Uganda

• 1. Introduction

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  Uganda has the lowest median age of any country in the world, just 15 years. Its population grew from 9.5 million people in 1969 to 34.9 million in 2014. By the latest census figures, 49.5 per cent of Ugandans were under the age of 18. The fertility rate in 2014 estimates was 5.97 children per woman, the fifth highest anywhere. This landlocked nation in East Africa is a country of the young, and those young people have inherited an unusual past. How did a patchwork of old kingdoms end up inside one set of borders? What happens to a new republic when its biggest kingdom refuses to be treated like any other region? And how do lakes, mountains, oil and refugees shape the lives of so many young people?

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• 2. Kingdoms and Protectorate

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  Roughly 3,000 years ago, Bantu speakers arrived in the south of what is now Uganda, and Nilotic speakers arrived in the northeast. They met farmers and herders who spoke Central Sudanic and Kuliak languages. By 1500 AD, all of these groups had been absorbed into Bantu-speaking cultures south of Mount Elgon, the Nile River and Lake Kyoga.

  Oral tradition and archaeology point to the Empire of Kitara, which stretched from lakes Albert and Kyoga in the north to lakes Victoria and Tanganyika in the south. The Tooro, Ankole and Busoga kingdoms claim it as their ancestor. Some Luo invaders settled among the Bantu of Kitara and founded the Biito dynasty, the line of the present Omukama, or ruler, of Bunyoro-Kitara.

  In the 1830s, Arab traders came inland from the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa, looking for trade. A different threat reached Bunyoro in the late 1860s. In 1869, Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt sent the British explorer Samuel Baker on a military expedition to northern Uganda. The stated aims were to suppress the slave trade and open the way to commerce.

  The Banyoro resisted, and Baker had to fight a desperate battle to get away. He judged their resistance to be treachery and denounced them in a book titled Ismailia, published in 1874 and widely read in Britain. When British officials later arrived, they carried that prejudice with them. They sided with Buganda, and Bunyoro lost half of its territory as Buganda's reward.

  British Anglican missionaries reached Buganda in 1877, and French Catholic missionaries followed in 1879. Muteesa I and much of his court converted to Christianity. After his anti-Christian son Mwanga took the throne, the Uganda Martyrs were put to death in 1885.

  Religious wars began in Buganda in 1886, first between Muslims and Christians. From 1890 the fighting set Protestants against Catholics. The two sides were called ba-Ingleza and ba-Fransa, after the imperial powers they were aligned with. The Imperial British East Africa Company, chartered in 1888 to negotiate trade agreements, said it could not maintain its occupation. The unrest had driven it into bankruptcy, and it transferred its administration rights to the British government in 1893.

  The Uganda Protectorate was established in 1894. Treaties with Toro in 1900, Ankole in 1901 and Bunyoro in 1933 stretched it to roughly the shape of present-day Uganda. Protectorate status left Uganda more self-government than neighbouring Kenya, which was made a full colony.

  In the 1890s, 32,000 labourers from British India were recruited on indentured contracts to build the Uganda Railway. When the line was finished, 6,724 of them chose to stay in East Africa. Some became traders and took over cotton ginning and clothing retail.

  A sleeping sickness epidemic raged in the south of Uganda along the northern shore of Lake Victoria from 1900 to 1920. It killed more than 250,000 people.

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• 3. The Buganda Showdown

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  In May 1966, about 120 armed guards of the Kabaka of Buganda held off the national army for twelve hours. Prime Minister Milton Obote had ordered Idi Amin to attack the Kabaka's palace. The Kabaka had asked for foreign help, and the Buganda parliament had demanded that the central government leave Buganda, Kampala included. The guards resisted harder than anyone expected. The army finally brought up heavier guns and overran the palace, and an estimated 2,000 people died. The Kabaka escaped over the palace walls and was taken into exile in London. The uprising in the countryside that Obote had feared never came.

  Uganda had become independent on the 9th of October 1962, with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. It became a republic in October 1963. The first post-independence government was an alliance between Obote's Uganda People's Congress and Kabaka Yekka, a party whose name means Kabaka Only. Obote was executive prime minister, and Edward Muteesa II, the Kabaka, held the largely ceremonial post of president.

  The arrangement papered over an old problem. Colonial governors had never found a formula for fitting the largest monarchy into a unitary state. Buganda had never sought independence. It seemed content with a loose arrangement that kept its special privileges. In the elections before independence, the UPC ran no candidates in Buganda and won 37 of the 61 directly elected seats elsewhere. The Democratic Party won 24. Kabaka Yekka won all 21 Buganda seats.

  The alliance broke in 1964. Basil Kiiza Bataringaya, the Democratic Party's leader in parliament, crossed the floor with five other MPs, leaving his party with only nine seats. Ten Kabaka Yekka members soon followed. Then Obote allowed a referendum in the so-called lost counties, lands that Buganda had conquered from Bunyoro and that British agreements had formalised. The residents voted to return to Bunyoro despite the Kabaka's attempts to sway them. Kabaka Yekka opposed the bill that handed the counties back, and the partnership with the UPC ended.

  Trouble spread inside Obote's own party. At the delegates conference in Gulu in 1964, the moderate Grace Ibingira beat the radical John Kakonge in a bitter contest for Secretary-General. Ibingira became the symbol of opposition to Obote. The factions acquired ethnic labels, with the mostly southern Ibingira camp called Bantu and the mostly northern Obote camp called Nilotic. The army and police, recruited by the British almost entirely in the north, leaned toward Obote. In April 1966 he passed out eight hundred new recruits at Moroto, and seventy per cent came from the Northern Region.

  The daring move came from Daudi Ochieng, a terminally ill MP close to the Kabaka. In Obote's absence, he accused Army Chief of Staff Colonel Idi Amin of plundering ivory and gold from the Congo. Parliament voted overwhelmingly to censure Amin. Obote answered in February 1966 by arresting Ibingira and other ministers at a cabinet meeting and assuming special powers. In March 1966 he announced the offices of president and vice-president would cease to exist, which dismissed the Kabaka. He also made Amin Army Commander, replacing Opolot, who was related to Buganda by marriage.

  Obote stripped away the Kabaka's powers one by one. He abolished independent public service commissions, the Buganda High Court and the lands held by Buganda chiefs. Buganda's finances came under central control. A new constitution in 1967 proclaimed Uganda a republic and abolished the traditional kingdoms, with Obote as president.

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• 4. Amin and the Aftermath

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  On the 25th of January 1971, a military coup removed Milton Obote and put General Idi Amin in charge. Amin ruled as a dictator, backed by the army, for the next eight years. He carried out mass killings to keep his hold on power. Estimates of the dead during his regime run from 80,000 to 500,000 Ugandans.

  Amin also forcibly removed the entrepreneurial Indian minority. About 80,000 Indians lived in Uganda before he required the expulsion of Ugandan-Asians, most of them of Indian origin, in 1972.

  In June 1976, Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France flight and forced it to land at Entebbe airport. Of the 250 passengers originally on board, one hundred were held hostage. An Israeli commando raid rescued them ten days later.

  Amin's rule ended in 1979 after the Uganda-Tanzania War. Tanzanian forces, aided by Ugandan exiles, invaded the country. Obote returned to power after the controversial general election of 1980. That result set off the Ugandan Bush War, a six-year guerrilla struggle. It ended with the victory of Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Movement. His forces toppled the regime in January 1986, and he has held the presidency ever since.

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• 5. Museveni's Long Rule

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  Under the Movement system that Museveni set up after 1986, political parties could keep only a headquarters office. They could not open branches, hold rallies or field candidates directly, though individual candidates could belong to a party. The restriction was officially meant to reduce sectarian violence. A constitutional referendum in July 2005 ended the nineteen-year ban on multi-party politics.

  In the mid-to-late 1990s, Western countries praised Museveni as part of a new generation of African leaders. The record since has been darker. Uganda invaded and occupied the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the Second Congo War, which brought an estimated 5.4 million deaths since 1998. At home, the Lord's Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, committed crimes against humanity, including child slavery and the Atiak massacre. The conflict in the north killed thousands and displaced millions.

  In 2005, parliament abolished presidential term limits. The vote came with an allegation that Museveni used public funds to pay US$2,000 to each MP who backed the change. Britain responded in May 2005 by withholding part of its aid. The opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who had once been Museveni's physician, was arrested before the February 2006 elections. Heavily armed security forces besieged the High Court during a hearing in his case.

  On the 20th of February 2011, the Electoral Commission declared Museveni the winner with 68 per cent of the vote. Besigye said he and his supporters "downrightly snub" the result. The European Union's observer mission said the process was marred by failures that left "an unacceptable number of Ugandan citizens being disfranchised." In the 2021 election, official results gave Museveni 58 per cent and the popstar-turned-politician Bobi Wine 35 per cent. The opposition alleged widespread fraud. A 24-year-old named John Katumba also stood as a candidate. Museveni was last re-elected in January 2026. Signs of a plan for succession by his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, have raised tensions.

  The Public Order Management Act of 2013 has been used to infringe on press freedom. The army, the Uganda People's Defence Force, has about 45,000 soldiers on active duty. It has deployed troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan. Commentators note that only the United States Armed Forces serve in more countries.

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• 6. Lakes and Wildlife

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  Mount Stanley, in the Ruwenzori range, rises 5109 metres and is the highest peak in Uganda. The country lies between 1 degree south and 4 degrees north latitude, and between 30 and 35 degrees east longitude. Its terrain mixes volcanic hills, mountains and lakes, at an average height of 900 metres above sea level. Mountains stand along both the eastern and western borders.

  Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, dominates the south and holds many islands. The most important cities sit near its shore, among them the capital Kampala and nearby Entebbe. Lake Kyoga lies in the centre of the country, ringed by extensive marshes. Uganda is landlocked, yet it also holds lakes Albert, Edward and the smaller Lake George.

  Almost the whole country lies within the Nile basin. The Victoria Nile runs from Lake Victoria into Lake Kyoga, and from there into Lake Albert on the Congolese border. It then flows north into South Sudan. A part of eastern Uganda drains through the Suam River toward Lake Turkana. The extreme north-east drains into the Lotikipi Basin, which lies mostly in Kenya.

  Uganda has 60 protected areas, including ten national parks. Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Rwenzori Mountains National Park are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mountain gorillas live in Bwindi, while Mgahinga Gorilla National Park shelters gorillas and golden monkeys. Hippos gather in Murchison Falls National Park. Jackfruit grows throughout the country.

  More than 1073 bird species have been recorded in Uganda. That ranks it 4th in Africa and 16th internationally. The country scored 4.36 out of 10 on the 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index, which placed it 128th of 172 countries.

  Tourism built on this scenery brought in 4.9 trillion Ugandan shillings, or US$1.88 billion, in the 2012-13 financial year. The main draws are photo safaris through the national parks and game reserves.

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• 7. Corruption and Oil

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  In June 2014, protesters smuggled two piglets into the Ugandan parliament and called them "MPigs." They were angry that MPs earned 60 times what most state employees earned and wanted a major raise. The protesters were arrested, but the stunt became a symbol of public anger.

  A far larger theft came in 2012, when US$12.6 million of donor funds disappeared from the Office of the Prime Minister. The money had been earmarked for rebuilding northern Uganda after a 20-year war and for Karamoja, the poorest region. The EU, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Norway suspended aid. In 2016, Transparency International ranked Uganda 151st of 176 countries, with a score of 25 on a scale where 100 means clean. A United States report put the annual loss to corruption at 768.9 billion shillings, or $286 million.

  Oil raises the stakes. Crude was found in the Lake Albert area, in an estimated volume of 95 million cubic metres. Global Witness said in 2012 that the reserves could double government revenue within six to ten years, worth an estimated US$2.4 billion per year. Parliament passed a Petroleum Bill in 2012 that the ruling party said would bring transparency. The Ugandan energy analyst Angelo Izama said it was tantamount to "handing over an ATM (cash) machine" to Museveni and his regime.

  On the 13th of September 2016, Uganda and Tanzania signed a deal for a 1,445 km crude oil pipeline costing $3.5 billion. It would link the oil-rich Hoima region with the port of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.

  An amendment to the law on non-governmental organisations in 2006 made life harder for aid groups. It required government recommendations for registration, annual re-registration and notice to officials before contacting people, and it forced all foreign funds through the Bank of Uganda. Coffee, at US$402.63 million, was still the top export in 2015.

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• 8. Refuge, Rights and Reform

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  By October 2025, Uganda hosted roughly 1.95 million refugees, more than any other country in Africa. Refugees may apply for work permits, move freely, and receive a plot of land in settlements closely linked to nearby Ugandan communities. They can form associations, and many refugee-run organisations now exist. The policy offers no path to citizenship. Uganda sheltered displaced people even before independence, including groups fleeing World War II, and by 2014 it held roughly 400,000. Most come today from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2023, more than 90,000 people fleeing the civil war in Sudan have arrived.

  On the 9th of October 2010, a Ugandan newspaper called Rolling Stone printed the names, addresses and photographs of 100 people it called homosexuals. Activists say many people were attacked afterwards. The activist David Kato was murdered on the 27th of January 2011. David Bahati submitted an Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009, and parliament passed it on the 20th of December 2013. Museveni signed it on the 24th of February 2014. The death penalty was dropped from the final law. The World Bank postponed a US$90 million loan, and the Constitutional Court ruled the law invalid on the 1st of August 2014 because it lacked the required quorum.

  A new push came in March 2023, when Asuman Basalirwa tabled a bill in parliament. On the 21st of March 2023, parliament approved a version that would have punished identifying as homosexual with 20 years in prison. The president did not approve it. In the revised version that became law, identifying as homosexual was not a crime.

  In 1997, the government declared primary school free for all children. Only two million children attended primary school in 1986, and by 1999 the figure was six million. In 2007, Uganda became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce universal secondary education.

  HIV infection rates of 30 per cent in the 1980s fell to 6.4 per cent by the end of 2008. In 2001, the government ended user fees at state health facilities, and visits rose by 80 per cent. More than half of that increase came from the poorest 20 per cent of the population. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 63.4 years in 2019.

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