Uganda Country Profile

Uganda General Information

Capital: Kampala

Language: English (official language, taught in schools, used in courts of law and by most newspapers and some radio broadcasts), Ganda or Luganda, other Niger-Congo languages, Nilo-Saharan languages, Swahili (official), Arabic

English is taught in schools and used in courts of law, whilst Luganda is the language used most often in the capital. 

Religion: Protestant 45.1% (Anglican 32.0%, Pentecostal/Born Again/Evangelical 11.1%, Seventh Day Adventist 1.7%, Baptist .3%), Roman Catholic 39.3%, Muslim 13.7%, other 1.6%, none 0.2% (2014 est.)

Currency: Ugandan Shilling 

Cryptocurrency: The government of Uganda does not recognise any crypto-currency as legal tender in Uganda, however users can now buy Bitcoin and Ethereum with Ugandan shillings.

GMT:  (+) 3

For 20 years the insurgency of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, produced great suffering in Northern Uganda. Uganda is still recovering from the effects of the insurgency. 

About Uganda

Uganda is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The current population of Uganda is 50 million. Uganda ranks 30th as the most populated country.  The official languages in Uganda are English and Swahili. The major religions in Uganda are Christianity and Islam.

On 25th January 1971, President Obote government was overthrown by General Idi Amin. General Amin seized control of the country and ruled Uganda as dictator with the support of the military. The International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, believe around 300,000 people died during the reign of General Amin. Another estimate, compiled by exile organisations with the help of Amnesty International, put the number of people killed at 500,000.  The Uganda- Tanzania war which lasted from 1978 to 1979 overthrew the regime of General Amin.

President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) have ruled Uganda without interruption since 1986.  In 2005 a constitutional amendment lifted presidential term limits, which allowed the president to win the 2011 presidential elections and the elections in 2016.

In 2017 parliament voted to remove the 75-year age limit for presidential candidates, this cleared the way for president Museveni to run for a sixth term in office. Under president Museveni, Uganda has been involved in a conflict against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has been guilty of numerous crimes against humanity, including child slavery, the Atiak massacre, and other mass murders. The conflict has spanned three decades.

To end the conflict the Juba peace talks took place between 2006 and 2008, which offered hope for a settlement to the conflict. However, after a long process, the talks collapsed when Joseph Kony the leader of the LRA failed to sign the final agreement.

Uganda ranks 141 on the Transparency international index 2023. The low ranking shows that Uganda has a long way to go to tackle corruption. The biggest scandal to date would be the embezzlement of $12.7 million US dollars in 2012 from Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

The funds were reserved for rebuilding northern Uganda which has been ravaged by a 20-year war with the LRA and Karamoja, Uganda’s poorest region. Foreign aid was suspended by the European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and Norway as a result of the OPM scandal and claims that the money was channelled into private accounts.

Reference

• https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uganda-population/
• https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023