central plateau. The land is richly fertile, and Ugandan coffee has become both a mainstay of the agricultural economy and a favourite of connoisseurs around the world.

      Uganda obtained formal independence on Oct. 9, 1962. Its borders, drawn in an artificial and arbitrary manner in the late 19th century, encompassed two essentially different types of society: the relatively centralized Bantu kingdoms of the south and the more decentralized Nilotic and Sudanic peoples to the north. The country's sad record of political conflict since then, coupled with environmental problems and the ravages of the countrywide AIDS epidemic, hindered progress and growth for many years. Yet even so, at the beginning of the 21st century a popularly elected civilian government ruled Uganda, which had attained political stability, had set an example for tackling the AIDS crisis that threatened to overwhelm the continent, and enjoyed one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa.

Land

 Uganda is bordered by The Sudan (Sudan, The) to the north, Kenya to the east, Tanzania and Rwanda to the south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo) to the west. The capital city, Kampala, is built around seven hills not far from the shores of Lake Victoria (Victoria, Lake), which forms part of the frontier with Kenya and Tanzania.

Relief (Uganda)

      Most of Uganda is situated on a plateau, a large expanse that drops gently from about 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) in the south to approximately 3,000 feet (900 metres) in the north. The limits of Uganda's plateau region are marked by mountains and valleys.

 To the west a natural boundary is composed of the Virunga (Mufumbiro) Mountains (Virunga Mountains), the Ruwenzori Range, and the Western Rift Valley (see East African Rift System). The volcanic Virunga Mountains rise to 13,540 feet (4,125 metres) at Mount Muhavura (Muhavura) and include Mount Sabinio (Sabinio) (11,959 feet [3,645 metres]), where the borders of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda meet. Farther north the Ruwenzori Range—popularly believed to be Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon—rises to 16,762 feet (5,109 metres) at Margherita Peak, Uganda's highest point; its heights are often hidden by clouds, and its peaks are capped by snow and glaciers. Between the Virunga and Ruwenzori mountains lie Lakes Edward (Edward, Lake) and George. The rest of the boundary is composed of the Western Rift Valley, which contains Lake Albert (Albert, Lake) and the Albert Nile River. (Albert Nile)

      The northeastern border of the plateau is defined by a string of volcanic mountains that include Mounts Morungole, Moroto, and Kadam, all of which exceed 9,000 feet (2,750 metres) in elevation. The southernmost mountain—Mount Elgon (Elgon, Mount)—is also the highest of the chain, reaching 14,178 feet (4,321 metres). South and west of these mountains is an eastern extension of the Rift Valley, as well as Lake Victoria. To the north the plateau is marked on the Sudanese border by the Imatong Mountains, with an elevation of about 6,000 feet (1,800 metres).

Drainage

      Uganda's Lake Victoria (Victoria, Lake) (26,828 square miles [69,484 square km]), in the southeastern part of the country, is the world's second largest inland freshwater lake by size after Lake Superior (Superior, Lake) in North America, although Lake Baikal (Baikal, Lake) in Siberia is larger by volume and depth. Victoria is also one of the sources of the Nile River. Five other major lakes exist in the country: Edward (Edward, Lake) and George to the southwest; Albert (Albert, Lake) to the west; Kyoga (Kyoga Lake) in central Uganda; and Bisina in the east. Together with the lakes, there are eight major rivers. These are the Victoria Nile in central Uganda; the Achwa, Okok, and Pager in the north; the Albert Nile in the northwest; and the Kafu, Katonga, and Mpongo in the west.

      The southern rivers empty into Lake Victoria, the waters of which escape through Owen Falls near Jinja and form the Victoria Nile. This river flows northward through the eastern extension of Lake Kyoga. It then turns west and north to drop over Karuma Falls and Murchison Falls before emptying into Lake Albert.

      Lake Albert is drained to the north by the Albert Nile, which is known as the Al-Jabal River (Baḥr al-Jabal), or Mountain Nile, after it enters The Sudan at Nimule. Rivers that rise to the north of Lake Victoria flow into Lake Kyoga, while those in the southwest flow into Lakes George and Edward.

      Except for the Victoria and Albert Niles, the rivers are sluggish and often swampy. Clear streams are found only in the mountains and on the slopes of the Rift Valley. Most of the rivers are seasonal and flow only during the wet season, and even the few permanent rivers are subject to seasonal changes in their rates of flow.

Soils

      The soils, in general, are fertile (and primarily lateritic), and those in the region of Lake Victoria are among the most productive in the world. Interspersed with these are the waterlogged clays characteristic of the northwest and of the western shores of Lake Victoria.

Climate

      The tropical climate of Uganda is modified by elevation and, locally, by the presence of the lakes. The major air currents are northeasterly and southwesterly. Because of Uganda's equatorial location, there is little variation in the sun's declination at midday, and the length of daylight is nearly always 12 hours. All of these factors, combined with a fairly constant cloud cover, ensure an equable climate throughout the year.

      Most parts of Uganda receive adequate precipitation; annual amounts range from less than 20 inches (500 mm) in the northeast to a high of 80 inches (2,000 mm) in the Sese Islands of Lake Victoria. In the south, two wet seasons (April to May and October to November) are separated by dry periods, although the occasional tropical thunderstorm still occurs. In the north, a wet season occurs between April and October, followed by a dry season that lasts from November to March.

Plant and animal life

Flora

      Vegetation is heaviest in the south and typically becomes wooded savanna (grassy parkland) in central and northern Uganda. Where conditions are less favourable, dry acacia woodland, dotted with the occasional candelabra (tropical African shrubs or trees with huge spreading heads of foliage) and euphorbia (spurge) (plants often resembling cacti and containing a milky juice) and interspersed with grassland, occurs in the south. Similar components are found in the vegetation of the Rift Valley floors. The steppes (treeless plains) and thickets of the northeast represent the driest regions of Uganda. In the Lake Victoria region and the western highlands, forest covering has been replaced by elephant grass and forest remnants because of human incursions. The medium-elevation forests contain a rich variety of species. The high-elevation forests of Mount Elgon and the Ruwenzori Range occur above 6,000 feet (1,800 metres); on their upper margins they give way, through transitional zones of mixed bamboo and tree heath, to high mountain moorland. Uganda's 5,600 square miles (14,500 square km) of swamplands include both papyrus and seasonal grassy swamp.

Fauna

  Lions and leopards are now present mainly in animal preserves and national parks, but they are occasionally seen outside these places. Hippopotamuses and crocodiles inhabit most lakes and rivers, although the latter are not found in Lakes Edward and George. Mountain gorillas, chimpanzees, and small forest elephants appear only in the extreme west. Elephants, buffalo, and the Uganda kob (an antelope) are limited to the west and north, while the black rhinoceros and giraffes are confined to the north. Zebras, topis, elands, and roan antelopes live in both the northeastern and southern grasslands, while other kinds of antelopes (oryx, greater and lesser kudu, and Grant's gazelle) are found only in the northeastern area. Uganda is home to diverse variety of birdlife, including threatened species. Most of the country's national parks provide excellent bird-watching opportunities. The country's varied fish life includes ngege (a freshwater, nest-building species of Tilapia), tiger fish, barbels, and Nile perch.

      Insects are a significant element in the biological environment. Elevations below 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) are the domain of the female Anopheles mosquito, which carries malaria, while the presence of tsetse flies has closed extensive areas of good grazing land to cattle. Butterflies are also very prevalent in Uganda. Many different species, including those which are endemic, can be found in the country.

Conservation

 Much of southern Uganda has been deforested, but a significant portion of the country's area has been placed in its 10 national parks. Murchison Falls National Park—the largest such park in Uganda, with an area of 1,480 square miles (3,840 square km)—is bisected by the Victoria Nile (Jinja). Queen Elizabeth National Park is about half the size of Murchison Falls and is in the Lake Edward–Lake George basin. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (World Heritage site), designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994, contains about half of the world's population of endangered mountain gorillas, and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park is also home to this rare mammal. Ruwenzori Mountains National Park (World Heritage site) (designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994) contains the country's highest mountain, Margherita Peak. The region was occupied by rebel forces in the late 1990s.

M. Semakula M. Kiwanuka Ed.

People

Ethnic groups

      Although Uganda is inhabited by a large variety of ethnic groups, a division is usually made between the “Nilotic North” and the “Bantu South.” Bantu (Bantu peoples) speakers are the largest portion of Uganda's population. Of these, the Ganda remain the largest single ethnic group, constituting almost one-fifth of the total national population. Other Bantu speakers are the Soga, Gwere, Gisu, Nyole, Samia, Toro, Nyoro, Kiga, Nyankole (Nkole), Amba, and Konjo. A sizable population of Rwanda (Banyarwanda) speakers, who had fled Rwanda in the late 1960s and early ′70s, also lived in Uganda until the mid-1990s.

      Nilotic (Nilot) languages are represented by Acholi (Acoli), Lango (Langi), Alur, Padhola, Kumam, Teso, Karimojong, Kakwa, and Sebei and represent more than one-tenth of the population. Central Sudanic peoples are also found in the north and include the Lendu, Lugbara, and Madi. Together they constitute less than one-tenth of the population.

      Under British colonial rule, economic power and education were concentrated in the south. As a result, the Bantu came to dominate modern Uganda, occupying most of the high academic, judicial, bureaucratic, and religious positions and a whole range of other prestigious roles. However, the British recruited overwhelmingly from the north for the armed forces, police, and paramilitary forces. This meant that while economic power lay in the south, military power was concentrated in the north, and this imbalance has to a large extent shaped the political events of postcolonial Uganda.

      South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis) came to Uganda largely in the 19th and 20th centuries and by 1969 numbered more than 50,000. Although Ugandan citizenship was made available to them when Uganda became independent, most Asians chose not to accept this offer. The population declined drastically when Idi Amin (Amin, Idi), head of government from 1971 to 1979, ordered the expulsion in 1972 of all noncitizen Asians and later even those Asians who held Ugandan citizenship. Although the latter group's expulsion order was eventually rescinded, the majority still left the country. By the end of the year, only a small number of Asians remained in Uganda. Amin commandeered both the businesses and personal goods of the expelled Asian community and redistributed them to the remaining African population. For a relatively short time, his actions proved immensely popular with most Ugandans, but the country has recovered slowly from the economic consequences of the expulsions. In the early 1990s, the Ugandan government formally invited the expelled Asian community to return; thousands did so, and some had their property returned to them.

Languages

      There are at least 32 languages spoken in Uganda, but English and Swahili (Swahili language)—both official languages—and Ganda are the most commonly used. English is the language of education and of government, and, although only a fraction of the populace speaks English well, access to high office, prestige, and economic and political power is almost impossible without an adequate command of that language. Swahili was chosen as another official national language because of its potential for facilitating regional integration, although Ugandans' command of Swahili falls substantially below that of Tanzania, Kenya, and even eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition, Swahili is unpopular with a large proportion of Ugandans who consider it the language of past dictators and armies.

      Uganda's indigenous languages are coextensive with its different ethnic groups. In addition to English, French, and Swahili, Radio Uganda broadcasts in more than 20 indigenous languages including Alur, Ganda, Lugbara, Masaba, Rwanda, Nyankole, Nyole, Soga, and Teso (Iteso). Most Ugandans can understand several languages.

Religion

 Uganda's religious heritage is tripartite: indigenous religions, Islam (Islāmic world), and Christianity. About four-fifths of the population is Christian, primarily divided between Roman Catholics and Protestants (mostly Anglicans). Other Christian denominations include the Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, Greek Orthodoxy, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and Presbyterians. About one-tenth of the population is Muslim, and, of the remainder, most practice traditional religions. As in other parts of Africa, Islam and Christianity have been combined with indigenous religions to form various syncretic religious trends.

      Islam was the first of the exogenous religions to arrive, and it became politically significant in the 1970s. Christianity came during the colonial period through spirited missionary activity—especially in the south, where Catholics were called bafaransa (“the French”) and Protestants bangerezza (“the British”). Rivalry and even hostility between adherents of these two branches of Christianity, which have always been sharper and deeper than those between Christians and Muslims, are still alive today. In the early 1930s a breakaway group of Anglican missionaries together with several Ugandans initiated the balokole (“born again”) revival, which spread throughout eastern Africa and beyond and has remained a powerful force of Pentecostalism in Uganda.

      A small number of Abayudaya Jews live in communities in eastern Uganda, the descendants of converts to Judaism in the 1920s. Until 1972, when Asians were expelled from Uganda, large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus lived throughout the country; in recent years, with returning South Asian practitioners, Sikhism and Hinduism have been reestablished in the country. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the 1995 constitution.

Settlement patterns

 Uganda's population remains basically rural, although the number of urban dwellers, constituting about one-tenth of the total population, is growing. A few northern societies, such as the Karimojong, are mainly pastoralists, but most northern societies combine cattle keeping with some cultivation. Between the mid-1970s and late '80s the cattle population declined significantly because of disease, rustling, and malnutrition; restocking projects were subsequently initiated. In the south, sedentary agriculture is widely practiced. Most cultivators keep some livestock in the form of goats, chickens, and occasionally ducks and even rabbits and geese. The prosperous farmers keep one or two local-breed cattle, while the more wealthy own imported breeds. In central, eastern, and southern Uganda, well-spaced homesteads have farms surrounding them.

       Kampala, the capital, is the largest city; others include Jinja, Mbale, Masaka, Entebbe, and Gulu, all except for Gulu located in the south. Urban centres have grown because of a rural-urban movement within the south itself as well as a migration from the north to southern towns. During colonial times, the British were not encouraged to settle widely in what was then the Uganda Protectorate (as they were in the settler colony of Kenya), and British and Asian immigrants generally lived in towns. Only gradually did a minority of black urbanites begin to emerge.

      Since 1986, urban centres in Uganda have been rehabilitated and expanded, especially in the eastern, central, and western portions of the country. In addition, numerous small trading centres have emerged along major routes, serving as important points for trade and access to information.

      Urban areas often contain large numbers of mainly younger people—usually many more men than women—who have come to town seeking whatever work they can find. Many are engaged in manual labour or service-related jobs such as food preparation, while a good many are jobless or are only occasionally employed. There are also, however, a growing middle class of Ugandans and visible signs of urban progress, such as good housing around the outskirts of towns. Yet, these improvements notwithstanding, since about the mid-1990s there has been a noticeable increase in the number of street children and other impoverished individuals in Kampala. Several agencies have established programs to resettle and educate the children who have no homes or whose families refuse to care for them.

Demographic trends

      The Ugandan population has grown rapidly since independence, when it was approximately seven million, to now total more than three times that number. Like many other African countries, the population is predominantly young, with roughly half under 15 years of age and more than one-fourth between the ages of 15 and 29. Uganda's birth rate is about twice that of the world average, and the death rate is also higher than the world average. Life expectancy in Uganda, while higher than or similar to that of most neighbouring countries, is below the world average.

      The number of Ugandans residing in cities or towns has grown slowly since the 1980s. Kampala, the political and commercial capital, contains nearly one-third of the country's urban population. Uganda's other major cities have considerably smaller populations, among them Jinja, which contains a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand). The most densely populated areas are in the south, especially around Lake Victoria and Mount Elgon.

Economy

      The economy is basically agricultural, and it occupies some four-fifths of the working population. Uganda's moderate climate is especially congenial to the production of both livestock and crops.

      As has been the case with most African countries, economic development and modernization have been enormous tasks that have been impeded by the country's political instability. In order to repair the damage done to the economy by the governments of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, foreign investment in agriculture and core industries, mainly from Western countries and former Asian residents, was encouraged. The 1991 Investment Code offered tax and other incentives to local and foreign investors and created the Uganda Investment Authority, which made it easier for potential investors to procure licenses and investment approval.

      The economy improved rapidly during the 1990s, and Uganda has been acclaimed for its economic stability and high rates of growth. It is one of the few African countries praised by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the international financial community for its economic policies of government divestiture and privatization and currency reform. Uganda has been particularly successful in soliciting international support and loans. In 1997 it was selected as one of the few countries to receive debt relief for its successful implementation of stringent economic reform projects and has continued to qualify for significant debt relief since then. Because of this, Uganda has been able to focus on eradicating poverty and expanding resource exploitation, industries, and tourism.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

      Agriculture accounts for a large share of Uganda's export earnings and its gross domestic product, as well as providing the main source of income for the vast majority of the adult population. Farmers, working an average of less than 3 acres (1 hectare), provide more than half of the agricultural production. They are largely based in the south, where there is more rainfall and fertile soil. Significantly, a considerable number of women own the land on which they work. Small-scale mixed farming predominates, while production methods employ largely rudimentary technology; farmers rely heavily on the hand hoe and associated tools and have minimal access to and use of fertilizers and herbicides. Two important cash crops for export are coffee and cotton. Tea and horticultural products (including fresh-cut flowers) are also grown for export. Food crops include corn (maize), millet, beans, sorghum, cassava, sweet potatoes, plantains, peanuts (groundnuts), soybeans, and such vegetables as cabbages, greens, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and numerous peppers.

      Livestock include cattle, both indigenous varieties and those known as exotics (mainly Fresians), plus experimental cross-breeds, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys. There have been several projects to introduce rabbits. Cattle ranching has been encouraged in the western region of the country. The average Ugandan consumes a modest amount of meat, mainly in the form of poultry. Dairy farming is another expanding sector with Uganda producing pasteurized and “long-life” milk, butter, yogurt, and cheeses.

      While Uganda contains adequate timber reserves, exports were banned in 1987 until legislation could be put in place to regulate forestry. In addition to concerns over exports, the domestic use of timber for firewood and charcoal was rapidly depleting reserves. Projects financed by the United Nations beginning in the late 1980s attempted to rehabilitate the sector. Exports of forest products had resumed by the mid-1990s, although the domestic use of timber was not totally under control.

      Because lakes and rivers cover nearly 20 percent of Uganda, fishing holds considerable potential for the country. Foreign investment in fish processing centres, begun in the late 1980s, was halted amid concerns over the depletion of fish stocks. Some lakes became clogged with water hyacinth. Herbicides used to destroy the plant apparently also contaminated the fish, and most fish exports were banned into the beginning of the 21st century. The bans were subsequently removed, and fish and fish products are now an important export.

Resources and power

      Uganda's reserves include copper, tungsten, cobalt, columbite-tantalite, gold, phosphate, iron ore, and limestone. Gold, cobalt, and columbite-tantalite are mined. Gold is an important export, but it is complicated by the fact that gold has been smuggled into Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Exploration for petroleum, while showing geological potential, particularly under Lakes Albert and Edward, has proceeded slowly.

      The majority of the country's power is provided by the Nalubaale (formerly Owens Falls) and Kiira hydroelectric stations on the Victoria Nile at Jinja, in the southern part of Uganda. Under an agreement signed in the mid-1950s, a portion of the power generated was exported to Kenya. By the early 21st century, however, Uganda faced severe power shortages and was not only unable to honour the agreement but had to begin importing power from Kenya when it was available. Plans to expand hydroelectric capacity by adding more power plants are under development. Firewood and charcoal still provide a significant amount of power.

Manufacturing

      Manufacturing contributes only a small portion of the gross domestic product. The major industries are based on processing such agricultural products as tea, tobacco, sugar, coffee, cotton, grains, dairy products, and edible oils. Also important are beer brewing and the manufacture of cement, fertilizers, matches, metal products, paints, shoes, soap, steel, textiles, and motor vehicles.

      Industrial production grew dramatically in the years following independence but then declined precipitously from the early 1970s. Since 1990, with the return of stability to the country, foreign companies and lending institutions have invested in such businesses as textile and steel mills, a car assembly plant, a tannery, bottling and brewing plants, and cement factories.

      There are a number of cottage industries, which produce a wide variety of domestic and commercial iron and wooden products ranging from security doors, household and farm goods, numerous spare parts, and furniture. Ugandans are creative and manage to utilize iron and other waste materials in the manufacture of useful implements.

Finance and trade

      Uganda's central bank, the Bank of Uganda, was founded in 1966. It monitors Uganda's commercial banks, serves as the government's bank, and issues the national currency, the Uganda shilling. The government sets the shilling's official exchange rate against foreign currencies.

      The Uganda Commercial Bank and the Uganda Development Bank serve most of the commercial and financial needs of the country. There are also commercial banks owned by Ugandan, British, South African, Indian, Egyptian, and Libyan firms. There is a stock exchange in Kampala.

      Uganda has participated in several regional economic organizations, including the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Cotonou Convention, the Kagera Basin Organization, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and the East African Community Customs Union. Its principal exports are coffee, fish and fish products, gold, tobacco, cotton, and tea. The main imports are machinery and transport equipment, basic manufactures, food and live animals, and chemicals. Its principal trading partners are Kenya, South Africa, The Netherlands, Japan, India, and the United States. Uganda has had an annual trade deficit since the late 1980s.

Services

      With its numerous national parks that contain a wide variety of animals, Uganda is a natural tourist destination. From independence until the early 1970s, tourism was a major part of the economy and ranked third after coffee and cotton in producing foreign exchange. Under President Amin, however, tourism ceased and the national parks were neglected. Since the mid-1980s tourism has slowly increased, and foreign investment in new hotels has also expanded. However, Uganda's tourist industry was affected by political instability in surrounding regions during the 1990s, although it rebounded in the early 21st century.

Labour and taxation

      The government is the country's largest employer. Attempts to decrease the number of government workers in the early 1990s met with failure. The Museveni government attempted to increase the status of wage labourers after it took power in the mid-1980s. Cooperative societies, largely focused on agricultural export products, numbered in the thousands at the beginning of the 21st century.

      Tax revenue in the form of customs duties, sales taxes, and income taxes provides the majority of Uganda's budget, and grants provide the remainder. The majority of the budget goes to capital expenditures, wages and salaries, education and security, with health receiving less than 5 percent.

Transportation and telecommunications

      Being a landlocked state, Uganda relies heavily on Kenya and Tanzania (particularly the former) for access to the sea. The country has more than 620 miles (1,000 km) of rail line, but rail travel is now infrequently used by the public. Linking Kampala with Kilindini Harbour at Mombasa, Kenya, is a rail line that passes via Jinja, Tororo, Leseru, Nakuru, and Naivasha. Kampala is also connected to the north by a rail line that crosses the Pakwach bridge and to the western parts of the country by a line that reaches the border town of Kasese.

      The main international airport is at Entebbe, Uganda's former capital, about 20 miles (30 km) west of Kampala. By the end of the 20th century, air travel had expanded to include major international carriers as well as numerous local air companies, which serviced the interior of the country. Kisoro in the far southwestern corner of the country, bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, gained an airstrip in 1999.

      There are about 16,650 miles (26,800 km) of roads in Uganda, but only a small fraction of them are paved. A number of road-repair projects are under way, but much of Uganda's road system is in great need of repair. There is limited shipping service on the Kagera River and on Lakes Albert and Victoria.

      The number of telephone lines is being expanded under foreign consortium agreements and has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Much more prevalent, however, is cellular service; in existence in Uganda since the mid-1990s, cell phone use had rapidly expanded by the early 21st century, as did the number of Ugandans using the Internet.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

      Until 1967 Uganda was a quasi-federal polity that included five subregional monarchies, non-monarchical districts, and a central government. The republican constitution adopted in 1967 abolished the monarchies and assigned ultimate political power to an elected president. The president was to be aided by a ministerial cabinet drawn, in the British tradition, from among members of the unicameral National Assembly. In theory, the judiciary, legislature, and executive were to be autonomous, if coordinate, institutions of governance, but in reality the powers of the different branches of government have varied widely with each president. Under Idi Amin's presidency (1971–79), representative institutions were abolished altogether, and, with the first of several military coups in 1985, the constitution was suspended.

      Under the new constitution promulgated in October 1995, the president is the head of state, government, and the armed forces and is assisted by a cabinet. Legislative power is vested in a unicameral parliament. Most members of parliament are directly elected to five-year terms; the remaining seats are reserved for one female representative from every district and representatives of specific groups, such as the army, youth, labour, and persons with disabilities. The constitution also recognizes the right of ethnic groups to pursue their own cultural practices. Uganda had a “no-party” political system until a 2005 referendum overwhelmingly supported a return to multiparty politics. The next year the country held its first multiparty elections since 1980.

Local government

      Uganda is divided into districts. Each district is administered by an elected chairperson and a district council. Subdistrict administrative units are governed by a tiered structure of elected councils. Each council consists of elected members with the political and judicial power to manage local affairs.

Justice

      The Supreme Court is the court of highest appeal; it also acts as a constitutional court. Below the Supreme Court is the Court of Appeal and the High Court. The Magistrates' Courts were established in 1970 and decide criminal and civil matters. Islamic and customary law also exist in the country.

Political process

      Nonparty elections were held in May 1996, the first popular election since 1962. Lieutenant General Yoweri Kaguta Museveni came to power in 1986 as the leader of the National Resistance Movement (NRM). He was elected president in 1996, although he ostensibly represented no political party. The country does have many parties, however, such as the Democratic Party, the Uganda People's Congress, and the Forum for Democratic Change.

      Women played a significant role in the formulation of the 1995 constitution, and the NRM government has assisted them in a number of ways. The Ministry of Women in Development was established in 1988 to formulate and implement women's programs and especially to make the public aware of women's issues. By 1990 eight women held ministerial posts in the government, and the first woman vice president in sub-Saharan Africa, Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, was appointed in 1994. In the early 21st century, women held about one-fourth of the seats in parliament and about one-fourth of the cabinet positions.

Security

      Uganda's armed forces, named the Uganda People's Defense Forces, consist of air force, marine, and army contingents as well as paramilitary forces. Security problems in the north of the country have kept them active, as have foreign engagements in such countries as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Border disputes with Kenya (in the 1980s) and The Sudan (in the 1990s) have also occupied Uganda's military. Ugandan troops have participated in United Nations-led international peacekeeping missions and are part of the African Union's standby peacekeeping force.

Health and welfare

      Only about half of the population has access to medical facilities, though since 1986 an internationally funded program has been under way to improve health-care infrastructure, training, and supplies. There are more than 100 hospitals; slightly more than one-half are government-operated. In addition, numerous health centres provide medical care throughout the country.

      Malaria, measles, anemia, acute respiratory infections and pneumonia, gastrointestinal diseases, sleeping sickness, venereal diseases, schistosomiasis, guinea worm (dracunculiasis), tuberculosis, chicken pox, and typhoid are all serious problems in Uganda. At the root of many of these diseases is a lack of clean water.

      AIDS, known locally as “slim” because of its debilitating effects, spread widely in the early 1980s and has placed stress on families and an already frail health-care infrastructure. However, there has been a vigorous campaign to educate and inform the public about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, and in 1998 Uganda became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to report a significant decrease in the rate of HIV infection.

Housing

      The government has sponsored housing development projects in urban areas such as Kampala, where there is a tremendous need to provide new housing units in order to keep up with the rising population.

      Rural houses are often made of mud and wattle. For the Nyoro, houses were traditionally built around a central courtyard. Ganda settlements, usually located on hillsides, can include as many as 40 to 50 homes.

Education

      Primary education begins at six years of age and continues for seven years. Secondary education begins at 13 years of age and consists of a four-year segment followed by a two-year segment.

      In early 1997 Uganda revolutionized education policy by introducing an initiative called Universal Primary Education, under which the government would pay tuition fees for all orphans and for up to four children per family. The policy, aimed at rapidly expanding literacy throughout the population, resulted in an increase in school attendance. A similar program for post-primary education was initiated in early 2007.

      Many of the oldest schools in Uganda were established by Christian missionaries from Europe. Since independence their role has been superseded by that of the government, but, because of the limited number of secondary schools, private schools have remained an important component of Uganda's educational system.

      Makerere University in Kampala, which began as a technical school in 1922, was the first major institution of higher learning in East and Central Africa. In addition to its medical school, Makerere's faculties include those of agriculture and forestry, arts, education, technology, law, science, social sciences, and veterinary medicine.

      A number of new institutions of higher learning have opened since the late 1980s, including Mbarara University of Science and Technology (1989), Uganda Christian University (founded as Bishop Tucker Theological College in 1913; present name and university status conferred in 1997), Uganda Martyrs University (1993), and Islamic University in Uganda (1988). In addition to these, there are primary-teacher training colleges, technical schools and colleges, and business colleges.

Cultural life

      Cultural diversity—from the Ganda culture in the south and Acholi and Lango cultures in the north to the influence of South Asians past and present—has produced a wide variety of lifestyles and interests among Ugandans. The country possesses a rich tradition of theatre, ranging from the very active National Theatre in Kampala to hundreds of small, local theatrical groups. Theatre has played an important role in educating and informing the public on a range of issues from gender relations to sexually transmitted diseases. Another popular and widespread form of entertainment is the small video booth, many hundreds of which are spread throughout the towns and small rural trading centres. A video booth, which can operate on a vehicle battery, provides an opportunity—mainly for young people—to see a variety of films; but, more important, the booths also show occasional short informative films supplied by government agencies. Television is widely available in urban centres and in some smaller rural centres, where it is not uncommon to see a large group of people clustered in front of one set.

Daily life and social customs

      In the countryside, the year is filled with a variety of festivals and ritual celebrations, including marriage “introductions,” weddings, births, christenings, and other familial gatherings. As in other places, the agricultural year is marked by a number of important events that require social gatherings. Other holidays, celebrated nationwide, are drawn from the Christian and Muslim calendars or commemorate events in Ugandan history, such as Martyrs' Day (June 3rd), Heroes' Day (June 9th), and Independence Day (October 9th).

      The staple diet in most of the south is a kind of plantain called matoke, which is cooked in stews and curries; a Buganda legend relates that one of the first acts of the first man on earth, Kintu, was to plant a matoke tree for his descendants to enjoy. Sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and cassava are consumed along with a variety of vegetables. The central market in Kampala—Nakasero—offers an extensive array of vegetables and fruits, some of which are imported from neighbouring countries. Most northerners eat millet, sorghum, cornmeal, and cassava together with local vegetables. The pastoral communities tend to consume animal-derived products, especially butter, meat, and animal blood. Fish is eaten by a number of groups, and a favourite dish is luombo, a spicy stew steamed in banana leaves. Banana leaves also figure in another favourite, oluwombo, made of rice, chicken, and tomatoes.

The arts

      The Westernized elites are virtually the sole consumers and practitioners of the fine arts. Nevertheless, there is a small but active group of local artists—painters, sculptors, poets, and playwrights—who exhibit their works in local galleries and theatres. Folk art is widely collected and provides an important source of revenue. Uganda's ethnic arts are prized by collectors around the world. Carving is an especially popular form, with scenes from Ugandan history and legend incised on hardwood shields or screens. Other popular forms are ironworking, ceramics, and batik, a technique of textile painting introduced to Uganda by Southeast Asian immigrants. David Kibuuka and Henry Lutalo Lumu (1939–89), two Ugandan painters, adopted elements of Western painting such as oil-based paints to express African themes and lived outside the African continent.

      Ugandan traditional music makes use of instruments such as the lyre, marimba ( xylophone), and thumb piano (see lamellaphone). There is a wide audience within the country for both Ugandan and foreign music. Uganda's well-known Afrigo Band, which combines traditional and popular musical elements, regularly tours abroad and has produced a number of recordings. The singer and composer Geoffrey Oryema has earned international recognition for his music, which combines the Acholi, Swahili, and English languages and Acholi musical traditions (the nangu [harp]) with Western musical techniques. Congolese music is extremely popular in the country and represents a return of musicians from that region, a cultural exchange that previously had been active until the 1970s. There are many discos, pubs, and bars in most towns and trading centres where live music is performed.

      Although Uganda has several writers of note, oral traditions remain a popular form of entertainment. Rajat Neogy, a Ugandan of Indian descent, started the literary magazine Transition in 1961. Okot p'Bitek (p'Bitek, Okot) developed a literary technique that combined the written word with oral traditions. An Acholi born in Gulu, he wrote several novels including Song of Lawino (1966).

Cultural institutions

      The largest and most important museum in the country is the Uganda Museum in Kampala. Others include those at Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth national parks. The Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi (World Heritage site) (designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001), a former palace converted into a royal burial ground in the 19th century, provides a glimpse into Ganda history and cultural traditions. National parks such as Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Ruwenzori Mountains National Park (both designated UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1994) and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park are an important part of Uganda's emerging ecotourism industry.

Sports and recreation

      Sports is a vastly popular cultural activity, with millions of Ugandans supporting their favourite football (soccer) teams. Kampala is home to one of the largest sports stadiums on the continent, completed in the late 1990s. Boxing and wrestling are also immensely popular. The country's first Olympic gold medal was earned by John Akii-Bua, who competed in the men's 400-metre hurdles at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Media and publishing

      Radio stations have proliferated since 1990. In addition to the government-run Radio Uganda, there are more than 100 privately owned stations, including Sanyu (established 1993), the first private station. Uganda Television is operated by the government, and there are also private local stations and satellite television from South Africa. Television is transmitted over a radius of 200 miles (320 km) from Kampala, with relay stations around the country.

      A fluctuating number of daily newspapers are published in Uganda. Those published in English include Telecast, The Star, The Monitor, and the state-owned New Vision. Popular vernacular papers include Munno, Etop, and Orumuri, while other papers appear sporadically. In addition, daily papers published in Kenya are available.

      The degree of government control and censorship of the press has varied under different regimes. Since the early 1990s, however, there has been considerable freedom of expression in the country.

Omari H. Kokole Ed.

History

      This discussion focuses on the history of Uganda since the 19th century. For a detailed treatment of Uganda's early history and of the country in its regional context, see eastern Africa, history of.

      The early history of Uganda, like much of sub-Saharan Africa, is a saga of movements of small groups of cultivators and herders over centuries. Cultures and languages changed continuously as peoples slowly migrated to other regions and intermingled. By the mid-19th century, when the first non-African visitors entered the region later to become the Uganda Protectorate, there were a number of distinct languages and cultures within the territory. The northern areas were occupied generally by peoples speaking Nilotic and Sudanic languages, while the central, western, and southern portions of the territory were predominantly occupied by Bantu-speaking peoples.

Bunyoro and Buganda

      The organization of the peoples who came to inhabit the area north of the Nile River was mainly based on their clan structures. In this respect the northerners differed markedly from the peoples to the southwest of the Nile. There, peoples were organized into states—or “kingdoms,” as they were labeled by the earliest European visitors. The dominant state was Bunyoro-Kitara (Bunyoro), which originated at the end of the 15th century and, under able rulers, extended its influence eastward and southward over a considerable area. To the south there were a number of lesser states, each with a chief who, like the ruler of Bunyoro-Kitara, combined priestly functions with those of a secular leader. To the southeast of Bunyoro-Kitara, the smaller state of Buganda grew as an offshoot of its larger neighbour. By the end of the 18th century, however, the boundaries of Bunyoro-Kitara had been stretched so far that the authority of the ruler began to weaken, and a succession of pacific chiefs accelerated this decline. Simultaneously the smaller, more compact state of Buganda enjoyed a succession of able and aggressive kabakas (rulers), who began to expand at the expense of Bunyoro-Kitara.

      It was during the period of Buganda's rise that the first Swahili-speaking traders from the east coast of Africa reached the country in the 1840s. Their object was to trade in ivory and slaves. Kabaka Mutesa I, who took office about 1856, admitted the first European explorer, the Briton John Hanning Speke (Speke, John Hanning), who crossed into the kabaka's territory in 1862.

      Henry Morton Stanley (Stanley, Sir Henry Morton), the British-American explorer who reached Buganda in 1875, met Mutesa I. Although Buganda had not been attacked, Achoiland, to the north, had been ravaged by slavers from Egypt and the Sudan since the early 1860s, and, on the death of Kamrasi, the ruler of Bunyoro, his successor, Kabarega, had defeated his rivals only with the aid of the slavers' guns. Moreover, an emissary from the Egyptian government, Linant de Bellefonds, had reached Mutesa's palace before Stanley, so the kabaka was anxious to obtain allies. He readily agreed to Stanley's proposal to invite Christian missionaries (mission) to Uganda, but he was disappointed, after the first agents of the Church Missionary Society arrived in 1877, to find that they had no interest in military matters. In 1879 representatives of the Roman Catholic White Fathers Mission also reached Buganda. Although Mutesa I attempted to limit their movements, their influence rapidly spread through their contact with the chiefs whom the kabaka kept around him, and inevitably the missionaries became drawn into the politics of the country. Mutesa I was not concerned about these new influences, however, and, when Egyptian expansion was checked by the Mahdist rising in the Sudan, he was able to deal brusquely with the handful of missionaries in his country. His successor, Mwanga, who became kabaka in 1884, was less successful: he was deposed in 1888 while attempting to drive the missionaries and their supporters from the country.

The Uganda Protectorate

      Mwanga, who was restored to his throne with the assistance of the Christian (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) Ganda, soon faced European imperialism. Carl Peters (Peters, Carl), the German adventurer, made a treaty of protection with Mwanga in 1889, but this was revoked when the Anglo-German agreement of 1890 declared all the country north of latitude 1° S to be in the British sphere of influence. The Imperial British East Africa Company agreed to administer the region on behalf of the British government, and in 1890 Captain F.D. Lugard (Lugard, F.D.), the company's agent, signed another treaty with Mwanga, whose kingdom of Buganda was now placed under the company's protection. Lugard also made treaties of protection with two other chiefs, the rulers of the western states of Ankole and Toro. However, when the company did not have the funds to continue its administrative position, the British government, for strategic reasons and partly through pressure from missionary sympathizers in Britain, declared Buganda its protectorate in 1894.

      Britain inherited a country that was divided into politico-religious factions, which had erupted into civil war in 1892. Buganda was also threatened by Kabarega, the ruler of Bunyoro, but a military expedition in 1894 deprived him of his headquarters and made him a refugee for the rest of his career in Uganda. Two years later the protectorate included Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole, and Busoga, and treaties were also made with chiefs to the north of the Nile. Mwanga, who revolted against British overlordship in 1897, was overthrown again and replaced by his infant son.

      A mutiny in 1897 of the Sudanese troops used by the colonial government led Britain to take a more active interest in the Uganda Protectorate, and in 1899 Sir Harry Johnston (Johnston, Sir Harry Hamilton) was commissioned to visit the country and to make recommendations on its future administration. The main outcome of his mission was the Buganda Agreement of 1900, which formed the basis of British relations with Buganda for more than 50 years. Under its terms the kabaka was recognized as ruler of Buganda as long as he remained faithful to the protecting authority. His council of chiefs, the lukiko, was given statutory recognition. The leading chiefs benefited most from the agreement, since, in addition to acquiring greater authority, they were also granted land in freehold to ensure their support for the negotiations. Johnston made another agreement of a less-detailed nature with the ruler of Toro (1900), and subsequently a third agreement was made with the ruler of Ankole (1901).

      Meanwhile, British administration was being gradually extended north and east of the Nile. However, in these areas, where a centralized authority was unknown, no agreements were made, and British officers, frequently assisted by agents of Buganda, administered the country directly. By 1914 Uganda's boundaries had been fixed, and British control had reached most areas.

Growth of a peasant economy

      Early in the 20th century Sir James Hayes Sadler, who succeeded Johnston as commissioner, concluded that the country was unlikely to prove attractive to European settlers. Sadler's own successor, Sir Hesketh Bell, announced that he wished to develop Uganda as an African state. In this he was opposed by a number of his more senior officials and in particular by the chief justice, William Morris Carter. Carter was chairman of a land commission whose activities continued until after World War I. Again and again the commission urged that provision be made for European planters, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Bell himself had laid the foundations for a peasant economy by encouraging the Africans to cultivate cotton, which had been introduced into the protectorate as a cash crop in 1904. It was mainly because of the wealth derived from cotton that Uganda became independent of a grant-in-aid from the British Treasury in 1914.

      In 1914, at the outset of World War I, there were a few skirmishes between the British and Germans on the southwestern frontier, but Uganda was never in danger of invasion. The war, however, did retard the country's development. Soon after the war it was decided that the protectorate authorities should concentrate, as Bell had suggested, on expanding African agriculture, and Africans were encouraged to grow coffee in addition to cotton. The British government's decision to forbid the alienation of land in freehold, and the economic depression of the early 1920s, dealt a further blow to the hopes of European planters. The part to be played by Europeans, as well as Asians, was now mainly on the commercial and processing side of the protectorate's agricultural industry.

      As the output of primary produce increased, it became necessary to extend and improve communications. Just before World War I a railway had been built running northward from Jinja, on Lake Victoria, to Namasagali, the intent being to open up the Eastern Province. In the 1920s a railway from Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast, was extended to Soroti, and in 1931 a rail link was also completed between Kampala, the industrial capital of Uganda, and the coast.

      The depression of the early 1930s interrupted Uganda's economic progress, but the protectorate's recovery was more rapid than that of its neighbours, so that the later years of the decade were a period of steady expansion.

Political and administrative development

      In 1921 a Legislative Council was instituted, but its membership was so small (four official and two nonofficial members) that it made little impact on the protectorate. The Indian community, which played an important part in the commercial life of the region, resented the fact that it was not to have equal representation with Europeans on the unofficial side of the council and so refused to participate until 1926. There was no evidence of a desire on the part of the Africans to sit in the council, since the most politically advanced group in the community, the Ganda, regarded its own lukiko as the most important council in the country.

      In light of the Africans' indifference toward the protectorate legislature, it is not surprising that they opposed the suggestion, made in the later 1920s, that there should be some form of closer union between the East African territories. An interest in “tribal” traditions was one source of this opposition, but there was also fear, among Africans as well as Asians, that they would be dominated by Kenya's European settlers.

      An important development was the beginning of government interest in education. The protectorate administration set up an education department in 1925, and, while aid was given to the missionary societies, which had already opened a number of good schools in Buganda, the government also established schools. This led to the gradual replacement of older chiefs (men of strong personality who usually lacked a Western-style education) by younger, Western-educated men who were more capable of carrying out government policy and more amenable to British control. In Buganda, too, the government began to interfere more actively in the kingdom's affairs in order to increase efficiency. The main result was that the people showed less respect to non-Bugandan chiefs, which caused some of the chiefs to resent the curtailment of their powers.

World War II and its aftermath

      During World War II the protectorate faced the task of becoming as self-sufficient as it could. More important for Uganda was the attempt by the governor, Sir Charles Dundas, to reverse his predecessors' policy and to give more freedom to the factions striving for power in Buganda. The old policy was revived, however, after an outbreak of rioting in 1945. Also in that year the first Africans were nominated to the Legislative Council, and in succeeding years African representation steadily increased. An important step was taken in 1954 when the African council membership increased to 14 out of a total of 28 nonofficial members; the 14 were selected from districts thought to be more natural units of representation than the provinces that had previously existed. In 1955 a ministerial system was introduced, with 5 nonofficial African ministers out of a total of 11. The success of the council was undermined, however, by the erratic participation of Buganda, which viewed a central legislature as a threat to its autonomy. This feeling reinforced the resentment Bugandans harboured after Mutesa II had been deported in 1953 for refusing to cooperate with the protectorate government. He returned two years later as a constitutional ruler, but the rapprochement between Buganda and the protectorate government was lukewarm.

      In the immediate postwar years the protectorate administration placed greater emphasis on economic and social development than on political advance. From 1952 the government rapidly expanded secondary education, while legislation was enacted and a loan fund established to encourage Africans to participate in trade. A relatively ambitious development program was greatly assisted by the high prices realized for cotton and coffee; coffee overtook cotton as Uganda's most valuable export in 1957. In 1954 a large hydroelectric project was inaugurated at Owen Falls on the Nile near Jinja, and in 1962 a five-year development plan was announced.

The Republic of Uganda

      In the late 1950s, as a few political parties emerged, the African population concentrated its attention on achieving self-government, with focus on the Legislative Council. The kingdom of Buganda intermittently pressed for independence from Uganda, which raised the question of the protectorate's future status. Discussions in London in 1961 led to full internal self-government in March 1962. Benedicto Kiwanuka, a Roman Catholic Ganda who was formerly chief minister, became the first prime minister, but in the elections in April 1962 he was displaced by Milton Obote (Obote, Milton), a Lango (Langi) who headed the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) party. At further discussions in London in June 1962, it was agreed that Buganda should receive a wide degree of autonomy within a federal relationship. Faced with the emergence of Obote's UPC, which claimed support throughout the country apart from Buganda, and of the Democratic Party (DP), which was based in Buganda and led by Kiwanuka, conservative Ganda leaders set up their own rival organization, Kabaka Yekka (KY), “King Alone.”

Obote's first presidency

      Uganda became independent on October 9, 1962, although it was divided politically on a geographic as well as an ethnic basis. By accepting a constitution that conceded what amounted to federal status to Buganda, Obote contrived an unlikely alliance with the Ganda establishment. Together the UPC and KY were able to form a government with Obote as prime minister and with the DP in opposition. Obote agreed to replace the British governor-general by appointing Mutesa II as the country's first president in an attempt to unify the alliance further, but this move was unsuccessful. Although Obote was able to win over some of the members of the KY and even of the DP so that they joined the UPC, tension grew steadily between the kabaka on the one hand and the UPC on the other. The Ganda leaders particularly resented their inability to dominate a government composed mainly of members of other ethnic groups. There were also divisions within the UPC, because each member of parliament owed his election to local ethnic supporters rather than to his membership in a political party. Those supporters frequently put pressure on their representatives to redress what they saw as an imbalance in the distribution of the material benefits of independence.

      Faced with this dissatisfaction among some of his followers and with increasingly overt hostility in Buganda, Obote arrested five of his ministers and suspended the constitution in 1966. Outraged, the Ganda leaders ordered him to remove his government from the kingdom. Obote responded by sending troops under the leadership of Colonel Idi Amin (Amin, Idi) to arrest the kabaka, who escaped to England, where he died in 1969. When Obote imposed a new republican constitution—appointing himself executive president, abolishing all the kingdoms, and dividing Buganda into administrative districts—he also lost the support of the peoples of southwestern Uganda. Internal friction subsequently grew in intensity, fostered by mutual suspicion between the rival groups, by assassination attempts against the president, and by the increasingly oppressive methods employed by the government to silence its critics.

      At independence the export economy was flourishing without adversely affecting subsistence agriculture, and the economy continued to improve, largely because of the high demand and high prices for coffee. To answer accusations that the profits from exports did not benefit the producers enough, Obote attempted in 1969 to distribute the benefits from the prospering economy more widely. To this end he published a “common man's charter,” which focused on removing the last vestiges of feudalism by having the government take a majority holding in the shares of the larger, mainly foreign-owned companies. In order to unite the country more firmly, he also produced a plan for a new electoral system in 1970 that would require successful candidates for parliament to secure votes in constituencies outside their home districts.

      These proposals met with a cynical response in some quarters, but the government was overthrown before they could be put into effect. Obote had relied heavily on the loyalty of Idi Amin, but Amin had been building support for himself within the army by recruiting from his own Kakwa ethnic group in the northwest. The army, which had previously been composed of Acholi and their neighbours, Obote's own Lango people, now became sharply divided. Simultaneously, a rift developed between Obote and Amin, and in January 1971 Amin took advantage of the president's absence from the country to seize power.

Tyranny under Amin

 Idi Amin's coup was widely welcomed, as there was hope that the country would finally be unified. Several Western nations, including Britain, who feared the spread of communism, were also relieved at Obote's overthrow: they had become suspicious that his policies were moving to the left. Amin promised a return to civilian government in five years, but problems with his leadership were soon apparent. Amin had little Western-style education and virtually no officer training, so he often resorted to arbitrary violence in order to maintain his position. In one incident, he destroyed the one potential centre of effective opposition by a wholesale slaughter of senior army officers loyal to Obote.

      To win more general support among the Ugandan population, Amin ordered all Asians who had not taken Ugandan nationality to leave the country in 1972. His move won considerable approval in the country because many Africans believed that they had been exploited by the Asians, who controlled the middle and some of the higher levels of the economy, but the action isolated Uganda from the rest of the world community. Although a few wealthy Ugandans profited from Amin's actions, the majority of the commercial enterprises formerly owned by Asians were given to senior army officers who rapidly squandered the proceeds and then allowed the businesses to collapse.

      Most people in the countryside were able to survive the total breakdown of the economy that followed in the mid- and late 1970s because the fertility of Uganda's soil allowed them to continue growing food. In the towns an all-pervading black market developed, and dishonesty became the only means of survival. This economic and moral collapse stirred up criticism of the government, and during this period the country experienced several serious coup attempts.

      In an attempt to divert attention from Uganda's internal problems, Amin launched an attack on Tanzania in October 1978. Tanzanian troops, assisted by armed Ugandan exiles, quickly put Amin's demoralized army to flight and invaded Uganda. With these troops closing in, Amin escaped the capital. A coalition government of former exiles, calling itself the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF), with a former leading figure in the DP, Yusufu Lule, as president, took office in April 1979. Because of disagreement over economic strategy and the fear that Lule was promoting the interests of his own Ganda people, he was replaced in June by Godfrey Binaisa, but Binaisa's term of office was also short-lived. Supporters of Obote plotted Binaisa's overthrow, and Obote returned to Uganda in May 1980.

Obote's second presidency

 In December 1980 Obote's party, the UPC, won a majority in highly controversial elections for parliament. The DP leadership reluctantly agreed to act as a constitutional opposition, but Yoweri Museveni (Museveni, Yoweri Kaguta), who had played a significant part in the military overthrow of Amin, refused to accept the UPC victory. He formed a guerrilla group in the bush near Kampala and waged an increasingly effective campaign against the government.

      With the support of the International Monetary Fund and other external donors, Obote tried hard to rebuild the economy. Initially his efforts seemed successful, but the extraordinary inflation rate resulting from an entrenched black market system worked against him. It was impossible for urban wage earners to keep pace with rising prices, and salaried civil servants grew frustrated at the government's inability to increase their pay in line with their needs. In addition, the guerrilla war drew strength from the fact that it was based in Buganda, among people already suspicious of Obote. That strength grew as an ill-paid, ill-disciplined, and vengeful army, consisting largely of Acholi and Lango, ravaged the countryside for loot and took vengeance on their longtime Ganda enemies.

Museveni in office

 A split within the army itself—in particular, between its Acholi and Lango members—led to Obote (Obote, Milton)'s overthrow and exile in 1985 and to the seizure of power by an Acholi general, Tito Okello. This, however, could not prevent a victory for Museveni's force of southern fighters, who now called themselves the National Resistance Army (NRA), and Museveni became president on January 29, 1986. While a new constitution was being drafted, an indirectly elected National Resistance Council, dominated by the National Resistance Movement, acted as the national legislature.

      Faced with the same problems that had confronted the UNLF in 1979 and Obote in 1980, Museveni announced a policy of moral as well as economic reconstruction, although it was not easy to enforce. Sporadic military resistance to the new government continued, particularly in the north and east. Arms were plentiful, and dissatisfied persons were willing to use them to promote their ends. The NRA, despite the president's injunctions, sometimes proved as heavy-handed in dealing with opponents as Obote's forces had been.

      Security did improve, however, at least in most of central, southern, and western Uganda, and observers claimed that human rights were more widely protected. A constitutional amendment in 1993 led to the restoration of the monarchies, and the Ganda, Toro, Bunyoro, and Soga crowned their traditional rulers. The new constitution was promulgated in 1995, and presidential elections were held in May 1996; Museveni easily won the majority of votes. He was reelected in 2001 and 2006, although the 2006 contest was clouded by allegations that Kizza Besigye, the leader of the opposition group Forum for Democratic Change, was imprisoned in the months leading up to the presidential election to stop him from participating. Besigye was ultimately released in January 2006 and able to stand for election in February; although he lost, he garnered almost two-fifths of the vote. Meanwhile, in the late 1990s Uganda faced international criticism over its involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's civil war; after many attempts at resolution, the last of the Ugandan troops withdrew from Congo in 2003. In December 2005 the International Court of Justice determined that Uganda was guilty of unlawful military intervention in Congo and that Uganda's military violated international human rights law and international humanitarian law and exploited Congo's natural resources; the court ruled that Uganda owed reparations to the country.

      During the 1990s and continuing into the 2000s, Uganda was faced with an increase in rebel activity, particularly from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Established in the late 1980s, the LRA abducted tens of thousands of children to serve as slaves or soldiers in its fight against Museveni's government. Its vicious attacks on civilians in the northern part of the country—including rape, murder, and acts of mutilation, such as cutting off the ears, noses, lips, and limbs of their victims—terrorized and displaced more than one million Ugandans, creating a humanitarian crisis in the early 2000s. After years of refusal, the LRA agreed to meet with government officials for peace talks in late December 2004. However, the talks broke down in early 2005, and the LRA resumed their brutal attacks on civilians. Peace talks resumed in July 2006, and although a cease-fire agreement was reached in late August, talks again broke down, and negotiations to end the decades-old conflict continued intermittently. In late 2007 there was some concern that the quest for peace might be hindered by a rift between Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA, and some of the group's high-ranking leadership; another concern was that some of the northern communities that had been terrorized by the LRA would refuse to accept any type of reconciliation agreement with the group.

      Although the country's continued economic growth was praised by the West, inflation and unemployment continued to be problems, especially given Uganda's dependence on fluctuating markets for its agricultural produce. In an effort to enhance economic activity in the region, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya launched the East African Community Customs Union on January 1, 2005.

Kenneth Ingham Maryinez Lyons Ed.

Additional Reading

Geography

Rita M. Byrnes (ed.), Uganda: A Country Study (1992), contains geographic as well as historical information. Peter Ladefoged, Ruth Glick, and Clive Criper, Language in Uganda (1972), is an engaging examination. C.C. Wrigley, Crops and Wealth in Uganda: A Short Agrarian History (1959, reissued 1970), shows how Ganda farmers prospered from the high postwar coffee prices. Dudley Seers et al., The Rehabilitation of the Economy of Uganda, 2 vol. (1979); and Mark Baird, Uganda: Country Economic Memorandum (1982), a World Bank study, detail economic development in independent Uganda. Nelson Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena: Participation and Ethnicity in African Politics, with a Case Study of Uganda (1976), examines ideas on ethnicity and ethnic categorizations in Uganda, drawing on case studies of ethnic collision in the first Obote and Amin regimes. Ali A. Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (1975), provides a survey of the country, investigating the interplay between cultural, economic, and military forces. Michael Twaddle (ed.), Expulsion of a Minority: Essays on Ugandan Asians (1975), examines several aspects of Amin's summary expulsions of Asians. Mahmood Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (1984), is a serious and unsensational study of the Amin regime. Kenneth Ingham, Obote: A Political Biography (1994), is a detailed study of one of Uganda's most contentious leaders. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (1997), is the autobiography of Museveni, who led the guerrilla war against Obote.

History

Thomas P. Ofcansky, Uganda: Tarnished Pearl of Africa (1996), provides a useful generalist overview of the country. Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire, A Political History of Uganda (1980), offers a brief, perceptive political history, mainly of the period 1860 to 1971. David Lee Schoenbrun, A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century (1998); and Christopher Wrigley, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (1996), focus on oral tradition and its use in writing histories of peoples who left few if any written records. Jan Jelmert Jørgensen, Uganda: A Modern History (1981), is a scholarly account of the influence of the economy on Uganda's history from 1881 to 1979. T.V. Sathyamurthy, The Political Development of Uganda, 1900–1986 (1986), details the history of colonial government and independence. M.S.M. Semakula Kiwanuka, A History of Buganda: From the Foundation of the Kingdom to 1900 (1971); D.A. Low, Buganda in Modern History (1971); and Benjamin Ray, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship in Buganda (1991), provide differing interpretations of Bugandan history. Michael Twaddle, Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda (1993), is a significant contribution that reveals the role of an influential African in the evolution of the protectorate. Edward Steinhart, Conflict and Collaboration in the Kingdoms of Western Uganda (1977, reprinted 1999), traces the reactions of the political elites from three Ugandan kingdoms to the imposition of colonial rule. Holger Bernt Hansen, Mission, Church, and State in a Colonial Setting: Uganda, 1890–1925 (1984), carefully documents the important role played by Christian missionaries in the early years of British administration. Mahmood Mamdani, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (1976), gives a Marxist view of Uganda's history since the late 19th century. Paulo Kavuma, Crisis in Buganda, 1953–55 (1979), recounts the exile and return of the kabaka of Buganda. G.S.K. Ibingira, The Forging of an African Nation: The Political and Constitutional Evolution of Uganda from Colonial Rule to Independence, 1894–1962 (1973), written by a leading participant, examines the achievement of independence and its aftermath. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (eds.), Uganda Now: Between Decay and Development (1988), collects essays on all aspects of Uganda's development since independence. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (eds.), Changing Uganda: The Dilemmas of Structural Adjustment and Revolutionary Change (1991), and Developing Uganda (1998), are invaluable as sources of more recent scholarship on Uganda.Maryinez Lyons

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