Dr Busingye Kabumba is a law professor at Makerere University. He said there is a misconception about sexual violence against men. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Feb 26 2026 (IPS)

When people ordinarily think about sexual violence, it’s of the rape of women by men. In Uganda, as in other countries, activists say men are also victims of sexual violence perpetrated by women, though males remain silent.

The UNFPA 2022 gap analysis of population-related indicators and issues in Uganda report gives details of sexual violence experienced by men and women.

“Similar to physical violence, women are reported to be more exposed to sexual violence than men, although the trend shows a decline over time. The incidence of sexual violence decreased from 27.8 percent in 2011 to 17 percent in 2022 but remains significantly higher than the 6 percent recorded for men in 2022. In the 12 months preceding the 2022 survey, 11 percent of women reported experiencing sexual violence, compared to 4 percent of men.”

The perpetrators of sexual violence against women include current husbands/intimate partners, strangers, friends, and acquaintances. For men, the identified perpetrators are current or former wives/intimate partners, the study says.

Section 110 of Uganda’s penal code describes rape as having unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman. Under that provision, only a male can be found guilty.

Lawyer Ivan Kyazze conducted an exploration study of the sufficiency of the existing international conventions and statutes in Uganda against rape that protect male victims from female perpetrators.

“I want to pose a question. Do you believe that men are raped by women? Think about it,” he asked an audience at Makerere University’s law school auditorium.

“Sexual violence against men has existed but has received relatively little attention. Because in Uganda and elsewhere, men are considered strong and dominant.”

He said for many, it is physically impossible for a woman to rape a man, and in law, it is a more serious offence to forcibly penetrate someone than to force them to penetrate you.

Kyazze, a senior State Prosecutor, suggested that Uganda’s law on rape is biased and that it needs to be changed to protect men who are raped by men.

He said rape is an international crime that is not just growing but is also highly contested and without a joint legal definition.

Rape is an act of sexual assault and a violation of bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, defined as the “non-consensual [invasion of] the body of a person by conduct resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the victim or of the perpetrator with a sexual organ.

Kyazze explained that, typically, society imagines men as the perpetrators and women as the victims of rape.

“We need to acknowledge that there are other stories. Stories of men who experience rape, sometimes at the hands of female perpetrators. This is a reality that many men face,” he argued.

He said this abuse is rarely discussed openly.

“In part, this is due to societal stereotypes that make it difficult for male survivors to come forward.”

Being a state prosecutor, Kyazze said some men told him that they were sexually abused by their spouses, workmates, and employers, but the cases don’t get to the courts.

“Today, male victims continue to face physical and psychological harm, including anxiety and depression, and denial of justice. Such a gap within our law leaves our country with no effort to prevent sexual violence against men, in particular rape, and it encourages the harmful stereotypes that exist in our society,” said Kyazze.

According to Kyazze, the rape of men by women happens when the female abuser uses emotional, sexual intimidation tactics and drugs to facilitate the rape.

He explained that when a woman has power or authority over a man, such as in a workplace, she may use that influence to coerce or manipulate a man into a sexual act.

Dr Daphine Agaba, a lecturer at the Department of Gender Studies, Makerere University, believed at one time that a man could not be raped by a woman.

“I asked myself this question several times. How are men raped by women exactly? So to find answers to this question, I polled my male friends,” she said.

In the poll, she discovered that men were willing to relate their experiences with women who had perpetrated sexual violence.  In one case a man said he felt “raped and violated” by his wife, who wanted to have a third child.

From that and other testimonies that Agaba heard from her male colleagues, she said she started understanding something that she had earlier doubted.

However, Agaba was not fully convinced by Kyazze’s suggestion about the need to redefine rape under the penal code.

“That assertion decontextualises rape from its societal position. Rape doesn’t happen in the abstract. Rape is a manifestation of how power operates, and this power is still very largely neocentric. This power play not only affects women, but it also hierarchises men into those who are powerful and those who are not,” she said.

Being a woman and a gender activist, Agaba said she felt the debate could help both women and men survivors of sexual violence.

“Finally, men are going to start taking seriously our (women’s) concerns,” she said.

For over sixty years, Uganda has not had a definition for marital rape — the act of one spouse having sexual intercourse without their spouse’s consent.

Women have attempted to include it in the laws enacted over the past 30 years. But each time they have been defeated. In 2021 President Yoweri Museveni declined to assent to a marital rape law, reportedly because  it was a duplication of other laws, but activists saw it as a setback for women’s rights.

“In the domestic relations bill, activists said marital rape is a very big challenge. When this bill was put before parliament, the male legislators essentially laughed the women legislators out of parliament,” Agaba commented.

“They said, if you’re my wife and I married you, under what circumstances would you say that I raped you?’ By talking about marital rape, this time perpetrated against men, it is my hope and prayer that now that men want to be written into the law, to be included in the law, they will now start to understand the real plight that we’ve been facing. So my question is, now that men want to be included in the rape law, will we see marital rape in our laws?”

Agaba explained that statistics about conviction rates for female rape victims remain too low in Uganda.

“Which means, even as we are talking about men, it’s not yet Uhuru (not yet Independence) for women, not even close. If Uhuru is here, women are about 100 years away from that.  Is that a law that is working for its people?” she asked.

The low conviction rates aside, Agaba told IPS that the elephant in the room was the reality that men are being raped by fellow men, but this issue has been side-stepped in Uganda as elsewhere on the continent.

“In DRC, one in four men has experienced sexual violence. Yet, despite these statistics, few people have asked where this violence comes from. While women are disproportionately affected by sexual and gender violence, its prevalence does not make it exclusive to women. SGBV against men is most often perpetrated by men. It occurs outside the household; the perpetrators are often their acquaintances, their neighbours, and family members.”

She explained that the kind of abuse faced by men in the Congo includes rape, genital mutilation, enforced nudity, and involuntary sterilisation, all of which are perpetrated against both men and women.

Why have men not sought legal action when raped?

Dr Busingye Kabumba, a Senior Law Lecturer at Makerere University’s Law School, said rape has been defined as a crime that leaves the person alive but with a real cost in terms of life.

“That, when someone mentions rape, there’s really no questioning of what is being talked about. One can also think of the rape of men by men, and in those situations, again, there is no questioning what is being spoken of. In some cases, it’s even seen as worse,” adds Kabumba.

Kabumba explained that, like female rape victims, men who are sexually abused by women fear being further traumatised during the court trial.

“I know it’s a very traumatic experience, but then you are in this courtroom, you have a judge, what happened was traumatic, but you’re now being asked to describe it,  there’s a transcriber, there’s a court clerk, and they’re just interested in the details,  they’re not really interested in what you went through. It’s just, yes, ‘what happened?'” said Kabumba

He explained that under Uganda’s case law, there is already a challenge for women who are raped by men. Now, the idea that men could be the victim of sexual violence by a woman would be even more difficult to prosecute.

The survivor may not even be taken seriously if he does decide to report the crime.

“Is it the incredulity about the idea that a man is too powerful to be powerless? “Are we saying men are so powerful that they can never be overruled or violated?” he asked.

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H.E. Abdulla Shahid (left), former President of the UN General Assembly, and Collen Kelapile (center), former UN ambassador to Botswana and former vice-president of the UN Economic and Social Council, speak as panelists at the launch event of ICO's flagship report. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2025 (IPS)

More than one year since its adoption, the UN Pact for the Future is held up as a critical framework for countries to address today’s issues through global cooperation. Its agenda for global governance and sustainable development is ambitious, and it is for this reason the Pact poses implementation challenges when it comes to the direct impact on local communities. It will require the joint efforts of governments, civil society and international organizations to achieve the goals laid out in the Pact.

The efforts of the International Communities Organisation (ICO), a UK-based international NGO, demonstrate what implementing the Pact would look like. Since 2016, ICO has worked to empower minority communities in conflict-affected areas through education and capacity-building opportunities. ICO focuses on directly supporting efforts to build up underrepresented groups’ involvement in community initiatives and diplomatic dialogue and address systemic, societal inequalities.

On December 3, ICO launched its flagship report, For Our Future: Best Practice for the Implementation of the UN Pact for the Future, at the UN Headquarters in New York, presenting a practical framework to support UN member states in advancing the objectives outlined in the Pact for the Future. Several Permanent Missions to the UN, including Bahrain, Guyana, Hungary, Kuwait, Samoa, Singapore, Tajikistan, Tonga, and Uganda, co-sponsored the event.

The UN Pact for the Future represents a shared set of global commitments to sustainable development, peace and security, and redefining global governance for member states. While its adoption marks a decisive moment of global consensus, there remains the challenge of translating the Pact’s guiding principles into meaningful action at the national and regional levels.  Through its ‘Best Practices’ blueprint, the ICO report distills their findings into an adaptable methodology designed to equip policymakers with the tools they need to implement the Pact’s goals effectively.

James Holmes, ICO founder and Secretary General, said, “The Pact reminds us that the strength of nations is measured not only by the power of their armies or the size of their economies, but also by the inclusiveness of their societies and the recognition of all who live within.” “How we treat minority peoples, those who are few in number, vulnerable, or historically marginal, is the true test of our progress and the true test of whether the fact for the future is being successful.”

H.E. Abdulla Shahid, ICO International Ambassador and former President of the 76th United Nations General Assembly, said it was crucial for the world to unite.

“The UN Pact for the Future calls for renewed unity in tackling humanity’s greatest challenges. This report demonstrates that lasting peace is built not only at negotiation tables but also through empowering communities themselves, ensuring that no group is left behind.”

“As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted at the opening of the ‘Summit of the Future’ in September 2024, ‘21st-century challenges require 21st-century solutions: frameworks that are networked and inclusive and that draw on the expertise of all humanity.’

He added that the ICO’s report embodies this principle, showing how global aspirations can intersect with local action.

Prominent UN diplomats and civil society members were present at the launch event, demonstrating and remarking on their commitment to the Pact for the Future, and specifically to ICO’s work on the ground. Current and former high-ranking UN officials were also in attendance.

“One year after the adoption of the Pact, this discussion is timely,” said Themba Kalua, the UN Director, Pact for the Future Implementation Kalua remarked during the event. “While the world has grown more complex since the adoption of the Pact for the Future, the Pact continues to be central in realizing multilateralism, navigating the current geopolitical complexities and shaping our collective action on the global agenda.”

Kalua noted the efforts made by the UN system towards the Pact, including global panels on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and the political declarations that emerged from UN conferences on social development in Qatar and financing for development in Spain. He expressed that the Pact was a “strategic priority” for the UN and its Secretary-General, António Guterres.

“From our side in the UN system and the Secretariat, we are committed to doing our part in supporting the implementation of the Pact,” Kalua told IPS.

Presenting the report, ICO’s UN Programme Manager Mia Sawjani broke down its findings and recommendations. She emphasized that countries would need to empower and promote the agency of local actors. This includes building up their capacity and skills to enact positive change in their communities. Countries must recognize adaptability in assessing situations on the ground, particularly in conflict settings that transform institutions and structures.

“The implementation of the Pact can be tangibly realized for all, but particularly to serve marginalized communities. It’s a transformative opportunity and it is our collective responsibility to follow through,” said Sawjani.

After the event, Holmes was heartened by the outpouring of support for ICO’s work, noting that many more countries had agreed to partner with them for future projects. By maintaining their focus on working with minority communities, ICO can “play a major global role” in implementing the Pact for Future.

“I have a big vision, and I have a lot of ambition for ICO,” Holmes told IPS. “We already have a global team, and I see that growing, and I see us having a bigger and bigger role in helping to implement the Pact.”

The launch event of ICO’s flagship report on the UN Pact for the Future at UNHQ in New York. The event was attended by high-ranking UN diplomats. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

Local actors and stakeholders, namely governments, academia, the private sector and civil society, would play a key role in implementing the Pact’s agenda. Organizations like ICO could serve as a bridge to translate the issues to the national context.

“The more we are able to bridge communities, the more successful it will be for states to deal with Track I diplomacy,” Shahid said to IPS, referencing the formal channel of diplomacy between governments on international issues.

Implementing the Pact for the Future must also mean recognizing the specific needs and challenges that these countries face. Island states like Samoa and Tonga, for example, are uniquely impacted by climate change, energy, and the global financial structures that need to better serve developing countries.

“For us in the Pacific, progress is measured not by rhetoric, but by real improvements that are felt in our villages, outer islands and vulnerable communities,” said Viliami Va’inga Tōnē, the Permanent Representative of Tonga.

Accountability and transparency will also be crucial to ensure countries follow through on the promises of the Pact. This must be present at all levels. Participants at the event emphasized the need for monitoring mechanisms that would measure progress.

The timing of the report coincides with the ongoing reform negotiations under the UN80 Initiative introduced this year. Discussions around the Pact went hand in hand with recognizing the critical step toward reforming the UN system that will optimize its ability to live up to its founding principles and the Pact’s promises.

If the Pact represents ‘what’ the UN and member states need to achieve in the global agenda, then UN80 represents ‘how’ the UN can implement the agenda.

“The UN80 initiative is really part of the UN response to how it can deliver on the ground,” said Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, the Permanent Representative of Samoa. He said to IPS, “When you look at all the individual actions that need to be taken, these are at the global level, the UN [level], regional level, and national level. They’re all important, because we can’t continue to work in silence. Everything is interconnected now. So we need to make those connections and work together, and you don’t want duplication.”

While New York hosts reform discussions around the UN and its mandates, the organization’s impact will ultimately be felt by local communities across the world.

Dr. Agnes Mary Chimbiri-Molande, Permanent Representative of Malawi, told IPS that the people who serve in multilateral systems like the UN need to “renew or even rebuild trust” with local communities. At a time when people are questioning the UN’s relevance, she said, these discussions must be held and all perspectives need to be respected.

“We need to hear the voices of the local people. Because here we are working for them. We are not working for ourselves,” Chimbiri-Molande said. “So in fact, to be hearing the voices of those peoples, it’s very, very important to inform our work here, whether we are making an impact or we are making differences in the lives of the people in the community.”

Shahid reiterated that the decisions made in the halls of UN Headquarters will affect local communities, adding that the UN’s success is also contingent on its partnerships with civil society and how important it is for civil society to recognize the UN’s relevance.

During his time as President of the General Assembly from 2021-2022, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. His ‘presidency of hope’ championed the progress made by the international system despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic. He also made efforts to promote inclusivity by opening the General Assembly to more participants, including civil society groups.

Shahid invited young diplomats from underrepresented member states to the President’s office to witness international diplomacy firsthand.

Even after his presidency ended, he told IPS, he wanted to continue to deliver on the ideals that defined his tenure.

“I thought that there’s no need to end the presidency of hope after one year. Let us keep delivering the message of hope through other platforms. And ICO provides me the platform, because it is a platform through which I can actually reach out to communities at [the] household level and inspire them not to give up. Keep working, keep aiming to change the status.”

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Promoting sign language and Deaf culture is not only a constitutional mandate, but also an international legal requirement.

By Timothy Egwelu
KAMPALA, Sep 25 2025 (IPS)

Every Last week of September the Deaf community in Uganda and the rest of the world celebrates sign languages and the rich identity of Deaf people and Deaf culture. The day is also an opportunity to advocate for the enforcement of sign language laws and policies.

In Uganda, despite the legal recognition of sign language in the 1995 Constitution of Uganda as amended, the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2020, and the ratification of the African Disability Protocol, the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disability and other international laws, significant implementation gaps remain the major issue in the promotion of sign language.

For instance, the Public Service Ministry announced in the approved staffing structure shared to local governments last year that sign language interpreters must be posted in general and referral hospital service structures.

Acknowledging and fostering sign language enhances society's comprehension of the Deaf community's needs and rights, supporting the pursuit of equal opportunities and inclusion

However, more than a year later, no tangible updates have occurred. Ministry of Health’s lack of compliance may be potentially due to the non availability of funds allocated in their budgets – and yet the same structures were already approved by the Ministry of finance.

Previously, no hospitals employed interpreters, making it increasingly critical that this mandate is fulfilled.

Under Section 7(1) of the Persons with Disability Act, 2020 there is a clear stipulation against discrimination in the provision of health services on the basis of one’s disability, highlighting the urgency for compliance and action to support individuals who rely on these sign language interpreting services.

As another example, the Uganda Communication Commission as mandated under section 31 and schedule 4 of the Uganda Communications Commission Act of 2013 also issued a suspension of broadcasting licence for broadcasters that don’t meet the requirements of the law under section 12(4) of the Persons with Disability Act of 2020 which stipulate that “An owner or a person in charge of a television station shall, provide or cause to be provided sign language insets in all newscasts.”.

However, many broadcasters have been in breach without interpreters at newscasts and no licence has been suspended as a punishment. What is the point of inclusive policies if they are not enforced?

In addition, the absence of sign language-trained teachers and adequate funding for assistive technology such as computers and screens for visualisation in electronic classrooms, means the average Deaf student continues to be excluded from important educational and career opportunities.

Is it any wonder that they annually have consistent poor performance in national exams countrywide? A major shortcoming of the state is the lack of a Policy to Streamline early childhood education for Deaf children.

Of course, promoting sign language and Deaf culture is not only a constitutional mandate, but also an international legal requirement. There is urgent need for Uganda sign language policy to operationalize its promotion and usage.

The Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals hinges on leaving no one behind. This is a salient feature of promoting sign language rights and zero discrimination towards the Deaf community.

Sign language interpretation available is an issue of the Deaf community’s human rights. Indeed, sign language acts as an essential instrument for advocating for Deaf rights. Acknowledging and fostering sign language enhances society’s comprehension of the Deaf community’s needs and rights, supporting the pursuit of equal opportunities and inclusion.

In South Africa is an example of a country that is making more strides, and Uganda should follow suit. The long-awaited recognition of sign language as the 12th official language is gaining momentum following parliamentary approval to amend the constitution.

This landmark decision marks the culmination of over thirty years of advocacy aimed at empowering the deaf community throughout the nation. By granting official status to sign language, South Africa acknowledges its role as a vital medium for communication and administration in public affairs, thereby enhancing accessibility for the country’s deaf citizens.

The inclusion of South African Sign Language (SASL) in policy discussions is indicative of a broader commitment to inclusivity and accessibility there.

This policy shift not only elevates SASL to a status comparable to other official languages but also lays the groundwork for its integration in educational, legal, and governmental frameworks.

With dedicated initiatives aimed at teacher training, public awareness campaigns, and resources development, South Africa demonstrates a proactive approach in fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of sign language.

This commitment not only serves the deaf community but enriches South African society as a whole, emphasizing the importance of linguistic diversity and human rights.

In contrast, in Uganda, systematic corruption has critically redirected essential resources away from initiatives aimed at enhancing the livelihoods of Deaf individuals, particularly within key sectors like the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development.

This ministry’s budget for the Special Island Grant and Youth Livelihood Program experienced staggering cuts of 80% and 79%, respectively, in the previous financial year.

Such drastic reductions reflect a troubling indifference towards minorities and , as the current regime, characterized by radicalization and self-enrichment, perpetuates a culture where the needs of Deaf persons and other marginalized groups are deemed non-essential.

Political figures, including leaders like Speaker Anita Annet, often downplay the importance of including sign language in public services, viewing it as a minimal concern amidst their pursuit of wealth and power. This disregard for minority rights breeds an environment where advocacy is stifled, and the rule of law is undermined.

To address this injustice, it is crucial to advocate for a Uganda sign language policy that focuses on sign language education and iIt’s accessibility in public sectors.

Efforts should include creating advocacy coalitions that highlight the economic and social benefits of integrating Deaf individuals into the Public service, thereby demonstrating their value to society.

Engaging in public campaigns to raise awareness and support for sign language programs can also shift perceptions among policymakers, reminding them that inclusivity fosters a stronger democracy. Furthermore, pressure needs to be applied on governmental bodies to prioritize budget allocations that support Deaf communities, ensuring the development of robust programs tailored to their needs.

Through the various ministries, the government must as a matter of urgency lead in promoting, respecting, implementing the sign language rights of deaf people and provide adequate and timely funding to meet the public need of sign language in major sectors such as health, education and Justice.

Timothy Egwelu is a lawyer and disability policy and an inclusion consultant.

Abortion is illegal in Uganda. Girls who get pregnant resort to deadly backstreet abortion providers. However, it is also criminal to provide safe abortion services. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 18 2025 (IPS)

Sarah Namukisa nearly missed her final year exams earlier this year. She was subjected to a mandatory pregnancy test—the 25-year-old student at the Medical Laboratory Training School in Jinja was then expelled because she was pregnant.

While Namukisa’s case sparked public criticism, activists say it was by no means an isolated incident.

Across Uganda and other East African countries, pregnant students continue to face expulsion, forced school dropout, and stigma in both public and private educational institutions.

Labila Sumaya Musoke, from the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), told IPS that the widespread practice reflects deep-seated systemic discrimination and patriarchal control over young women’s bodies and futures

She said the expulsion mirrors systemic and institutional discrimination that international and regional human rights bodies have explicitly deemed unlawful and incompatible with human rights standards.

Namukisa was lucky that her case attracted the attention of the civil society and Uganda’s Equal Opportunities Commission. The commission ordered her school to rescind the expulsion. Many young women resort to deadly “backstreet” abortions in an effort to find ways to return to school or higher learning institutes. Abortion is still outlawed in Uganda and its neighbors—Kenya and Tanzania.

The most recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) datasets of the 12 East African countries found that the overall prevalence of adolescent pregnancy in East Africa was 54.6 percent. The survey concluded that it is vital to design public health interventions targeting higher-risk adolescent girls, particularly those from the poorest households, by enhancing maternal education and empowerment to reduce adolescent pregnancy and its complications.

Teenage pregnancy and motherhood rate in Kenya stands at 18 percent. This implies that about one in every five teenage girls between the ages of 15-19 years has either had a live birth or is pregnant with their first child.

The rate of teenage pregnancy has stagnated for over a decade in Uganda; it stood at 25 percent in 2006, at 24 percent in 2011 and now shows trends of rising at 25 percent. Teenage pregnancy in Tanzania is a significant public health issue, with 22 percent of women aged 15-19 having been pregnant, according to a 2022 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey.

Rosemary Kirui, the Legal Advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights—which works in seven countries, including Uganda—said the enjoyment of the Sexual Reproductive Health rights has been limited by barriers related to the legal and policy framework.

“We have a legal environment that has restrictive laws that criminalize some SHRH services. Most of the laws were adopted or inherited from the colonialists. And most of the countries have not changed the laws. So you will find that the penal code is similar, giving a blanket criminalization of abortion. So you will find this is being interpreted narrowly in many African countries,” said Kirui.

She told IPS that the other aspect of restrictive laws is the age of consent, where there is a mandatory third-party requirement for adolescents seeking information and sexual reproduction health services.

Primer Kwagala, a Ugandan Lawyer whose organization, Women Pro Bono Initiative (WPI), has been litigating for access to SHR services, told IPS that the country maintains restrictions on abortion.

“We are saying that 16 women are dying each day due to lack of services in public health facilities. And there are those who are dying in communities due to unsafe abortion. We have on our law books outdated colonial policies preventing health workers from providing life-saving services.”

Uganda’s constitution says that no one can take the life of an unborn child except in exceptional circumstances.

“For many women to exercise autonomy over their bodies and to say, ‘I cannot carry this pregnancy; I need an abortion,’ they cannot go ahead and have that discussion. The first thing the health worker will say is, ‘I don’t want to go to prison,’” said Kwagala.

The Ministry of Health in Uganda has issued guidelines allowing safe abortions in cases of defilement, rape, and incest. But the guidelines, according to Kwagala, are more on paper than in practice.

In 2020, a ruling by the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) against the Republic of Tanzania found that Tanzania’s policy of expelling pregnant schoolgirls constituted a violation of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, particularly the rights to education, health, dignity, and non-discrimination.

Six girls who were pregnant were expelled from the school. The committee urged Tanzania to reform its education policies.

Dr. Godfrey Kangaude, an expert on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights based in Malawi, said there is a tussle between the gatekeepers who think the SHR issues are for the civil society to handle.

“But I think this is closest to us. Sex and reproduction are relevant to everyone,” said Kangaude while speaking to the East Africa Law Society on litigating for sexual health rights.

He said sexual and reproductive justice is closely interrelated with finance and labor justice and generally the overall well-being of humans.

Kagaunde explained that in Malawi and other countries in the region, there are anomalies when it comes to the age of consent.

“In Malawi, the law says an adult cannot have sex with a child. Okay, we want to protect children. Isn’t it? But the line has been so rigid that an 18-year-old boy can’t have sex with a 17-year-old girl, because a 17-year-old is a minor and an 18-year-old is an adult. We understand that we want to protect people from harmful sexual conduct, especially children, but the law shouldn’t just be arbitrary. It should take into account that the 17-year-old and 18-year-old are peers.”

Criminalization of Consensual Sex 

Kangaunde and others argue that rights-based reform is needed. Laws should be gender-neutral, orientation-neutral, and distinguish exploitative adult–child sex from non-exploitative peer sex. Kangaude points to alternatives like multi-stage consent and close-in-age (“Romeo & Juliet”) exemptions.

Kangaunde and others have been criticized over their stance on the age of consent to sex and access for individuals younger than 18 to access contraceptives and safe abortion services.

“But look, there is a 19-year-old boy who is being charged with the offense of having sex with a girlfriend of 17. I mean, for him, life just went crazy. He is at school, and he had to stop schooling,” said Kangaude, the director at Nyale Institute. His institute provides legal support and engages in strategic litigation to protect and promote sexual and reproductive health rights.

Activists have since 2017 been pushing for a regional Sexual Reproductive Health Rights law. They contend that across East Africa, sexual and reproductive health rights have been narrowly defined as standalone rights.

If enacted, it would require the EAC member states to harmonize provisions on sexual and reproductive health services and information.

The bill has, however, faced significant resistance based especially on social and cultural barriers. The resistance has focused on aspects of comprehensive sex education for teenagers and provisions regarding legal abortion.

Dr. Tom Mulisa, a human rights and constitutional law researcher based at the University of Rwanda, told IPS that sexual and reproductive health rights are broad.

“Constitutions have those rights, and national health laws and policies have those rights, we are talking about the right to health, which most constitutions have, and we are talking about the right to privacy, the right to information, and sexual and reproductive health rights,” he said.

The partner states have ratified the Maputo protocol, which allows for the termination of pregnancy. The protocol is the main regional instrument that advances women’s rights especially sexual and reproductive health rights. The protocol also provides for elimination of discrimination and prohibition of harmful practices, such as female genital cutting.

Within the region, some countries have ratified the protocol, others have not and others have ratified it with reservations. Enforcement of the protocol has been split, making it difficult for all to enjoy the broader rights therein.

Kenya made reservations about Article (14), which provides for safe and legal abortion. Kenya’s constitution, on the other hand, provides for a right to legal and safe abortion when the life of the mother or fetus is at threat.

Learning From Advances in Rwanda

Rwanda has made significant progress in improving the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of its population, especially young individuals. Like many countries in the region, it had post-colonial laws. It embarked on reform since 2009. The reforms laid the groundwork for what many describe as a flexible system.

Earlier this month, Rwanda’s Parliament passed a new law granting adolescent girls the right to access Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services—particularly family planning—without requiring parental consent. It lowered the legal age to access contraceptives from 18-15.

Mulisa stated that the country modified its new penal code by eliminating the court’s requirement for an abortion. The penal code also included sexual reproductive health rights.

“Previously, the government held the right to health, while individuals were obligated to comply with it. But now the constitution has an explicit right to health,” revealed Mulisa, the founder of the Great Lakes Initiative For Human Rights and Development, which does public interest litigation in Rwanda.

It is now a crime under the penal code in Rwanda if a woman is denied access to contraceptives. And there are fewer restrictions on safe abortion following the removal of the court order requirement.

Rwanda’s ministerial order on abortion defines the right to health more broadly, incorporating the scope outlined by the WHO.

According to the WHO, the right to health includes four essential, interrelated elements: availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality.

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Opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye and co-accused Obeid Lutale before a civilian court in Kampala. They have been in jail since they were abducted from Kenya by Uganda's security forces. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Jun 19 2025 (IPS)

In East Africa’s Tanzania and Uganda, political tensions are rising as they prepare for the next elections. Tanzania goes to the polls in October 2025, while Uganda’s presidential and general elections will take place early in 2026.

In both countries, the leading political leaders, Tundu Lissu of the Chadema party in Tanzania and Dr. Kizza Besigye, a former leader of the once largest opposition party, are under detention facing treason charges.

Political and civil actors in the two countries and their neighbor Kenya say a wave of repression is sweeping across the region and that democracy and civil liberties are dying across East Africa.

Civil actors have reported numerous cases of torture, abductions, and general human rights abuses that have shrunk civic spaces.

On 10 April 2025, Lissu was charged with treason, along with three offenses of publication of false information under cybercrime laws. The charges are connected to his nationwide campaign pushing for electoral reform under the slogan “No Reforms, No Election.” He appeared in court this week (June 16) and was granted permission to represent himself because, he argued, he was denied access to private consultations with his lawyers.

Shortly after Lissu’s arrest, Chadema was disqualified from the October 2025 presidential and parliamentary elections, based on the party’s refusal to sign an electoral code of conduct.

Lissu narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 2017 and was forced into exile, only to face renewed persecution upon his return to Tanzania.

In the run-up to the November 2024 local elections, Tanzania’s government has impeded opposition meetings, arbitrarily arrested hundreds of opposition supporters, imposed restrictions on social media access and banned independent media.

Four government critics were forcibly disappeared and one Chadema official was abducted and brutally killed.

Forced Deportations, Allegations of Torture

On May 19, when Lissu was returning to the court, authorities in Tanzania ordered the deportation of Kenya’s former Justice Minister, Martha Karua, and Dr. Willy Mutunga, the former Chief Justice of Kenya, together with a couple of journalists from Kenya.

They had traveled to Tanzania under the invitation of the East Africa Law Society. Further, a Kenyan human rights activist, Boniface Mwangi, and a Ugandan activist, Agather Atuhaire, were arrested and held incommunicado for five days despite protests. The two activists said they were badly tortured by Tanzanian police and security operatives.

Atuhaire told IPS that she was blindfolded and sexually molested by her captors, who had driven her and Mwangi out of the Central Police Station in Tanzania.

“They took off all my clothes and threw me down and handcuffed my feet and hands and turned my feet upside down. They put a board between my feet and hands. One was hitting my feet and the other was attacking my private parts,” said Athuaire, a mother of two.

Atuhaire, awardee of the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Awards (IWOC) and winner of the 2023 EU Human Rights Defenders’ Award in Uganda said she has seen impunity in Uganda but what she went through and experienced in Tanzania was at a higher level.

“I faced a policeman who seemed very angry. He threatened us. I think with Boniface, he said they will circumcise him the second time. With me, he said they will teach me, so I have a good story for Uganda when I come back,” Atuhaire recounted.

“He also asked me if I had a child. And I said, ‘What do my children have to do with this?’ I told him that I have two children. Then you will get a third one. When we got out, I told Boniface that I think that is a rape threat,” she said.

Mwangi was found on the border with Tanzania near the coast following widespread condemnation by Kenyans. He was carried to the car because he could hardly walk following the torture.

“My body is broken in so many ways that you will never know but my spirit is very strong. They did very horrible things to us. And those things were recorded. And they told us that if we get back home and share what happened, they will share the videos with everyone,” said Mwangi.

“The situation in Tanzania is very bad. I think what happened to us is what happens to all Tanzanian activists,” he said.

He wondered why a country that belongs to the East African Community could torture citizens from the other member states the way it did to them.

“I had just gone there to attend a court case. I didn’t have any ulterior motive. I was treated worse than a criminal and yet I had not committed any offense,” he said.

Foreign Activists Warned

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu, in a televised address, warned foreign activists to stay away from her country.

“Let’s not give them space. They already ruined their own countries. They have already caused chaos. The only country that has not been ruined, where people have security, peace, and stability, is ours. There have been attempts and I strongly urge our security and defense forces, as well as you who manage our foreign policy, not to allow undisciplined individuals from other countries here,” said Suluhu.

Tigere Chagutah, Regional Director, Amnesty International, East and Southern Africa, condemned the torture and inhumane treatment of the two activists.

“For four days, these two human rights defenders were subjected to unimaginable cruelty. Their ordeal highlights the dangers faced by human rights defenders in Tanzania and there must be accountability and justice,” he noted.

Chagutah raised concern about Suluh’s call for a crackdown on human rights defenders, labeling them “foreign agents.”

“Such statements provide state authorities with an unlawful and spurious pretext to impose restrictions flouting international human rights obligations. Trial observation is central to the transparency of court processes and guarantees of fair trials and is not a threat to security,” said Tigere Chagutah.

Social Justice Campaigner, Khalid Hussein in response to Samia Suluhu, said, “You cannot hold foreign nationals, torture them, and then pretend they are meddling and so they deserve what they got.”

Before the arrest of the two activists, Tanzania had deported Kenya’s former Justice Minister, Martha Karua, and Willy Mutunga, the former Chief Justice of Kenya. The two were in Tanzania for a trial observation too.

Karua denied that she was in Tanzania to meddle in its internal affairs, as alleged by Suluhu.

“I was in Tanzania to watch a political trial. In Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, criminal trials are public. One is entitled to a trial before an impartial court, a trial that is public,” said Karua.

Karua suspected that the authorities in Tanzania were disturbed by her addressing a press conference in April on the need to observe the rule of law, when Tundu Lissu was due to appear in court.

“So as a citizen of the Jumuhiya (East African Community), I went to observe a trial. Nothing wrong with that. We feel as citizens of East Africa we have a duty to stand in solidarity with one another to ensure that we push back on autocratic tendencies and the violation of rights,” said Karua.

Professor Peter Kagwanja, a Kenyan intellectual, advisor, and policy strategist, told IPS that what is happening in Tanzania and its neighbors is regrettable.

“If they are chasing Martha Karua and Dr. Willy Mutunga like that. Can you begin to imagine what is happening to the Tanzanians themselves? Who are Dr. Kabudi and others who want to defend Tundu Lisu?” asked Kagwanja, the President and Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute (API).

Lack of Tolerance for Opposition

Kagwanja said what is happening in Tanzania is a sheer lack of tolerance for the opposition, yet the countries claim to be operating under a multiparty democracy.

“And that attitude is what we are seeing in Zimbabwe. It is the same attitude you find in Botswana. That you can push the leader of the opposition to exile. You want to constrain the opposition and their leadership. Rather than talk to them and defeat them politically, you want to defeat them at a battle of violence,” he explained.

“It appears that in Uganda and Tanzania, your ambition to be President is not legitimate. You will either be shot at or languish in jail. And no people from outside should help you out,” Kagwanja added.

While in Uganda for Besigye’s trial, Karua told IPS that it appears like the leaders in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania are collaborating in oppressing citizens.

“We feel as citizens of East Africa that we have a duty to stand in solidarity to ensure that we push back against autocratic tendencies and the violation of rights,” said Karua.

Besigye was abducted in Nairobi on 16 November 2024. He was arraigned in a military court in Uganda. He was charged with offenses relating to security and unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition.

While the Kenyan government has denied involvement, it has been accused by human rights activists of supporting and facilitating an extraordinary rendition.

In August 2024, 36 leaders of Uganda’s FDC were abducted from Kisumu city in Kenya. They were charged with terrorism in Ugandan courts and remanded.

Uganda’s Attorney General, Kiryowa Kiwanuka, refuted claims of kidnap, saying that the suspects were lawfully arrested.

“Even the manner in which people are collected, if at all, from a neighboring country or another country is prescribed by law and we are saying that these people were charged,” he said

Karua and Besigye’s lawyers insist that the abduction was the result of collusion between Kenyan and Ugandan authorities.

“I’m stressing rendition because Kenya has an extradition Act which demands that anybody being removed from Kenya to another country for trial must be due process. Due process was not followed. Nor were they documented at the border when being transported into Uganda,” Karua told IPS.

Besigye and the co-accused, Obeid Lutale, were arraigned before the military court.  The Supreme Court in Uganda at the end of January ruled that civilians should not be tried in a military court. After the ruling of the Supreme Court, Besigye was taken to the civilian court with a new charge of treason. The charge before the military court was treachery.

The Ugandan Parliament hastily debated and passed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces Amendment Bill 2025 on 20 May. President Yoweri  has assented to the law, which, among others, broadens the jurisdiction of military courts, authorizing them to try a wide range of offenses against civilians.

Trying Civilians in Military Courts Contravene Human Rights Obligations

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in May 2025 expressed concern at the passing in Uganda’s Parliament of proposed legislation to allow for civilians to be tried in military courts.

“I am concerned that rather than encouraging efforts to implement the Supreme Court’s crystal-clear decision of January this year, Uganda’s legislators have voted to reinstate and broaden military courts’ jurisdiction to try civilians, which would contravene international human rights law obligations,” said Türk.

As Uganda heads to the polls, diplomats from the European Union have raised concern over the torture of the opposition leaders and their supporters. The diplomats particularly expressed concern about the conduct of the Chief of Defence Forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, President Yoweri Museveni’s son.

Early May, Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is Museveni’s eldest child, said he had detained Eddie Mutwe, the chief bodyguard for opposition leader Bobi Wine.

He wrote on X that he had captured Mutwe “like a grasshopper” and was “using him as a punching bag.” The tortured Mutwe was presented in court and slapped with robbery charges.

Uganda’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, Norbert Mao, said, “Bringing illegally detained, brutalized, and tortured suspects before the courts of law is an abuse of judicial processes.”

Meanwhile, Kainerugaba has promised a showdown on Presidential aspirant, Wine and his supporters.

“I want to remind you to advise your children to stay away from NUP gangs. Intelligence reports indicate that NUP is not merely a political party but is also involved in activities that raise concerns related to terrorism. The leaders of NUP are recruiting young people for activities that could be harmful to our beautiful country,” he warned.

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In Somalia, water infrastructure projects are building climate resilience and reducing emissions by using solar panels to provide energy. A new report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors in the Horn of Africa. Credit: UNDP/Tobin Jones

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 13 2024 (IPS)

The Horn of Africa holds the resources and potential for lasting development and resilience. The countries in the subregion and development partners need to come together to invest in regional cooperation and resource management.

On December 12, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first-ever Human Development Report on the Horn of Africa subregion, which includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

Horn of Africa Human Development Report 2024: Enhancing Prospects for Human Development through regional Integration, explores the key challenges that the eight countries and the subregion are experiencing in

In the Arab states and the African region, low productivity in economic activity will only continue in a “vicious cycle,” one that perpetuates poverty for the population. Abdallah Al Dardari, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for the Arab States, remarked that the countries in the subregion have been taking what he described as a “siloed approach” to state affairs, even as its neighbors are dealing with the same issues. This is evident in how the region engages with the water and food sectors.

The report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors. Over 50 percent of the population across the Horn of Africa experience moderate to severe food insecurity and only 56 percent have access to electricity. Less than 56 percent have access to clean drinking water, yet the report indicates that this is not a consistent experience among the countries, given their geographical locations.

Conflict and disasters have also been persistent factors that have limited development in the Horn of Africa, as over 23.4 million people have been displaced in the wake of major conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and internal conflicts like in Ethiopia.

The report presents three priorities that will help to accelerate human development and build resilience: build on increasing intra-regional trade, enhance collaboration in the water, energy and food sectors, and promote governance and peace.

The region could see a GDP increase of 3.9 percent by 2030 through liberalizing trade and reducing tariffs. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) agreement would also boost trade were it fully implemented; the countries in the ACFTA need to ratify the agreement for them to benefit. Regional integration through collaboration on resource management can help foster sustainable growth and climate resilience, as the report suggests. This could be seen in improved access to electricity and shared food value systems. This could be valuable in a subregion that holds a high share of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro and yet faces significant energy gaps.

“What we’ve attempted to do with this report is see if we can begin to see a shift in the narrative on this region,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. In working towards integration in economic and political relations, she argued, partnerships need to be established within the subregion that is built on finding commonalities and shared purposes. Changing the narrative is key towards achieving sustainable development.

At the report’s launch, Eziakonwa remarked that certain demographics needed to be brought into the fold when discussing development, requiring a re-examination of the narratives associated with them. Young people make up a significant percentage of the population across the region, yet they have been characterized as the problem rather than the solution. Involving young people and recognizing the skills and perspectives they can bring to the table is critical, which will involve expanding socio-economic opportunities for the youth population that are not employed or in education. Investing in women’s participation in the development sector is also needed, for they have been largely left out of decision-making spaces and policy discussions.

Through this report, UNDP is calling on governments and development partners to invest in infrastructure and policy frameworks that build up human development and resilience in the Horn of Africa.

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Kemitoma Siperia Mollie, Praise Aloikin, and Kobusingye Norah appear in court early in September. They were charged with common nuisance. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Oct 24 2024 (IPS)

Until recently, Margaret Natabi would never have dreamed of taking her anti-corruption fight on the streets of Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

Natabi, 24, is a University student. She has first-hand experience of how corruption affects marginalized groups, especially women and girls.

She was orphaned during childhood. Her mother died while giving birth to one of her siblings. She believes that if it were not for corruption, her mother would not have died.

Natabi is among those arrested in July during the famous “march to parliament in protest.” The march followed a social media campaign by young Ugandans using the hashtag #StopCorruption.

On the day of her arrest, Natabi was holding a poster reading, “The corrupt are playing with the wrong generation.” Data from the latest population and housing census indicate that some 15 million out of a population of 45 million Ugandans.

When the police approached her during the protest, Natabi did not resist.  Female police constables lifted her and bundled her into the police car.

“I was so determined to preach the gospel against corruption to everyone. Even the police officer that was arresting me,” she shared.

However, the arresting officers were not about to listen to her.

“I actually don’t know where the policemen and women got that anger from because I was peaceful. It was as if something was charging them with anger. I was just exercising my constitutional rights. But here they were charging at me with brutal force,” Natabi narrated.

While others went to beat the young men taking part in the protest, she claimed that a male police officer kicked her hard in the back.

“Then the police officer turned to me, saying, ‘Look at you. You have painted nails; you have money to plait in your hair. What has corruption done to you? And you are saying this country is hard for you!’” she narrated.

Natabi further narrated that she insisted on “preaching to the officers” the dangers of corruption.

“I told the officer that by the time you see me here, you don’t know how many things I have lost due to corruption. I do not have a father. I do not have a mother. Do you know how corruption caused that? My mother had to die because she was not attended to at the hospital when she was pregnant. She lost her baby and she lost her life.”

Even though she had just come out of prison, Natabi told IPS that she was not about to give up in her fight against corruption. “Because the more I keep quiet, I’m doing an injustice to my country,” she said

“We may not end corruption. But the number of people who have seen what we are doing, the eyes that we are opening—there is a person today who is going to pick that courage from us,” said Natabi. “When we all keep quiet, nobody is going to rise up. But some people just want to see one person standing up and they will get that courage.”

Natabi is not alone; more and more young women like 25-year-old Claire Namara have come out to challenge the status quo. She was charged with disturbing a lawful religious assembly.

Her problem stemmed from a lone protest during mass at a Catholic church in the suburbs of Kampala. Dressed in black and holding the Ugandan flag, Namara attempted to preach to the congregants about the dangers of the luxurious lifestyle of the country’s Speaker of Parliament, Annett Anita, whom many believe squanders public money for personal gain.

Namara also had a poster with a picture of a sanitary pad with the message, “Magogo’s birthday car would pad one million young girls for a year. #StopCorruption.”

The Police questioned her about the message on the sanitary pad poster.

“He asked me to read the placard twice. I confidently read it because I wrote it when I meant it. He asked me what the meaning of this message was. I told him the cost of Magogo’s car would (provide) pads for one million girls in a year; that is what we are meaning and that is a fact,” Namara narrated.

Anita bought a new Range Rover as a birthday present when millions of girls were going with sanitary pads.

Many young girls in rural Uganda continue to miss long constructive hours away from school because of a lack of sanitary pads.

In 2021, the government and a group of civil society organizations published A Menstrual Health Snapshot of Uganda, which found that 65% (nearly 7 out of 10) of girls and women in Uganda did not have access to products to fully meet their menstrual health needs. It noted that 70 percent of adolescent girls mentioned menstruation as a major hindrance to their optimal school performance.

“I would at certain point fail to get sanitary pads and I would end up using cloth. That is a personal story but as well, in my village, many girls still struggle to afford sanitary pads,” Namara told IPS.

President Yoweri Museveni during the 2016 election pledged to provide funds for free sanitary pads in schools. However, in 2020, his wife, Janet Museveni, also the Minister of Education and Sports, said that there were no funds to sustain the provision of free sanitary pads.

Namara told IPS that while the government said it lacked the money to fund menstrual hygiene, politicians—more so women politicians—have been named in corruption scandals.

“I must believe that even when we think that we have it all, every woman, apart from those who belong to the first family and those who are stealing from our taxes, has struggled to get pads. Even when you access it, you struggle to get that money,” argues Namara, who believes that the state must ensure that young girls have access to safe menstrual hygiene services.

Namara told IPS that while she was facing ridicule from a section of the public that condemned her for carrying “her” protest to church, she has equally been receiving messages of commendation from many.

“We need a bigger discussion in Uganda about women in Uganda and how they are facing these societal norms. I was so disappointed by fellow women who were asking how she could go to protest in church. She is a young girl. Who will marry her?

In early September, Norah Kobusingye, Praise Aloikin Opoloje, and Kemitoma Kyenziibo were arrested while marching the Parliament building with posters “No Corruption.” They had almost stripped naked and painted their bodies.  The youthful protestors, who belong to the Uganda Freedom Activists, were slapped with a common nuisance charge contrary to the Uganda Penal Code Act.

In reaction, the feminist scholar and writer Dr. Stella Nyanzi said the young women’s imprisonment would not deter the peaceful protests.

“Charging comrades Kemitoma Siperia Mollie, Praise Aloikin, and Kobusingye Norah with common nuisance and remanding them to Luzira Women’s Prison until September 12, 2024 will not stop the peaceful #March2Parliament to #StopCorruption and demand that #AnitaMustResign,” observed Nyanzi, known for using “radical rudeness” as a form of political protest similar to what the young men did.

The emergence of a young breed of female anti-corruption actors in Uganda has triggered debate. For some, these young people have broken the formal and cultural barriers about women and corruption.

Dr. Miria Matembe, a former Minister of Ethics and Integrity under Museveni, agrees with those who believe that the young women anti-corruption activists have come to challenge the status quo because the once vibrant women’s movement in Uganda has been silenced.

“Do you hear any NGO going out the way we used to do? They are in their offices doing their work. So the space for us who used to go out is completely closed.”

She told IPS that the entire system of governance in Uganda is corrupt.  “Corruption is not about the Prime Minister because she is a woman. Look at the women politicians individually. They are greedy. We have a transactional parliament. Rather than a transformative parliament. When Museveni wants something, he takes them aside and asks how much.  Therefore, I must say we are heading nowhere,” she said.

Others say they are posing a challenge to women who are holding “big” positions under Museveni. There is a feeling that women in leadership like Vice President Jessica Alupo, Speaker of Parliament Anita Among, and Prime Minister Robina Nabanja have conspired with Museveni in propping up a corrupt regime.

Younger female Ugandans, like Nantongo Bashira, believe that those leaders have let them down.

Bashira, a lecturer at the Islamic University in Uganda, told IPS that young women bear the responsibility to make the future they want.

“We keep on saying the future is female. If you tell us that the future is women and corruption is skyrocketing, the future is female and things are not going your way, it is our responsibility to shape that future that we want,” said Bashira.

Aili Mari Tripp, a Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison USA, wrote in a paper titled “How African Autocracies Instrumentalize Women Leaders” that Uganda is among the autocracies that have instrumentalized women to stay longer in power.

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Works at the Tilenga Development Project operated by TotalEnergies. Some landowners object to what they consider forced evictions with inadequate compensation. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, BULIISA, and HOIMA , Apr 18 2024 (IPS)

When Mugisha Jealousy Mulimba learned that the government of Uganda was dragging him to court, he expected justice. But he says he has realized these courts are being used to deprive him of his rights to a fair hearing and the right to fair and adequate compensation for his land and property.

Mulimba told IPS that within days after the government’s case against him and 41 other landowners in the oil-rich Uganda Albertine region was heard in December 2023, the court ruled that money meant for the expropriation compensation should be deposited with the court and that the government could evict them so that TotalEnergies oil refinery construction could go ahead and the pipes for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) could be installed.

“It was the fastest trial that I have known of since my childhood. And more so that involving a case when the government sued its citizens,” Mulimba told IPS.

“Justice Jesse Byaruhanga of the High Court in Hoima heard and passed the judgment against us within four days. You can imagine determining a case filed by the government within four days,” he added. Now the landowners are playing a waiting game, not knowing when they will finally be evicted.

Mulimba and hundreds of the dependents of the 42 landowners  are on the brink of homelessness, facing eviction for refusing to accept the unjust, unfair, and inadequate compensation by TotalEnergies, which is acquiring the land from the peasant farmers on behalf of the government.

The threat of forceful eviction of the landowners has been around for years. But this time, it appears to be imminent, with the government armed with an eviction order and determined that the oil, discovered in 2006, should be extracted by 2025.

“Unfortunately, we, the landowners, have been punished since 2018. And now, with their eviction order, they can do anything. But we are determined to die for our rights,” said Fred Balikenda. The government applied and granted a specific order to have Balikenda evicted from his land in Kirama village.

“Each of us is going through the toughest times. You don’t know when they will finally pounce or how they will treat us,” said Balikenda

On December 4, 2023, Uganda’s Attorney General’s Chamber sued 43 landowners. The suit asked the court to grant the government leave to deposit compensation money in the court so that TotalEnergies could take possession of land for the Tilenga oil and gas project.

The government asked that it be discharged from any liabilities arising from any claim from the eviction order.

The High Court ruled on December 8, 2023, that the landowners’ compensation be deposited in court so that TotalEnergies can take possession of the land in dispute. TotalEnergies E&P has since 2020 been trying to acquire a 60-acre piece of land on behalf of Uganda’s Ministry of Energy.

The “hurried ruling” in favor of the government raised eyebrows within the legal fraternity. In Uganda, land disputes stay in the court system for years without resolution.

“All the cases we filed against the government are still rotting in the courts. The same judiciary hears the case against us by the government in four days. Has the devil taken over our government? We are crying in our hearts, wondering who will help poor people like us,” said Kwonka William Mugisa, another landowner.

A human rights lawyer, Eron Kiiza, issued a statement saying that the judge in the matter violated established legal principles by delivering a verdict in the land case within four days, without allowing the accused parties to respond or contest the matter.

“When a judge, oozing impunity, deliberately denies parties to a case/suit an opportunity/right to be heard, to contradict the evidence, to file their submissions, and hastily makes orders for the benefit of TotalEnergies to prejudice Ugandans’ homes, gardens, residences, livelihoods, dignity, and property, he is undermining the rule of law and fundamental human rights and freedoms,” said Kiiza.

Kiiza and other lawyers in January have tried to urge the Uganda Law Society to boycott the Judiciary’s activities in protest against the conduct and the way the judge handled the matter.

He, with the permission of the landowners, appealed the ruling to the Court of Appeal to overturn the High Court eviction order and compensation money deposited in the court.

The Court of Appeal had not fixed the date for hearing the appeal petition at the time IPS was filing this report. Fearing that the government could go ahead with the eviction, Mulimba and four other aggrieved parties traveled to Kampala at the end of February in an attempt to seek an audience with the Minister of Constitutional Affairs and the other leaders in the judiciary to hear their plea.  Mulimba old IPS that they were not allowed to enter any of the offices.

Kwonka William told IPS that, going by the government’s valuation report, he was being forced to accept an equivalent of about USD 9 for his land and assets.

The Energy Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Irene Batebe, said in an affidavit that compensation due to the respondents was based on approved valuation reports and a 30 percent project uplift by the government.

Meanwhile, Mulimba, flanked by his wife, Pityedi Mugisa, told IPS that the government, through the court, is trying to force them to accept unfair compensation in the form of cash.

“The land is for the family. We asked for land in exchange. If they can find equivalent land, we are ready to leave. But we didn’t ask for cash,” said Mulimba.

The couple said they have attended scores of meetings demanding fair and adequate compensation but have been unsuccessful.

“We had been using that land for many years. We earned money for school fees from it. We get food from it and we got medical support from there,” he said. “So, we are not fighting the government but we are fighting for our rights to be respected.”

Dickens Kamugisha, a lawyer and Chief Executive of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), told IPS that the landowners have been trying to meet government officials to ensure that there is fairness and justice.

“Instead of ensuring fair and adequate compensation, they are now using the court. Knowing that these people cannot get the best lawyers to represent them, knowing that they cannot influence the courts. So the government is filing those cases to get those rulings that they want to use to evict the people,” he said.

Kamugisha said AFIEGO supported the oil refinery-affected people in filing a case against the government of Uganda over low, inadequate, and unfair compensation in March 2014.

“Nearly ten years later, hearings on the case have yet to be concluded. That is an injustice. And where there is injustice, you cannot have a settlement that is coming from negotiations,” he asserted.

Besides, Kamugisha told IPS that no law provides that the government can go ahead to acquire land and deposit the landowner’s compensation in court.

“In 2021, the judiciary illegally allowed the government to deposit the households’ compensation in court. This set a bad precedent that should never be repeated. It is also sad that the government has continued to use and misuse courts to destroy citizens’ right to own property and/or get adequate compensation,” Stated Kamugisha.

As the landowners wait for the Court of Appeal to consider their appeal, some of them told IPS that they are being threatened by security operatives who, they said, keep visiting their homesteads.

“That is mainly happening here in Kasinyi, Ngwedo Center, and Kisimo villages, where most of us live. Someone comes and parks a motorcycle or car at your land and then drives away. Isn’t that intimidation?” another landowner said

According to Global Witness, evidence from its undercover investigation in December 2023 showed that state authorities had threatened and detained a number of campaigners.

“In a handful of instances, the state authorities appeared to be in communication with TotalEnergies before reprisals took place,” said the report.

IPS learned from some of the employees at TotalEnergies and EACOP that the oil company was opposed to the idea of forceful evictions because it was not within its rules and that it feared the likely negative publicity.

There are also reports that TotalEnergies was considering hiring an independent firm to look into the claims by the landowners.

But Kamugisha said it is TotalEnergies that is displacing these people.

“It is unfortunate that Total is saying they are bringing here an independent investigator. They are bringing an investigator at a time when they are working with the government to get eviction orders. How is that investigator going to be helpful?”

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Calisti Wanzama, a farmer, lost most of his relatives to the 2010 landslide in the Bududa district. He fenced off the area where he believes his house once stood. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
Oct 26 2023 (IPS)

On December 4, 2019, landslides in the Bududa region of Uganda killed 20. The landslides occurred after heavy rains, and a Red Cross report estimated that 96 households were affected, with 49 houses destroyed. It displaced many, while others continued to live in high-risk areas that could “slide at any moment.”

This wasn’t the first or the last incident of flooding – news reports from the region narrate numerous incidents where people died when their homes were buried in landslides after torrential rains.

In Uganda, the case, popularly known as ‘Tsama William and 47 others,’ has been pending since it was filed in 2020.

Williams and others have argued that the Government of Uganda had been aware of the risk of landslides in Bududa for many years, but it had not implemented landslide early warning systems.

They seek relief from the courts, including declarations that their right to life, right to own property, right to physical and mental health, and the right to a clean and healthy environment were infringed when landslides occurred.

“Bududa district is likely to suffer from more landslides in the future because of the past history of landslides and, due to factors such as changing rainfall patterns and increasing extreme weather events caused by climate change and environmental degradation, and that if the affected people are not urgently relocated and resettled, further loss of life, loss of property and infringement of human rights is likely to occur,” reads their founding affidavit.

A fishing village in Uganda’s Albertine Region impacted by floods. Floods and mudslides have become frequent in many parts of Uganda. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

The authorities deny their culpability. Julius Muyizi, the lawyer representing the National Environment Management Authority, instead accused William and other residents in the Mount Elgon region of having contributed to landslides through their poor agricultural practices, vegetation clearance, and poor cultivation.

William and his fellow survivors await a court judgment, but it could be a long wait; another similar case has been held up in the courts for more than a decade.

However, like many others caught in climate change-impacted weather events and disasters, William is part of a group of survivors who are increasingly using the courts to test whether governments, businesses, individuals, and local authorities are responsible for the impacts of climate change.

Environment and the Judiciary

Justice Lydia Mugambe, a High Court judge and recently appointed judge at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, told judicial officers at a recent training session that the judiciary was crucial in matters of the environment. She was presenting on judicial officers’ role in ensuring climate justice. One question was: Can individuals sue the government over climate change?

“I think the role of the judiciary is a very important one in matters of the environment, and we as the judiciary should take it on with gusto,” she said. “We need to change our mindsets; we need to separate politics from the real issues when cases come before us.”

Mugambe notes that judges need to understand the role of public interest litigation in matters of the environment.

“From my experience in the courts, a case can be brought straightforward as a public interest litigation. But there are cases that come as individual cases. But they are ‘public interest cases’ because of their nature. So, when determining these cases, what kind of remedies do we give?” she asked.

She suggested that judges could give remedies in individual cases that have the effect of creating reforms – this would ensure resolution so that other similar cases won’t need to be prosecuted.

Over the years that Mugambe has worked as a lawyer and later judge, she said she had watched and witnessed environmental damage to Uganda’s forests and water bodies and read about climate change ravaging some of the communities.

She believes judicial officers should take an interest in emerging laws like the country’s newly enacted environmental law.

Judges should ask themselves crucial questions.

“What do these acts and conventions provide? And how can we use them in our judgments? And then what kind of remedies when these cases come before us? Are they meaningful remedies for environmental protection? Do we assess the context of the case before us so that we take account of all the factors?” suggested Mugambe.

The training session Mugambe was addressing was hosted by an environment advocacy NGO known as Greenwatch.

A young boy sits on the rocks that rolled down the mountain with the landslides at Nametsi in Mount Elgon 13 years ago. The landslides destroyed the only school and health center in the area. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Though the area is disaster-prone, the soils in the foothills of Mount Elgon in Bududa district are fertile. Residents risk staying because of good crop yields. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Survivors of a 2010 mudslide in Bududa district. Hundreds died in that disaster. Some of the victims were buried by huge boulders carried down by the impact of the mudslide. Credit Wambi Michael/IPS

Advocacy and Environmental Laws

Greenwatch says it’s crucial that every individual in Uganda knows that they have environmental rights, and these rights can be fully exercised through access to information, justice, and public participation.

Samantha Atukunda Mwesigwa, the director and legal Counsel at Greenwatch, told IPS that training of the judicial officers was critical because there were several environmental disputes in the courts.

“So, it’s important to have a judiciary that is knowledgeable and equipped when it comes to climate aspects, in particular, climate justice,” Mwesigwa explained.

Uganda has joined the global trend of climate litigations in which victims of climate change cite human rights and constitutional violations in their arguments.

The recent Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2021 snapshot recognized the crucial role judges can play in the context of climate justice. Training of Judges was one of the critical areas of concern.

Furthermore, On March 28, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a historic resolution asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the UN’s principal judicial organ—to provide an advisory opinion clarifying what governments’ obligations are under international law when it comes to tackling climate change.

Justice Richard Buteera, the Deputy Chief Justice of Uganda, agrees that the training is vital because the judges are part of the vanguard of the environmental laws.

“We have to balance between human needs for now. But sustaining the environment for the future. Because in an effort to maintain the environment, these conflicts have to be resolved by courts. And the training is making clear the position of the law,” said Buteera, who previously served as Uganda’s Director for Public Prosecutions.

Each time a new cohort of judges comes in for training, a wealth of information needs consideration. Some judges know a few things about international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement, but because climate change and law are not everyday topics in their chambers, some are skeptical about it.

Bridget Ampurira, a lawyer with Greenwatch, has participated in the training that started in 2019.

She told IPS, “Of course, there are judicial officers who will point out that they are skeptical about climate change and climate Justice. So, they will point out and question us as to the reality of climate change. But there are those who have seen and realized that climate change is a real issue.”

Over 120 judicial officers have been trained. According to Ampurira, of those who have been trained, there has been progress in how they handle the cases before them.

“I can say in terms of court procedure, there has been great improvement in the attention accorded to climate change cases.”

Who is Liable Under International Law?

The late Justice of the Court of Appeal, Kenneth Kakuru, still referred to as one of Uganda’s front runners of environmental law, would raise questions whenever he addressed fellow judges.

“Is the government liable for failure to implement the obligations in international agreements? For example, we have seen children trying to go through a flood. This flood takes a child. Who is liable if the government has not obliged with its obligations?” asked Kakuru. “We owe it to ourselves and the citizens of this world; we owe it to those from whom we inherited this beautiful place. We owe it to our children and their children. To those yet unborn. The time is now, for tomorrow may be too late.”

While the training of judicial officers continues, cases before the Ugandan courts remain unresolved.

Climate Cases Before Ugandan Courts

Greenwatch has, over the years, filed several public interest litigations under Uganda’s constitution, which allows an individual or organization the right to sue the government where it has failed its obligations. Some of the rights can be environmental or climate change elated.

One of those cases is the one commonly known as the ‘Nisi Mbabazi.’ It was filed by Kakuru in 2012 before he was appointed a judge. Kakuru sued on behalf of the surviving minor children of the victims of a natural disaster.

The plaintiffs argued that Article 237 of the Ugandan Constitution makes the government of Uganda a public trustee of the nation’s natural resources—including its atmosphere—and that Articles 39 and 237 require the government to preserve those resources from degradation for both present and future generations. Citing multiple examples of damage and loss of life resulting from extreme weather events, they alleged that the government has breached its constitutional duty.

Climate Justice Denied

Eleven years later, there is still no judgment in this case. Some activists have described the long wait for judgment as an injustice against victims of climate because of the delays.

Ampurira said one of the challenges Greenwatch has faced in the past has been the delay with the justice or a court system beset by adjournments. “So, you would find that a case that should take a year to be settled takes ten years.”

She suggested that the Uganda government should establish an environmental court like the ones established by Kenya to expedite the cases “Because we say justice delayed is justice denied. Kenya has two specialized fora for adjudicating environmental matters.

On July 16, 2023, the Land and Environment Court in Kenya awarded an equivalent of USD 13 million in compensation for the impacts on the environment and the health of a community caused by lead poisoning from a nearby smelter that recycled batteries.

It was the first in Uganda where victims of climate change-related disasters sued the government, asking it to comply with several articles of the Paris Agreement 2015 and articles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which Uganda is a state party.

Peter Kibeti, who witnessed many landslides in Bududa, told IPS, “The landslides are not in a way related to destroying trees. But it has been due to heavy rains. The water has sunk into the soil, leading to the collapse of the slopes. We still have many trees in Bududa. Much as they say we should plant more trees – they also get uprooted by landslides. I cannot believe that cutting down trees causes landside because heavy rains have weakened the soil.”

Yazidhi Bamutaze, an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Geo-Informatics, and Climatic Sciences at Makerere University, told IPS that the loss of vegetation and tree cover in Bududa cannot be solely blamed for the rampant landslide disasters.

“We have had previous cases, and they are a combination of factors that lead to the occurrences of landslides in that area. The slopes are quite steep. In some areas, they go over 80 degrees. Then you also have the climatic factors, particularly rainfall. If you look at the data, you realize you get over 1500 millimeters of rainfall,” he said, explaining the multiplicity of causes for the disasters.

International Climate Justice Cases

Internationally the number of climate change cases has more than doubled from 884 in 2017 to 2,180 in 2022, according to the UN Environment Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review.

This trend includes cases brought on behalf of “children and youth under 25 years old, including by girls as young as seven and nine years of age in Pakistan and India, respectively, while in Switzerland, plaintiffs are making their case based on the disproportionate impact of climate change on senior women.”

The caseload indicates that human rights links to climate change, protection of the most vulnerable groups, and “increased accountability, transparency and justice, compelling governments and corporations to pursue more ambitious climate change mitigation and adaptation goals” are increasing.

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Excerpt:

A transgender person participates in health services provided by the Khmer HIV/AIDS NGO Alliance (KHANA) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, December 2019. Credit: UNAIDS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jul 14 2023 (IPS)

A report released this week has highlighted how continuing criminalisation and marginalisation of key populations are stymying efforts to end the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The report from UNAIDS, entitled ‘The Path that Ends AIDS’, says that ending AIDS is a political and financial choice, and that in countries where HIV responses have been backed up by strong policies and leadership on the issue, “extraordinary results” have been achieved.

It points to African states that have already achieved key targets aimed at stopping the spread of HIV and getting treatment to people with the virus. It also points out that a further 16 other countries, eight of them in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 65% of all people living with HIV, are close to doing so.

But the report also focuses on the devastating impact HIV/AIDS continues to have and how alarming rises in new infections in some places are being driven largely by a lack of HIV prevention services for marginalized and key populations and the barriers posed by punitive laws and social discrimination.

Estimated adults and children living with HIV. Credit: UNAIDS

“Countries that put people and communities first in their policies and programmes are already leading the world on the journey to end AIDS by 2030,” said Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS.

Experts and groups working with key populations have long warned of the effect that the stigmatisation, persecution and criminalisation of certain groups has on the AIDS epidemic.

They point to how punitive laws can stop many people from accessing vital HIV services.

Groups working with people living with HIV in Uganda, which earlier this year passed anti-LGBTQI legislation widely considered to be some of the harshest of its kind ever implemented (it includes the death penalty for some offences) say service uptake has fallen dramatically.

“The law has had a very negative effect in terms of health,” a worker at the Ugandan LGBTQI community health service and advocacy organisation Icebreakers told IPS.

“Community members are threatened by violence and abuse by the public, many are afraid to go out. HIV service access points are now seen by LGBTQI community members as places where they will be arrested or attacked,” he said.

Newly infected adults and children. Credit UNAIDS

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the worker added: “This is going to affect adherence to treatment and will be bad for the spread of HIV. Some people are being turned away at service centres, including places where people go for ARV refills because although the president has declared that treatment will continue for members of the community, there are individuals at some centres who say the law has been passed, and so they don’t need to give treatment to members of the community.”

Groups working with people with HIV in other countries where strict anti-LGBTQI laws have been introduced have also warned that criminalisation of the minority will only worsen problems with the disease.

In Russia, which has one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, anti-LGBTQI legislation brought in last year has effectively made outreach work illegal, potentially severely impacting HIV prevention and treatment. Widespread antipathy to the community also forces many LGBTQI people living with HIV to lie to doctors about how they acquired the disease, meaning the epidemic is not being properly treated.

A worker at one Moscow-based NGO helping people with HIV told IPS: “What this means is that the right groups in society are not being targeted [with measures to prevent the epidemic growing] and so the epidemic in Russia is what it is today.”

Harsh legislation, conservative policies and state-tolerated stigmatisation also impact another key population – drug users.

Countries in regions where drug use is the primary or a significant driver of the epidemic, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Asia and the Pacific, drug users often struggle to access harm reduction and HIV prevention services. They fear arrest at needle exchange points, attacks from a general public which often views them negatively, and prejudice and stigmatisation from workers within the healthcare system.

At the same time, in states with harsh laws targeting the LGBTQI community, drug users, sex workers or other vulnerable groups, civil society organisations helping those populations are also affected by the legislation, meaning that vital HIV prevention and treatment services they provide are hampered or halted completely.

And these problems are not confined to a handful of states. The UNAIDS report states that laws that criminalize people from key populations or their behaviours remain on statute books across much of the world. The vast majority of countries (145) still criminalize the use or possession of small amounts of drugs; 168 countries criminalize some aspect of sex work; 67 countries criminalize consensual same-sex intercourse; 20 countries criminalize transgender people; and 143 countries criminalize or otherwise prosecute HIV exposure, non-disclosure or transmission.

Consequently, the HIV pandemic continues to impact key populations more than the general population. In 2022, compared with adults in the general population (aged 15-49 years), HIV prevalence was 11 times higher among gay men and other men who have sex with men, four times higher among sex workers, seven times higher among people who inject drugs, and 14 times higher among transgender people.

Ann Fordham, Executive Director at the International Drug Policy Consortium, told IPS there was an “urgent need to end the criminalisation of key populations”.

“Data shows HIV prevalence among people who use drugs is seven times higher than in the general population and this can be directly attributed to punitive drug laws which drive stigma and increase vulnerability to HIV. It is devastating that despite evidence that these policies are deeply harmful, the majority of countries still criminalise drug use or the possession of small quantities of drugs,” she said.

But it is not just minorities which are disproportionately affected by HIV.

Globally, 4,000 young women and girls became infected with HIV every week in 2022, according to the report.

The problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa region, where there is a lack of dedicated HIV prevention programmes for adolescent girls and young women and where across six high-burden countries, women exposed to physical or sexual intimate partner violence in the previous year were 3.2 times more likely to have acquired HIV recently than those who had not experienced such violence.

Research has suggested that biological, socio-economic, religious, and cultural factors are behind this disproportionately high risk of acquiring HIV. Many girls and young women in the region are economically marginalized and therefore struggle to negotiate condom use and monogamy. Meanwhile, a predominant patriarchal culture exacerbates sexual inequalities.

“For girls and women in Africa, it is general inequalities which are driving this pandemic. It is social norms which don’t equate men and women, girls and boys, it is norms which tolerate sexual violence, where a girl is forced to have unprotected sex and that is then dealt with quietly rather than tackling the abuser,” Byanyima said at the launch of the report.

UNAIDS officials say that promoting gender equality and confronting sexual and gender-based violence will make a difference in combatting the spread of the disease, but add that specific measures aimed at young women and girls, and not just in sub-Saharan Africa, are also important.

“[Sexual and reproductive health] services are not designed for young women in many parts of the world – for instance girls cannot access HIV testing or treatment without parental consent up to a certain age in some countries,” Keith Sabin, UNAIDS Senior Advisor on Epidemiology, told IPS.

“A lack of comprehensive sexual education is a tremendous barrier in many places. It would go a long way to improving the potential for good health among girls,” he added.

But while the report highlights the barriers faced by key populations, it also shows how removing them can significantly improve HIV responses.

It cites examples from countries from Africa to Asia to Latin America where evidence-based polices, scaled up responses and focused prevention programmes have reduced new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths, while some governments have integrated addressing stigma and discrimination into national HIV responses.

It also noted that progress in the global HIV response has been strengthened by ensuring that legal and policy frameworks enable and protect human rights, highlighting several countries’ removal of harmful laws in 2022 and 2023, including some which decriminalized same-sex sexual relations.

“Studies strongly suggest a better uptake of services among men who have sex with men (MSM) in countries where homosexuality has been decriminalised or is less criminalised. A certain policy environment can improve uptake [of HIV services] and outcomes,” said Sabin.

The UNAIDS report calls on political leaders across the globe to seize the opportunity to end AIDS by investing in a sustainable response to HIV, including effectively tackling the barriers to prevention and services faced by key populations.

Experts agree this will be crucial to ending the global epidemic.

“We have long known that we will not end AIDS without removing these repressive laws and policies that impact key populations. Today, UNAIDS is once again sounding the alarm and calling on governments to strengthen political will, follow the evidence and commit to removing the structural and social barriers that hamper the HIV response,” said Fordham.

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Some people in parts of Uganda have depended on small-scale charcoal production for livelihoods, but the trade has been taken over by illicit charcoal traders. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Jul 10 2023 (IPS)

At Kampala’s Nakawa market, Lovisa Nabisubi scoops charcoal from a bag and packs it into tins ready for customers. Her bare hands, feet, and clothes are stained black from hours of dealing in this popular household fuel which some equate to “black gold” not just in Uganda but in most of East Africa.

The sizes of Nabisubi’s measuring tins have been shrinking as charcoal gets scarcer and more expensive. While the price of charcoal is getting out of reach for some residents in Kampala, Nabisubi tells IPS that she may lose her only source of income if the situation persists.

“It is becoming difficult to find the suppliers of charcoal. We have been buying a bag of charcoal at ninety thousand shillings. The suppliers sell at one hundred and ten thousand shillings ($32). Sometimes I don’t get any stock, so I stay at home,” she said.

Charcoal is a popular source of cooking energy for urbanites in Uganda and most of East Africa. It also has immense social-economic importance, but it is getting scarce and expensive.

A household study by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) in 2021 found that charcoal provides the primary energy of up to 80% of Kampala’s population. While charcoal, wood, and other forms of biomass together provide more than 90% of the total primary energy consumed in Uganda.

Most of the charcoal supplies to Uganda’s capital Kampala, neighbouring municipalities, and districts have been from formerly war-torn Northern Uganda, but there has emerged pressure against it over environmental concerns.

In February this year, a former member of Parliament, Samuel Odonga Otto, and others mobilised vigilantes to enforce bans on charcoal burning and illegal trade in a region which has a tree cover relatively better compared to other parts of Uganda. The vigilantes would intercept trucks loaded with charcoal cutting off supplies to markets like Nakawa and others.

“Cutting (down) any trees should stop. It should stop if we are to protect our environment. You can see the rainfall patterns. We will not turn to politics; this is environmental,” said Odonga Otto.

As the vigilante group got more sympathizers, President Yoweri Museveni swiftly responded by issuing an order banning commercial charcoal trade in northern Uganda and districts bordering South Sudan and DRC and Kenya to the northeast of Uganda.

While the ban was celebrated by some in the region, a number of questions have emerged. What alternatives to charcoal? How can governments address the conflict between the charcoal ban versus lives and livelihoods?

Only 1.7 million of about 8 million households in Uganda are connected to grid electricity while small-scale charcoal burners, like Cypriano Bongoyinge, wondered how else to survive as the ban took effect.

Bongoyinge told IPS that traders from cities and towns should have been cut off because they were fueling large-scale production.

He told IPS that the traders from Kampala pay between $400-800 to clear an acre of land covered with trees and then hire labourers to burn into charcoal for transportation to the cities or across the borders.

Like Bongoyinge, Ceaser Akol, a politician based in Uganda’s northeastern district of Karamoja, told IPS that communities in the region were burning charcoal at a small-scale level, but they were invaded by large-scale commercial charcoal burners. “While the president came up with a ban, the challenge, as usual, is on enforcement and, of course, corruption.”

Denis Ojwee, a journalist based in northern Uganda’s Gulu city, told IPS that “Our ancestors used to use firewood for cooking but not charcoal. One tree cut for firewood would last longer. So fewer trees were cut for firewood than it is for charcoal.”

Ojwee said the war in northern Uganda may have saved the trees from unsustainable harvesting and that the times of peace have come with a negative impact on the region’s tree cover.

“As much as people died during the war, the environment got saved. But now, trees are getting finished. They have finished other types of trees now they are cutting shea nut trees (Vitellaria paradoxa). Rare species of tree which take very long to grow,”  said Ojwee.

Charcoal from Uganda’s Acholi and Karamoja regions is not only sold to cities in Uganda. It gets through the porous borders and is smuggled to Kenya and beyond.

The Wasteful Archaic Method of Making Charcoal

Charcoal in most of East Africa is produced under anaerobic conditions. That method cannot efficiently regulate the oxygen supply, leading to a lot of wastage.

Xavier Mugumya, a forestry expert, told IPS that the high demand for charcoal had escalated the levels of destruction of trees because people look at it as a source of income.

“If you take a thousand kilograms or a ton of wood and you want to convert it into charcoal using the methods which we normally see, you will only get 100 kilograms of charcoal. That means you are only able to utilize 10% of the original wood. Meaning that 90% of the trees go to waste and become carbon dioxide and ashes,” explained Mugumya.

Corruption and the Role of Organized Crime in the Charcoal Value Chain

The Global Initiative Against Transitional Crime 2021 released the findings of the study investigating the charcoal market in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan. It produced a report titled “Black Gold The charcoal grey market in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan”.

Michael McLaggan, one of the co-authors of the report, said they found what he described as “a classic grey market, where laws or regulations are flouted at some point in the value chain.”

“There are more organized criminal elements in the charcoal market. And while it is not pronounced in other trades such as drug trade or markets for animal parts, it is present,” said McLaggan

The report found that loose groupings headed by charcoal dealers or people with influence in charcoal value chains commission clandestine production of Charcoal to stay in the market.

Nyathon Hoth Mai, a South Sudanese Climate and natural resources expert, told IPS that small-scale charcoal is produced predominantly by the armed forces in South Sudan, while foreign traders were involved in large-scale production.

“We have seen a lot of traders that come from Sudan, Uganda, DRC, Ethiopia, and Eretria. And they exert a lot of pressure on forests. And then as well how this has the potential of corruption practices,” she said.

Can Charcoal Prohibitionist Policies Work? 

Kenya has since 2018 used sporadic bans on charcoal production. In Uganda, a number of bylaws against trade in charcoal have emerged, but there has not been a national moratorium. There exists a national moratorium in South Sudan on the export of Charcoal, but this has hardly been enforced.

The main shortcoming with prohibition, according to McLaggan, is that where there exists a commodity for which there is a sizable demand, that demand doesn’t disappear upon the commodity being outlawed.

“We noticed that when charcoal gets banned in a certain county, production shifts to another county. Or from one country to another country. So the problem is merely displaced,” he said

 Sustainability Interventions in the Charcoal Sector

At the end of March, the FAO released a study report, Are policies in Africa conducive to sustainability interventions in the charcoal sector? It assessed forestry, environmental and energy policies related to charcoal in 31 African countries.

The report found that more than half of the 31 countries assessed do not have policy frameworks that would encourage sustainable interventions in the charcoal sector.

In other countries, existing policies and regulations tended to be inconsistent and risk creating a confusing and unconducive environment to increase the sustainability of the sector.

The study found that five countries – Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda – provide favourable policy frameworks for interventions that would improve sustainability.

Another study, “Cross-border charcoal trade in selected East Central and Southern Africa Countries: A call for regional dialogue”, said although several governments in Africa have banned the cross-border trade of charcoal, making it effectively illegal, markets in border areas and beyond remain vibrant.

“Therefore, the issue of sustainable charcoal production and trade remain critical and must be addressed as part of broader efforts to manage forest-agricultural landscapes across national borders,” it suggested.

While policymakers and environmentalists lobby for change, those trying to make a living from it have uncertain futures.

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Activists from Freedom and Roam Uganda launch LGBTQI+ campaigns, My Body is Not a Battlefield and Break the Chains, Stop Violence campaigns. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Apr 21 2023 (IPS)

The mothers of LGBTQ+ individuals in Uganda have taken a stand against Bill passed by the Ugandan Parliament proposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality, life imprisonment for the “offense of homosexuality,” and up to 20 years in jail for promoting homosexuality.

This stance is considered rare for Uganda and Africa, where Human Rights Watch says 33 countries still criminalize homosexuality. And there is concern that because of the success of the Ugandan Bill, other African countries could be encouraged to intensify targeting the anti-LGBTQ+ community.

Mawethu Nkosana Nkolomba, the Crisis Response Fund Lead/LGBTI Advocacy Lead at CIVICUS, told IPS that the passing of the Bill in Uganda was not an isolated incident. “There is a threat of LGBTI civil society groups being targeted soon in Kenya, and because of what just happened in Uganda, there are fears of the LGBTI bill coming back in full force. Niger – has a similar bill being tabled.” 

“So is Tanzania – the targeting of LGBTI and feminist groups are under target (anal testing), Ghana – has a similar bill as Uganda, Burundi – (is experiencing) a new wave of arrests of LGBTI groups, the situation of LGBTI groups in Tunisia and Algeria is worsening, in Egypt, police are using queer apps to target the LGBTI community – so definitely there is a trend,” Nkolomba says in an interview with IPS.

Activist Eric Ndaula says the issue is that homophobia is a pervasive mindset – with politicians, religious leaders, and even family taking a stance against it. “They tell us that homosexuality is wrong; it’s an abomination.”

When the Ugandan Parliament passed the Bill on March 21, 2023, without asking for anonymity, Jane Nasimbwa, Sylvia Nassuna, Janet Ndagire, Patricia Naava, Jackie Nabbosa Mpungu, Florence Matovu Kansanze, Josephine Amonyatta, and Shamim Nakamate openly identified themselves as mothers of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Their “Open Letter to President Museveni from Mothers of LGBTQ+ Individuals,” – republished by the Monitor, surprised many.

“As parents of LGBTQ+ individuals, we are not ‘promoters’ of any agenda; we are Ugandan mothers, who have had to overcome many of our own biases to fully understand, accept, and love our children,” reads the letter.

The women expressed fear that their children were likely to be targets of mob violence, which they noted was a direct consequence of living in a country whose legislators are “recklessly” legalizing homophobia and transphobia with the Anti-Homosexuality law.

“We, too, did not choose to be parents of LGBTQ+ children, but we have chosen to love our children for who they are. As parents, we all desire and work to ensure that our children are healthy, well-educated, successful, and fulfilled in both their professional and personal lives.”

The letter was shared on Twitter by Dr Catherine Kyobutungi, a feminist and The Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center, sparking an online debate.

They requested President Yoweri Museveni not to assent to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, saying they could no longer stand on the sidelines and watch as their children continued to be bashed and threatened in such a dangerous and deliberate manner.

Will President Museveni Listen?

There are doubts about whether Museveni, who previously signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law in 2014, will heed the mothers’ call – even though he has sent the Bill back to parliament for amendment.

In a press statement released on April 20, 2023, which quoted him as saying: “Be ready to sacrifice to fight homosexuals,” he also noted: “It is good that you rejected the pressure from the imperialists. Those imperialists have been messing up the world for 600 years, causing so much damage.”

The Bill is to be returned not because of a change in sentiment but because Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka said the Bill in its current form criminalizes even those who voluntarily come out to having “practiced homosexuality” and need to be helped.

He proposed a provision for amnesty for this group.

Museveni has been quoted several times that those behind the criticism of the Bill were associated with Europeans – and he has expressed anti-homosexuality sentiments in several other addresses since then.

“There is some issue with these Europeans. They don’t listen; we have been telling them that this problem of homosexuality is not something that we should normalize and celebrate,” Museveni said. “I told them that there were some few homosexuals before Europeans came here … But now the Europeans want to turn the abnormal into normal and force it on others.”

After the Bill was enacted, Museveni addressed a meeting of members of Parliament from 22 African countries and the UK. He repeated that homosexuality was a deviation, adding that it was more dangerous than drugs.

In February 2014, President Museveni appointed a committee of scientists to determine whether there was a scientific or genetic basis for homosexuality and whether it could be learned and unlearned.

While the committee recommended a further study, it observed that homosexuality existed throughout history.

‘Blatant Violation of Rights’

Dr Zahara Nampewo, a lecturer at the Makerere University’s School of Law and Director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), speaking at a debate a day after the Bill was passed, said there were far-reaching implications of the law.

“We have raised our voices of concern over issues such as the blatant violation of rights such as the presumption of innocence, the right to a non-derogable right to a fair trial,” Nampewo says. “We have been calling for laws to protect children against child abuse; we have been calling for the marriage bill. Why now, in a period of a month, has (this) law been passed?”

The mover of the Bill, Asuman Basalirwa, told IPS that they had planned to table the Bill since August 2022, but it was only in late February that the Speaker granted them space on the order paper.

“The issue of recruitment, promotion, and financing of homosexuality. You don’t provoke a community like that. If those people were doing their things quietly, nobody would be bothered, but you see, you are going into our schools, you are attacking our children. And you want us to look on?”

Asked why a particular stance to criminalize LGBTQ+ persons, Basalirwa told IPS that the criminalization of homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. “It is the colonialists who first brought here a law on homosexuality section 145 of the penal code. This is intended to be a penal law. So you want a penal law that doesn’t criminalize it,” he asked.

Timing of Passing the Bill

Some critics have argued that the Bill was rushed by Speaker of Parliament Anita Among and her deputy Thomas Tayebwa because those behind it wanted it to be passed before an Inter-Parliamentary Conference on family values under the theme “Protecting African Culture and Family Values.”

The two-day conference was held on the shores of Lake Victoria from March 31 to April 1, 2023. It was attended by leaders of Family Watch International (FWI) officials. FWI is a US Christian organization described by civil rights activists as a “hate group, which opposes comprehensive sexuality education.” Delegates from FWI included Sharon Slater, who told the conference that: “We are on fire, and we must stop this culture of imperialism that is destroying our children.” Slater and her team, which included Henk Jan van Schothorst, the Executive Director at Christian Council International, and Gregg Scot, a US attorney, met Museveni and his wife, Janet Museveni, at State House Entebbe.

‘Victimless Offense’ 

But Dr Adrian Jjuuko, Executive Director at Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum – Uganda (HRAPF), disagrees with Basalirwa about the timing of the enactment of the Bill.

“This is a campaign that has been going on for years. And it is not just a Ugandan campaign. This is an international campaign,” said Jjuuko, whose organization provides legal aid to LGBTQI+ persons.

Jjuuko, whose organization has allegedly been listed by Uganda’s NGO Bureau among Civil Society groups likely to be closed, told IPS that the offenses suggested in the laws are victimless because the relationships were consensual. “If you have a victimless offense, why do you have to criminalize a victimless offense? Nobody is complaining; there’s no harm. Harm to who? To Hon Basalirwa?”

The Bill limits the offense of homosexuality to sexual acts between persons of the same sex. The offense is punishable by life imprisonment, up to ten years. It also provides for the offense of aggravated homosexuality.

“If you look at the provision on the promotion of homosexuality. It essentially bans what we do as lawyers. So as a lawyer, you cannot represent an LGBTQ+ person because that will be seen as a promotion of homosexuality,” Jjuuko says.

The law suggests several punishments, including the death penalty for being a repeat offender and life imprisonment.

“Repeat offender means if you are convicted of being gay twice, you die for that. Having consensual sex when you are HIV-positive, you die for that; if you have sex with a person of the advanced age of 75 years, you die for that regardless of whether it is consensual.”

Jjuuko observes, “If you wanted to fight pedophilia, sexual orientation is not what you go for. What you go for is the crime that you are interested in fighting.”

NGOs suspected of promoting homosexuality risk a fine of one billion shillings (over $264,000) or face twenty years in prison.

Restrictions, threats, and the vilification of sexual minorities in Uganda preceded the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. In August 2022, the civil society organization Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) was banned by the Ugandan National Bureau (the NGO Bureau for Non-Governmental Organizations) because it was not registered. In 2012 the NGO Bureau rejected an application by SMUG to have it registered because the organization was “undesirable and un-registrable.”

Asuman Basalirwa, the mover of the Bill, and fellow Parliamentarians argued that the country needs the law to protect children from promoters of homosexuality. But Jjuuko, in an interview with IPS, said that it was a misplaced sentiment.

“If you talk about children, the biggest threat to our children is not homosexuality. The biggest threat to children is heterosexuality. Because if you look at the annual police crimes report, over ten thousand cases of defilement of girls by men. And there were only 83 cases of unnatural carnal knowledge (as the offense is described in the bill) against the order of nature.”

The Bill is Retrogressive

Many have observed that the Bill is retrogressive and will worsen the HIV situation in Uganda as it would deny LGBTIQ+ persons, who are key populations, access to HIV services.

The Bill came after PEPFER Uganda, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Uganda, the Uganda AIDS Commission, conducted a legal and environmental assessment of HIV/AIDS and key populations. The evaluation had recommendations to ensure an enabling environment to move the course toward epidemic control.

PEPFAR Uganda Country Coordinator, Mary Borgman, told IPS, “We need to ensure that the human rights of all key populations are respected regardless of who we are. And this is our primary objective to ensure that we provide services to all people. That is stigma and discrimination-free.”

While South Africa’s Constitution is hailed for being the first in the world to prohibit unfair discrimination based on sexual orientation, LGBTQ+ people still experience violence. Human Rights Watch noted that in 2021 at least 24 people were murdered due to their sexual orientation.

More concerning is the decision of an independent expert body within the African Union (AU), the African Commission of Human and Peoples’ Rights, to reject the three NGOs’ observer status to three NGOs.

Frans Viljoen, Director and Professor of International Human Rights Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, argues in the Conversation that the rejection of Alternative Côte d’Ivoire, Human Rights First Rwanda and Synergía “casts a shadow over the commission’s commitment to advancing the rights of all Africans. It also seriously erodes its independence from AU states … The denial of observer status means the NGOs will not have a voice before the African Commission. They will not be able to draw its attention to the human rights violations of LGBTQ+ people in Africa.”

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Uganda used public health measures like screening, testing of temperatures, and isolation of suspected cases to contain the Ebola outbreak. While those measures were successful, scientists warn that another outbreak could occur. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA & MUBENDE, Mar 10 2023 (IPS)

It is two months since the World Health Organization declared Uganda free of the most recent Sudan ebolavirus, which killed 55 people.

Uganda employed public health measures to end the outbreak. In the absence of vaccines and therapeutics, the threat of the next outbreak looms.

Scientists are yet to find answers to questions like who was the first person to be affected? Or the index case, what viral host reservoir did that patient get in contact with?

“We don’t have answers to those questions. And honestly, we are hoping that Uganda will provide us and the world with those answers,” says Emmy Bore, program director for the CDC’s Division of Global Health Protection in Uganda.

“In every Ebola outbreak we have responded to, in West Africa, in DRC, there have been attempts to trace the roots back to the very first person who got infected. When you figure out where that person went and what they ate, you can figure out how they managed to get the virus. In most outbreaks, we don’t,” she said.

With those questions answered, Lt Colonel Dr Kyobe Henry Bossa, who has been at the front lines against Ebola outbreaks and COVID-19, told IPS that it is urgent they track precisely the viral host reservoir before the next outbreak.

“We know that the reservoir lives in the jungle innocently. We suspect that the viral host reservoir is a bat circulating in the area, and the virus is maintained in nature,” said Kyobe.

Bats have long been the prime suspects for what scientists have termed as the “spillover” of novel pathogens to humans. They are believed to harbor diverse viruses more lethal to humans than any other mammals.

Ugandan Veterinarian and Epidemiologist Dr Monica Musenero Masanza is no stranger to fighting viruses like Ebola and Marburg in Uganda and West Africa. Musenero came to be commonly known as Dr Kornya—loosely translated as a female warrior for her fight against Ebola in Port Loko in northern Sierra Leone. She told IPS that Ebola is categorized among emerging or re-emerging diseases.

“And those diseases show up with a lot of drama. Ebola, when it shows up, there is a lot of drama. Now those emerging and re-emerging diseases are attracting a lot of attention. Unfortunately, because we don’t know much about them, there is usually little we can do about them in the immediate except control,” said Musenero.

According to Musenero, now that Uganda successfully ended the Sudan ebolavirus, efforts should be geared towards finding pathogen X otherwise, another outbreak is guaranteed. “It’s not a matter of if, but when. That is why we should get to the jungles to find the host reservoir,” she said.

On September 20, 2022, Uganda declared an Ebola disease outbreak caused by the Sudan ebolavirus species in the Mubende district.

It was the country’s first Sudan ebolavirus outbreak in a decade and its fifth of this kind of Ebola. There were 164 cases (142 confirmed and 22 probable), 55 confirmed deaths, and 87 recovered patients.

The outbreaks have over the years occurred in a very similar region, with the suspected viral host reservoir suspected to be a bat.

Dr Trevor Shoemaker, an epidemiologist in the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), suspects that bats carrying the virus are circulating in that area.

“It is not unexpected that there would be an outbreak where we have seen previous outbreaks in the central region of Uganda,” said Shoemaker.

According to Shoemaker, during the course of testing for ebolavirus cases in the just-ended outbreak, three of the samples were negative for ebolavirus but tested positive for another viral hemorrhagic fever called Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever.

“There are pathogens that we know about, and there are those we know. So we need to trace them before they spill over to humans,” said Shoemaker.

Scientists from the University of Bonn have in the past confirmed the presence of Crimean Congo viruses in African bats and therefore suggesting that bats could play a role in spreading the virus.

Others studies have linked Crimean Congo viruses to ticks. While bats have been suspected as reservoirs of the Sudan ebolavirus, no conclusive evidence exists.

The district of Mubende and Kasanda forested with indigenous trees. Some private plantation forests are also thriving. Late in the evening, different species of bats fly into the darkening sky.

Fortytwo-year-old Bright Ndawula is an Ebola survivor. He tells IPS that there are as more as ten types of bats that he knows of “Some are tiny, they live under the rooftops, some are big, and they live in trees. Health workers told us that bats carry Ebola, but we don’t know one,” said Ndawula who lost his wife and three family members to the virus.

So far, scientists have been able to identify only one species of African fruit bat (R. aegyptiacus) positive for Marburg virus infection. No evidence of the Marburg virus was identified in the other species of insect-eating or fruit bats tested.

A few kilometers out of Mubende town, IPS comes across farmers and loggers living on the edge of the forest, risking some of the infectious diseases that may spill over from bats to humans.

Dr Charles Drago Kato leads a surveillance team with USAID funded project named Strategies to Prevent Spillover, or STOP Spillover. It targets viral zoonotic diseases—infections that originate in animals before they “spill over” into humans. His teams have been to Districts like Mubende, Kibale, and parts of the Rwenzori Mountains, specifically researching bats and humans.

He told IPS that under the project, they are trying to trace pathogens in bats that may be dangerous when they cross over to humans.

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Abbey Lubega inside the larvae hatchery unit. Simple tools are used to harvest the larvae and frass. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
Kampala & Kayunga, Jul 19 2022 (IPS)

The conflict in Ukraine has led to an increase in fertiliser prices in Uganda and neighbouring Kenya. Amidst the shortages, some farmers are shifting to a more sustainable way of enriching their soils using frass from the Black Soldier Fly.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Marula Proteen Hub, based in Kayunga in central Uganda, mobilised farmers to produce Black Soldier Fly larvae (BSF). But many, especially the elderly, were hesitant.

“I wondered what they will think of me keeping maggots? Some, however, accepted. So, they have been keeping those maggots from which we make animal feed and now, quality fertiliser too,” said Abbey Lubega, the overseer of Marula Proteen Hub in Kangulumira sub-county.

About one thousand farmers in Kayunga have been mobilised to rear the maggots, which they sell to the hub either in cash or in exchange for organic fertiliser.

“Farmers have waste on their farms. So, we give them BSF systems for rearing the larvae. We also give them five-day-old larvae. The larvae eat through waste collected from homes. After eight days, they sell us the mature larvae or feed their livestock. There is also that option. Then they retain fertiliser for their garden,” said Lubega in an interview with IPS

“What the farmers are looking for, besides this income from the larvae, is the fertiliser produced on their farms. They can produce whatever quantities they want. It is quick, it is reliable,” explained Lubega

Marula Proteen Hub is situated below a pineapple and jackfruit processing plant to tap into the waste generated as feedstock for the larvae rearing. A pungent smell of ammonia fills the air as one enters the larvae hatchery section, where five-day-old larvae eat through waste.

“These larvae are eating. They are defecating. The ammonia that you are smelling is emanating from frass,” explained Lubega

Harriet Nakayi harvests BSF Larvae in Kangulumira Kayunga District.

Harriet Nakayi lives in Namakandwa Parish, close to 75 kilometres east of Uganda’s capital Kampala. She is one of the women in this area trained to sustainably produce BSF larvae for animal proteins and frass fertiliser for their crops.

With her three-year-old daughter standing by, Nakayi scoops larvae from black containers and pours them onto a metallic net to separate them from the decomposed brown substances that look like loam soil. The larvae are about to be taken to the hub for sale. The frass and compost material are ready to be applied in her coffee, vanilla, and banana gardens.

She told IPS that frass from BSF is much easier to apply when compared with farmyard manure.

“This fertiliser does not burn the plants. So unlike manure which you have to wait for some time, you can take this one immediately to the garden,” said Nakayi

Like Nakayi, Solomon Timbiti Wagidoso, a pineapple farmer, said he applied BSF fertiliser to one of his gardens and that their growth seems to point to a better harvest.

“The government said it would manufacture our fertiliser, but I’m told that project is on a standstill. We now depend on imported fertiliser whose cost keeps on increasing,” said Timbiti

According to Timbiti, the price of fertiliser has increased since late 2020. The war in Ukraine now exacerbates the high prices.

By early April, fertiliser prices had more than doubled in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The three countries and the rest of East Africa depend on imports from Russia and Belarus.

Researchers in Uganda and Kenya found that ‘the composting process of black soldier fly frass fertiliser takes five weeks compared to the 8–24 weeks for conventional organic fertiliser.

Frass, a by-product of BSF rearing, has been found to contain substantial amounts of nutrients that can fertilise the soil. Lubega scoops frass from one of the containers with his hands. Tiny maggots are still crushing the waste that now looks like fine loam soil.

“It’s almost powder, as you can see. It is very fine,”  said Lubega. “Manure from cow dung is good, but that from goat manure is better. That from chicken is better than that of a goat. So how about the larvae that are the smallest. So, we see that the smaller the animal, the better the manure.”

Lubega explains to IPS that Black Soldier Fly larvae can break the substrates to make the nutrients available to the plant.

“Inorganic fertilisers give you the nutrient the plant needs, but organic fertilisers improve the soil health. They reduce that dependency. If I buy inorganic fertiliser for this season, I have to go back and buy more for the next season. You will need to apply inorganic fertiliser throughout your entire life,” he added.

He said organic fertilisers are better suited for smallholder farmers, like those in Kangulumira, who cannot afford to buy inorganic fertilisers.

“And if you look at the cost-benefit analysis, why would I buy inorganic fertiliser if I’m going to need it all the time? It not different from teaching me how to fish and giving me fish,” added Lubega.

Rucci Tripathi, the global Practice Lead Resilient Livelihoods at international development charity VSO with an office in Uganda and several other countries, told IPS that there is a need for a strategy for farmers and developing countries to shield farmers from the current fertiliser, fuel and food prices crisis.

Tripathi said there was a need to invest in supporting community initiatives on the production of natural manure, including feeding the soils through having a crop cover such as hay and planting nitrogen-fixing plants.

“This reduces farmers’ dependence on imports of chemical fertilisers, which is good for farmers’ incomes and soil health. We see many such small-scale initiatives across Zimbabwe to Uganda to Kenya,” she said

Researchers at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) have revealed that adopting insect bioconversion technology can recycle between two and 18 million tonnes of waste into organic fertiliser worth approximately 9–85 million US dollars per year.

The researchers, who include Dr Sevgan Subramanian, Dr Chrysantus Mbi Tanga and Denis Besigamukama, recently published an article titled “Nutrient quality and maturity status of frass fertiliser from nine edible insects”.

They observed that although the use of organic fertiliser is acceptable and affordable to farmers, there has been limited uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa due to poor quality, long production time, and limited sources of organic matter on the farm.

“Thus, there is a need to explore alternative sources of organic fertilisers that are readily available, affordable and of good quality, such as insect frass fertiliser,” they wrote.

Dr Debora Ruth Amulen, the founder of the Centre for Insect Research and Development, based in Kampala, told IPS that there is a need to sensitise farmers about the animal proteins and fertiliser generated from BSF.

“It is useful on our farms. It’s also a useful tool for our environment. We have a lot of manure from cattle and livestock. They are producing a lot of greenhouse gases. The Black Soldier fly has been found useful in compositing urban waste,” explained Amulen, also a lecturer at Makerere University

“It is a very simple technology that even those that have not gone to school can apply. And it’s very cost-effective.”

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Many NGOs suspended in 2021 remain in limbo. There have been allegations that the organisations’ suspension was because they were critical of President Yoweri Museveni’s government and policies. Graphic Credit: Cecilia Russell/IPS

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
Kampala, Jul 18 2022 (IPS)

Nearly a year after the Ugandan government suspended 54 NGOs for allegedly operating illegally and failing to file accounts, most civil society organisations (CSOs) remain shut.

Analysts say this is because President Yoweri Museveni sees them as a threat to his 36-year regime.

Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), told IPS: “The two court cases we filed against the NGO Bureau for illegal actions against AFIEGO are still ongoing in court. But we know that the NGO Bureau knows their actions toward the affected CSOs are wrong. This is why it has continued to make endless phone calls to AFIEGO and others for informal discussions. We have asked them to put their invitation in writing, but they haven’t done so perhaps to avoid implicating themselves.”

Before its suspension, AFIEGO was one of four Ugandan organisations involved in legal action to stop the $10 billion oil project by TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Its opposition is based on environmental concerns.

At a recent signing of the agreement between the government and the oil major, Museveni said that the “associations that criticise this project are people who don’t have a job. They have nothing to do, so let these idiots continue to wander aimlessly. They are only good at drinking tea and eating cookies”.

However, Kamugisha asked: “What’s wrong with fighting against anything that worsens the impacts of climate change, such as this risky oil project, the deforestation of the forests of Bugoma and Budongo, the safeguarding of Nile River and Lake Edward, of Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth NPs, and so on?”

Kamugisha said the government’s actions towards CSOs showed that the civic space in Uganda was not getting any better.

According to Amnesty International, in the run-up to the January 2021 elections, Museveni critics bore the brunt of the security forces.

“In 2020, dozens of people were killed in the context of electoral campaigning ahead of the January 2021 general election, most of them by police and other security forces…The rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association were severely restricted. The authorities targeted organisations working on human rights and shut down the internet,” the human rights organisation said.

Many observers believe Museveni deliberately targeted the organisations for challenging his policies and undermining his rule.

Justice climate activist Robert Agenonga told IPS from Germany that the government’s decision to suspend NGOs was retaliation for their critical role before, during, and after the elections.

“So many violations occurred during the electoral period, whereby people were detained, killed, and tortured. And organisations such as Chapter Four, for instance, provided legal support to opposition politicians, ordinary people and activists that were intimidated and prosecuted during and after the electoral period.”

Museveni believes NGOs act as agents of foreign governments and are supported by outsiders to undermine the government, Agenonga said, adding that this is done to reduce the capacity of CSOs and their ability to influence communities.

Another reason behind the suspension is that the Museveni administration has accused NGOs of replacing the state’s role by receiving money for state institutions.

“Over the years, donors were becoming increasingly unhappy with Museveni’s overstaying in power. So, they have resorted to channelling money they were giving to the state through NGOs. That’s what might have angered the government.”

Before the mass suspension of 54 NGOs, the government cracked down on the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF), a multi-million-dollar fund assisting local organisations that focus on democracy, human rights and good governance.

In 2019, the authorities banned the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU), an election monitoring coalition.

In January 2021, the authorities also banned the National Elections Watch – Uganda, a coalition of local organisations, from monitoring national elections.

Kamugisha categorically denied the government’s allegations that the suspended NGOs were operating illegally, stating that it was all about intimidating, harassing and instilling fear in the CSOs sector.

“You know that the Executive Director of Chapter Four spent weeks in prison, and later his case was dismissed due to lack of prosecution. The government lost interest in the case, and later the man left for the US apparently on study leave but heard on study leave, but his organisation is as good as closed,” he added.

“Even the AFIEGO issues with the police, the police do not have any evidence of criminal offences. We are legally registered, and the NGO Bureau knows it very well.”

Chapter Four Uganda applied to the High Court Civil Division to challenge its suspension.

In May 2022, High Court Judge Musa Ssekaana called the decision to indefinitely suspend Chapter Four “irregular”. This was because there was no timeframe for comprehensive investigations into the NGO’s operations to enable the bureau to determine whether or not to revoke its permit and cancel the registration.

In June, Chapter Four was allowed to resume operations.

Another affected the NGO Democratic Governance Facility (DGF), had its suspension lifted in late June. The NGO, funded by Denmark, Ireland, Austria, the UK, Sweden, Norway, and the European Union, was suspended in January 2021. It supports projects for poverty eradication, equitable growth, and the rule of law.

Gideon Chitanga, a political analyst with the Johannesburg-based Centre for Study of Democracy, told IPS that NGO suspensions were a  draconian violation of civil liberties and human rights by the Ugandan government.

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While the opposition leader Bobi Wine is under house arrest, analysts say Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni must make concessions to those who voted against him. Courtesy: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By Jonathan Irumba
KAMPALA, Jan 18 2021 (IPS)

Thirty-five years ago when President Yoweri Museveni talked, a majority of citizens listened. But now, as he approaches almost four decades in power, his message is not resonating well — particularly with the country’s youth who constitute about 70 percent of the voting population in Uganda.

On Saturday the Electoral Commission of Uganda declared the incumbent president winner of the vote. While the opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, remains under house arrest it is unclear how and when he will dispute the election results, as he’s vowed to do. But one thing is clear as analysts say Museveni must make concessions to those who voted against him.

In an election notable because of the nationwide internet shutdown that began on the evening before the elections, and is yet to be restored, Museveni secured 58% of the vote compared to 35% of the vote cast for opposition candidate, musician-turned-politician Bobi Wine.

Bob Wine has rejected the results as rigged. And has indicated that his party will challenge the result through all legal recourses available — this includes filling a case challenging the result within the next 14 days with the Electoral Commission of Uganda; going to court to challenge the results; as well as peaceful demonstrations, which are legal according to the country’s constitution.

Joseph Kalema, 38, resident of Kakindu Village near Kampala is convinced his candidate, Bobi Wine, won against Museveni in the Jan. 15 election but was simply “rigged out”.

“We are waiting for our generation president to tell us the next course of action,” Kalema told IPS, referring to Bobi Wine who is president of the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP).

Bobi Wine shut off from party officials and the world

However, it may take sometime before 38-year-old Bobi Wine can make that call as he has been under house arrest since the elections, with his residence surrounded by state forces, and his mobile phones reportedly disconnected.

The media have been denied access to his residence as well as his close colleagues.

In a tweet from Bobi Wine’s account but with ADMIN written in brackets— and presumably sent from outside Uganda’s borders as at the time of filing in the morning of Monday Jan. 18 the internet still remained shutdown — it was claimed that Member of Parliament Francis Zaake was beaten after he allegedly attempted to enter the residence. He is reportedly still in hospital.

Everyone including media and my party officials are restricted from accessing me. @ZaakeFrancis was arrested outside my gate as he made his way to my house, he was badly beaten by soldiers. He is now in Rubaga hospital.
(ADMIN)

— BOBI WINE (@HEBobiwine) January 17, 2021

In another tweet yesterday, again from Bobi Wine’s account but with ADMIN written in brackets, it was claimed that the opposition leader and his wife had run out of food and when his wife attempted to pick food from the garden she had been “blocked and assaulted by soldiers”.

It’s now four days since the military surrounded our home and placed my wife and I under house arrest. We have run out of food supplies and when my wife tried to pick food from the garden yesterday, she was blocked and assaulted by the soldiers staged in our compound. (ADMIN) pic.twitter.com/MLEtSbyCcW

— BOBI WINE (@HEBobiwine) January 17, 2021

Today, Jan. 18, elected members of the NUP called a press conference, demanding Bobi Wine’s immediate release, saying despite claims that the state forces surrounding him were there for his own protection, the current conditions under which their presidential candidate is living can be classified as house arrest.

Mathias Mpuuga the vice president of the NUP, and a newly-elected member of the party, said party officials had attempted to meet Bobi Wine were blocked by security. NUP demanded the immediate release of Bobi Wine, adding that he should be allowed to have access to his party leadership and lawyers to guide the next course of action.

Museveni blames ‘foreign forces’

When this will happen remains unclear. After being declared the winner in the election, Museveni said his main challenger Bobi Wine was an agent of foreign forces who wanted to push for their interests and were using him as their vessel to achieve their agenda.

Who the foreign forces are, was not clarified but Museveni alluded to “promoters of homosexuals” and a neighbouring country which was not named, and those intent on frustrating Uganda from reaping the benefits of its oil discovery

With the internet, a key mobilisation tool for the NUP, still shut down any large scale demonstrations would be difficult to organise. 

Heightened security across the country

A few weeks ago when Bobi Wine, the main challenger to Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), was arrested after being accused of flaunting COVID-19 guidelines during campaigning, there were spontaneous riots in urban centres across the country by his supporters.

The national security apparatus swung into action to quash the riots. Over 50 people died.

But Kalema, like many of his peers, simply do not care about the risk of being arrested or killed in confrontations with security.

“Many of our colleagues are languishing in jail, many have been killed, including innocent citizens. Should we just look on?” wondered Kalema.

Security is not taking matters lightly and are armed to the teeth to quail any violence.

“Last time they took us by surprise. Now we are more than ready for any riots,” Lieutenant Colonel Deo Akiiki, the deputy spokesperson of Uganda People’s Defence Forces, told IPS.

The army and the police had deployed heavily on the streets of Kampala and other major towns across the country ahead of the election. They are still patrolling the streets days after the election for fear of a repeat of riots, following the declaration of the election results that announced Museveni victorious.

Museveni must make concessions 

Museveni is credited for ushering in peace and security to a country that had descended into anarchy following the overthrow of Idid Amin and subsequent short-lived governments.

The biggest challenge to Museveni is that the majority of voters in this election were not born when he took power. Many were born during Museveni’s reign and did not experience that difficult period in the country’s history.

What they understand are the issues of unemployment and poverty, which they have to deal with now, with many blaming this on Museveni’s continued stay in power.

Political analyst Dr Samuel Kazidwe says that situation is very fluid and a lot will depend on how the parties react.

“It is not over yet because President Museveni must find a way to reach out to Bobi Wine and his supporters and be able to make some concessions. Otherwise we could be headed for trouble,” Kazidwe told IPS. 

Kazidwe said Museveni could learn from the Kenya experience and the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which was agreed between Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga following a disputed 2017 election.

Kazidwe said that when looking at the election results, it was clear that the whole of the central region had rejected Museveni and his party as evidenced by the numbers of votes for the opposition. 

Meanwhile, the  Secretary General of the ruling NRM, Justine Kasule Lumumba, said on Saturday that were looking for evidence of foreign interference in the country’s election.

Some see this as an attempt to justify the earlier shutdown of Facebook after it blocked NRM activists’ accounts over allegations of impersonating other users and unethical conduct.  However, the NRM has taken this as evidence of foreign interference in the election. 

 ** The story notes that internet was not restored at time of publication of this piece. It was later restored around 14.30 Ugandan time. 

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A parent helps his children to go through work received in the study kits distributed by Education Cannot Wait (ECW) implementing partners in Uganda. ECW allocated $1 million in emergency funds to its education partners in Uganda to ensure that refugee children still continued schooling despite the nationwide coronavirus lockdown. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA/KIKUBE/RWAMWANJA, Uganda , Dec 21 2020 (IPS)

Thirteen-year-old Wita Kasanganjo is a pupil at Maratatu Primary School in the Kyangwali Refugee Settlement based in Uganda’s Hoima district. But last month, when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni ordered the re-opening of schools for the first time since the mid-March nationwide closure, Kasanganjo was not part of the returning group of students. The government, in a cautious lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions, has allowed only pupils who are part of the final year or candidate classes to return to their schooling.    

“Not being in class for all this time is not fun. I miss my friends at school and my teachers too,” Kasanganjo tells IPS, saying that she looks forward to the day when the government allows all children to return to school. Kasanganjo has lived as a refugee in Uganda since 2015 when she and her mother fled from armed conflict in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province.

During the coronavirus lockdown and subsequent school closures, close to 15 million girls and boys, including children living in refugee settlements across this East African nation, were affected. And while pupils in their final years of school, estimated at 1.2 million, returned last month, more than 13 million remain at home, with some still unable to access learning materials.

The most vulnerable among these children include refugee children like Kasanganjo. According to international charity, Save the Children, Uganda hosts the largest number of refugees on the continent.

The numbers are sobering. According to the NGO, 57 percent of refugee children in Uganda are out of school, in some cases for several years. “Even for those who are able to attend school, the quality of education is severely compromised by a shortage of classrooms, teachers and materials. Class sizes average more than 150 children, with some squeezing in 250 children or more,” according to Save the Children Uganda.

Kasanganjo is one of the fortunate ones. She was enrolled in Uganda’s Primary Education under the Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda (ERP), facilitated by Education Cannot Wait (ECW).

The plan, the first of its kind globally, was launched two years ago by the Ugandan government together with local and international humanitarian and development partners. “It targets children and youth in 12 refugee-hosting districts in Uganda where more than half a million children are currently out of learning and out of school,” according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.

ECW, the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies and protracted crises, provided the impetus to develop the three and a half year ERP and supports its implementation with a $33 million seed funding allocation. ECW is urgently appealing to new and current donors to step up and cover the full $389 million expected cost of the ERP. So far, an additional $93 million has been mobilised.

While other refugee children may not be attending school during the lockdown, Kasanganjo is able to continue learning from home as she has been supplied with reading material distributed by the ERP partners working in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement.

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, ECW immediately released additional funds through its first emergency response funding window for its partners to quickly set up relevant remote learning solutions and safe and protective learning environments, and to raise awareness of barrier gestures for children and youth and their communities to prevent the spread of the virus.

“In times of crisis, support to continuous learning opportunities is crucial to help protect vulnerable girls and boys who face high risks of permanently dropping out in case of a prolonged interruption to their education. Girls are particularly at risk of child marriage and early pregnancies,” said Yasmine Sherif, director of ECW. “In the face of COVID-19, rapid emergency interventions have been key to protect refugee children and youth and other vulnerable and marginalised girls and boys from an uncertain future and to preserve the gains of ECW’s longer-term multi-year investments in quality education outcomes.”

In total, ECW allocated $1 million in emergency funds to its education partners in Uganda. This includes $475,000 implemented by UNHCR and $525,000 implemented by Save the Children as part of a consortium of civil society organisations, including War Child Holland and ZOA Uganda. The consortium distributed 38,000 home learning kits and more than 900 solar-powered radios that were given to some of the poorest households to ensure children in refugee hosting communities were able to listen to lessons over the radio. The funding also supported classes to be conducted over local radio stations. 

“I have I read all the reading materials and answer all the questions. Sometimes I have challenges because I cannot get ready answers, but my mother allows me to visit some of my friends in the community so that we can do the work together. That has really worked for me,” says Kasanganjo.

Geatano Apamaku, a radio manager at Radio Pacis in Uganda’s West Nile region – which lies along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Uganda’s largest concentration of refugees, numbering 750,000, are based – believes that radio classes are more effective compared to distributing the study material and having students learn by themselves.

“We have had children call in asking teachers questions. I think this was more effective because most refugee parents are illiterate. So, they could not help their children learn,” Apamaku tells IPS. 

Dugale Severy, a teacher and refugee from South Sudan who lives and teaches in the Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement in Adjumani District, tells IPS that without education programmes for refugee children, many would never have entered a classroom after fleeing their countries. And despite the COVID-19 lockdown, he says that South Sudanese refugee children are receiving a good education.

“Because you cannot learn when you are hearing gunshots. Just like you cannot teach at your best when you are hearing bombshells. I pray that this type of education is extended to other refugee children all over the world,” explains Dugale.

Uganda’s National Commissioner for Basic and Primary Education Dr. Cleophus Mugenyi tells IPS that without funding from ECW, children in refugee settlements would not have been able to continue their education.

“It would be horrible. The children would be denied the right to education, and you know that education is a basic human right for all and it is important for everyone to make the most of their lives. So, children in refugee settlements deserve education, too,” says Mugenyi.

According to Mugenyi, funding from ECW has benefitted refugees and their host communities to improve learning facilities, construct classrooms and pit latrines, and train teachers, among others.

In fact, ECW reports that the primary gross enrolment ratio for refugee children improved from 53 percent in 2017 to 75 percent in 2019, following the Fund’s support to the ERP.

Despite this progress, more is needed as refugees are faced with precarious situations.

“Our appeal to partners is to continue mobilising resources towards this kind of education because from Uganda’s perspective, we have demonstrated that the Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities in Uganda can help children to access education,” says Mugenyi.

But Uganda has done more for refugees than most countries by granting them access to land and services, freedom of movement, and the right to work. According to Save the Children, the Ugandan government has shown “global leadership in refugee policy and how we respond to refugee crises”.

According to the NGO, what happens in Uganda will determine an international framework for the refugee crisis.

“Uganda and the ERP is a test case for the willingness of the international community to back their commitments with practical actions, and ensure that the responsibility of responding to the refugee crisis is shared fairly,” Save the Children states. 

ECW is appealing to public and private donors to urgently mobilise $400 million globally. With these resources, ECW will continue to fund emergency education support during the COVID-19 pandemic and in other sudden onset crises, and help develop and roll out multi-year response plans for refugees and other children and youth in a total of 25 protracted crises around the globe.   

Meanwhile Gladys Nayema, just like Kasanganjo, is one of the many girls who will continue their home learning. “Some of our colleagues were happy when the schools were closed. They thought it was an early holiday. I didn’t. I have continued to learn from those materials from Save the Children and the government. I urge other boys and girls to read them because they are useful,” she tells IPS.

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David Mande shows the walls of a house made out ecobricks. The ecobricks, according to Mande, are filled with moist soil to ensure that they become hard. The bottle top is then tightly closed to ensure that the moist sand and soil bond to make a brick that can be turned into a strong wall. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
MPIGI/MUKONO/KAMPALA, Uganda , Sep 21 2020 (IPS)

About 40 kilometres out of Uganda’s capital, Kampala, in the Mpigi area, you can find an entire village hill with houses that have plastic bottles walls and car tyre rooftops.

Plastic bottles, which you can usually found littered almost everywhere in rural and urban Uganda, could help alleviate the country’s housing shortage as well as avoid environmental harm. An innovative idea of turning plastic bottles into “ecological bricks” is one of the latest solutions being promoted by environmentally sensitive individuals and NGOs here.

The village in Mpigi is part of a project by the Social Innovation Enterprise Academy (SINA), which promotes the use of ecobricks as an upcycling solution to the plastic waste problem rather than reverting to recycling.

• Recycling would involve the waste being reduced or destroyed from its current form to create something new. Whereas upcycling uses the existing waste and incorporates it into something new.

The initiative has spread out to a number of refugee camps in Uganda.

Uganda’s plastic headache 

Like many other African countries, Uganda is faced with the threats of plastics arising from the packing and beverages industry.

The plastics from bottled soft drinks end up in landfills, scattered all over the streets and block roadside drainage. Most of the plastics waste has been found floating on shores of Lake Victoria, it’s swamps and wetland or are simply burnt in the open air.

It is estimated that Kampala, the country’s capital, alone generates more than 350,000 tons of solid waste every year, only half of which is collected. So plastic remains one of the huge environmental concerns for the country whose plastic consumption increases by the day.

David Mande is a promoter of the ecobrick solution. He works as a builder and a trainer at SINA. The plastic waste have huge significance for him. Mande’s younger brother died tragically after trying to cross a swamp. After several hours of searching for the dead boy, his body was found concealed under a pile of bottles.

“I need to make use of these bottles. I found out that in Nepal and Nigeria, they were using those bottles to build houses in rural communities. And it has worked too in Uganda,” he told IPS.

He has become an enthusiastic promoter of upcycling plastic bottles instead of recycling.

The ecobricks, according to Mande, are filled with moist soil to ensure that they become hard. The bottle top is then tightly closed to ensure that the moist sand and soil bond to make a brick that can be turned into a strong wall.

Ultimately, Mande said, the aim is to maintain a green planet.

“So we collect the bottles and tyres from the environment and turn them into ecobricks and tiles. Then we use them for the construction of beautiful houses like the ones you are seeing across there,” said Mande. 

Are ecobricks a solution to the country’s housing shortage?

Mande estimates that three million plastic bottles that were littering the environment have been used to construct some 117 houses across this East African nation.

Though it may take a while yet to alleviate the country’s housing shortage. According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the country has a deficit of 2.1 million housing units, growing at a rate of 200,000 units a year. It is estimated that by 2030, the country’s housing deficit is expected to reach in excess of five million units.

Edison Nuwamanya, who runs a shop from one of the houses constructed with plastic bottles or eco-bricks, told IPS that he had not seen these types of buildings until he moved to Mpigi area.

“Nature always provides the cool environment; it is rarely hot in here. It looks nice and it feels good to be in,” Nuwamanya told IPS of the house.

Back in Kampala’s Kamokya slum, a group of young people have turned plastic waste bottles to their advantage by promoting ecobricks as an alternative to mud and wattle houses common in this area.

The men and women from the Ghetto Research Lab collect plastic bags and bottles and repurpose them into ecobricks. From a distance one is welcomed by piles of bottles and polythene bags, which they use to make the bricks.

Rehema Naluekenge is one of the women involved constructing houses using the bottles. She uses a metal rod to staff soil and polythene bags into the bottle.

“I compact polythene bags and soil into the bottle until it gets hard. Because if the bottle remains soft as it was meant to be, it can’t make a brick,” she explained to IPS.

“The houses constructed with bottles or ecobricks are proving to be quite durable. We have not seen any develop cracks,” said Nalukenge. “Our operating principal at Ghetto Research is that waste is only waste when you waste it.” 

Women in eastern Uganda’s Mbale city collect plastic waste for recycling. Proponents of upcycling say that in recycling waste one ends up polluting the environment. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

The demand for Uganda’s plastic waste has dropped

It has been common to find huge heaps of plastics in urban areas, these are usually collected by women and children for recycling into plastic flake products, which would be exported to China and India.

Manufacturers in India and China would recycle the flakes into products like polyester fibres for cloth and carpets or back into plastics bottles. But the market seems to have dried up. A middleman who was supplying these plastic flakes to China told IPS that the closure of particularly the China imports has had huge blow to the recycling industry in Uganda.

“There is no demand from our usual customers. It is not a COVID-19 effect. China’s demand reduced [before the outbreak], followed by India in mid-October last year,” the middleman, who declined to be named, told IPS.

A kinder method of construction

In the central Ugandan district of Mukono stands another upcycling project — this one is by high school teacher Allan Obbo. Obbo is the owner of the Bottle Garden Resort, whose entire perimeter wall and a number of cottages have been constructed from waste bottles.

“Research tells us that plastics are very dangerous to the environment … look at our lakes, the lakes are choked. And research tells us that for this bottle to degrade, it will take 300 years.

“So if I use one for building, it has more life than when left in the soil. So using this bottle as an alternative for construction saves the environment,” Obbo told IPS.

“Construction materials are detrimental to the environment. When you get the bricks, sometimes you are using soils that you could have used for farming. Then on top of that you go on cutting down trees, but when you are using the bottles, you are retrieving them from the environment,” said Obbo

Obbo doesn’t know how many bottles he has retrieved from waste bins to construct his Bottle Garden Resort. 

“I have one unit I took the time to count and it has 12,000 bottles. But if you put all the structures together, they are over a million bottles. It would have choked the environment,” he said

Lack of awareness and government support

While Obbo thinks that eco-bricks can serve as alternative building material, he told IPS that he was disappointed that construction engineers in the country’s urban areas cannot approve building plans for developers planning to construct houses using waste plastic bottles.

Obbo thinks recycling has not helped to retrieve all the bottles and that it cannot be comparable to upcycling.

“Remember recycling it into a reusable plastic, again there is that carbon emitted. And when that carbon goes to the ozone layer, it will affect the environment. With this one, there is nothing that goes in the air to pollute the environment,” he said.

Architect Patricia Kayongo, the managing director of Kampala-based Dream Architects Ltd., has been involved in supervision of construction projects in government and the private sector in Uganda. 

She told IPS that while the ecobricks have not been tested and approved by the country’s bureau of standards, they, together with other buildings materials, can be used as a sustainable building solution.

“And not much research has been done on them. It means that people have been denied of more options for constructing houses cheaply,” said Kayongo.

She said recycled materials like glass and plastics are good for construction but they were not being utilised to solve the housing deficit in most countries.

Zubedah Nakitende was trafficked as salve labour to a family in Jordon. Her employer gave her a cream for her injured fingers that was actually turned out to be acid. Nakitende’s fingers were so badly injured they had to be amputated. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Sep 18 2019 (IPS)

In 2017, Zubedah Nakitende’s electronics shop was robbed with thieves taking her entire stock. But she had heard from a colleague about lucrative jobs in Jordan and decided to take on work as a domestic helper, earning an income of 740 dollars a month.

“I was desperate, I had debts. So I said let me go and work to pay those debts,” Nakitende told IPS.

She made contact with a trafficker, known by the pseudonym Abu Ahmad, with whom she communicated by phone. On his advice she travelled by road to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where she was given an illegal visa and flown to Jordan.

But she ended up placing her life in the hands of a criminal network that sold her as slave domestic labour. And in the end she lost four of her fingers and never earned the money she had hoped to to pay off her debts.

East Africa’s trafficking transit point

• According to the United Nations Refugee Agency’s Refworld, Kenya has been identified as a transit point for Ethiopians and other East Africans seeking work in South Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
• The Ugandan government, despite criticism, has encouraged externalisation of labour in order to attract foreign exchange in the form of remittances. Remittances from Ugandans abroad, according to the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Youth Affairs (UPFYA), increased from 1.6 billion dollars in 2016, to 2.0 billion dollars in 2017. 
• In 2017, the government lifted a ban on Ugandans travelling abroad for domestic work, despite reports of abuse and trafficking.
• Since then there has been a surge in labour recruitment agencies targeting the export of labour to countries like Oman, Jordan, UAE, Malaysia and China. As of 2018, over 105 private companies were licensed by Uganda’s Gender and Labour Ministry to recruit workers for external employment.
• Nairobi-based labour recruiters recruit Ethiopian, Rwandan, and Ugandan workers through fraudulent offers of employment in the Middle East and Asia. But women recruited through these agencies end up in sex slavery or forced labour in the Middle East and China, among others.

She was forced to work through the pain

Nakitende was herself forced into salve labour. Her passport was taken by the domestic recruitment agency in Jordan and she was taken to a home in the city to work.

One day she told her employer that her hands ached. Her boss gave her a liquid, which Nakitende thought would ease the pain. Instead it turned out to be an acid that burnt her fingers.

She was in deep pain but her employer forced her to work saying, she “had been bought for that purpose”.

Eventually she was sent back to the recruitment company that facilitated her employment so she could receive treatment. But the medication could not relieve the pain. “It instead worsened the situation as the palms turned black and swollen,” Nakitende said.

In the end she was taken to a specialist who recommended she return to Uganda “because I would no longer be able to work”.

Upon return home she went to hospital for treatment. But her fingers were so severely damaged that the only course for her was amputation.

“I went to Jordan knowing that I was going to work but I returned with a permanent injury. I did not get any money. The trafficker even took the money that had received to facilitate my treatment,” she recalls.

Healing the psychological wounds 

Nakitende has just completed psychosocial support and rehabilitation by Willow International — a nonprofit organisation with an office in Uganda’s capital that provides rescue and restoration support to survivors of trafficking.

Flavia Amaro, a programme officer with Willow International, told IPS that some of the victims have been referred to the Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital in Kampala for treatment for a range of mental issues that mainly related to depression.

She said 15 women were receiving counselling and treatment at the time of the interview. One woman, she said, would always stand still, without moving. “From our assessment, we realised that she was locked up in a very cold room for a longtime,” said Amaro.

Uganda’s efforts not enough to end trafficking

• Uganda is one of the countries battling to end trafficking. It has been also identified as the destination for persons trafficked for sexual exploitation, with women originating from countries like conflict-ridden Burundi, among others.
• In its 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report, the U.S. State Department said Uganda does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it was making significant efforts.
• According to the Ugandan government, authorities intercepted a total of 599 Ugandans, 477 females and 122 males, attempting to depart to countries that officials assessed as high risk for trafficking and where travellers were unable to adequately explain the purpose of their travel.
• According to the U.S. Trafficking in Person Report, Uganda reported that of 145 trafficking investigations, there were prosecutions of 52 defendants in 50 cases, and convictions of 24 traffickers in 2017 under the country’s 2009 anti-trafficking act. This is compared to 114 investigations, 32 prosecutions, and 16 convictions in 2016.
• The report observed that corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action.

Airport and immigration officials implicated in trafficking crime

Security officers at Uganda’s border with Kenya, at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport and officials from the Civil Aviation Authority and immigration departments have been accused of colluding with traffickers to facilitate the travel of trafficked persons.

Jessica (not her real name), a survivor of trafficking, told IPS that her travel to Jordan was facilitated by ground staff and immigration officials at Entebbe Airport. She said the trafficker who helped her leave Uganda for a job as a domestic worker in Jordan had been in contact with them.

Jessica, who worked as slave labour and was beaten on several occasions, was eventually rescued by her member of parliament. She posted a video explaining her ordeal on social media and reached out to Ugandan legislator, Louis Gaffa Mbwatekamwa. Mbwstekamwa travelled to Jordan, with permission from parliament, and brought her home.

Uganda’s Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control spokesperson Jacob Siminyu did not rule out the fact that some immigration officials were working with traffickers for personal gain. He said the directorate worked with the police and other agencies to ensure that trafficked persons were not allowed to exit Entebbe Airport.

Not enough money to bring trafficked survivors home

• The U.S. trafficking report also suggests the need to fully implement the protection and prevention provisions of Uganda’s 2009 Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act.
• Among the recommendations was the need to allocate funds for victim protection, the track and refer how victims for appropriate care or assistance and expansion of protective services for victims through partnerships with NGOs
• It suggested the need to implement strong regulations and oversight of recruitment companies, and improve enforcement, including by continuing to prosecute those involved in fraudulent labor recruitment.

The Commissioner of Police Anti-Human Trafficking National Task Force, Moses Binoga admitted that there were intuitional challenges in the implementation of the trafficking law but noted the level of awareness about trafficking persons has increased since the law was enacted.

He revealed that a number of convictions of the traffickers after a number of judges were trained about the crime of trafficking. But there remain challenges.

“The existing processes and systems of assisting victims are not sufficient enough. For instance, [there aren’t] sufficient funds for paying fines and return air tickets for all the reported stranded victims in foreign countries,” Binoga told IPS

Damon Wamara is the country director of Dwelling Places, a non-government organisation dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of internally trafficked women, agreed that Uganda has a good law against trafficking in persons but implementation was a big challenge.

He said the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force was poorly staffed yet it has to handle over 11,000 victims that either need rehabilitation or repatriation annually.

Special courts needed for safe testimony and convictions

Uganda’s High Court judge Margret Mutonyi recently told IPS that there is need for Uganda to establish a special court to handle issues related to trafficking in persons. She said the current court system was too adversarial and tended to leave the victims more traumatised.

“The ordeal they go through affects them mentally, physically and psychologically. Some think there is nothing to protect or defend. Their dignity and integrity is affected profoundly. They don’t think there is any punishment that can atone their hearts,” she said.

Mutonyi agreed with other activist groups pushing for a victim-witness protection legislation in Uganda.

Civil society groups in Uganda have argued that the absence of such a law has hindered investigations and prosecutions because perpetrators can threaten and blackmail victims and witnesses, discouraging their participation in trials.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Dr. Stella Nyanzi (seated with glasses), a lecturer and researcher at Makerere University and feminist and activist, was convicted on Aug. 2 for publishing a poem critical of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. She is pictured here in the dock, surrounded by prison warders. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Aug 6 2019 (IPS)

The conviction of Ugandan feminist and activist Dr. Stella Nyanzi for publishing a metaphorical poem about President Yoweri Museveni could have a chilling effect of freedom of expression, according to Dr. Peter Mwesige, co-founder of the Kampala-based African Centre For Media Excellence. 

“There are very many people who are going to think twice before they can express themselves in certain terms. I think it narrows the frontiers of the right to free expression. Absolutely it does,” Mwesige, who is also a former group training editor of the Nation Media Group, East Africa’s biggest multi-media company, told IPS.

Mwesige said that going forward those who did not have Nyanzi’s courage would not be able to say certain things in public for fear of being sent to prison.

On Friday, Aug. 2, Nyanzi was found guilty of “cyber harassment” for  posting a poem on Facebook on Museveni’s birthday on Sept. 16, criticising his 33-year rule and his birth. She was given 18 months imprisonment for writing the strongly-worded verse that spoke about oppression, unemployment and the country’s absence of good governance and rule of law.

The post has received over 1,800 likes and 2,000 comments. At the time some people reached out stating that they prayed for her safety as the post was so heavily critical of the government, others criticised her mention of Museveni’s late mother, asking her to allow the woman to rest in peace, and many others praised her poetry, agreeing with her vivid description of the oppression they also felt, and calling her a courageous woman.

One user messaged Nyanzi, who is a lecturer and researcher at Makerere University, saying: “Well, at the end of the day. All your wishes are in vain. None came true”, to which the poet responded, “Wishes are yearnings, desires, aspirations. Words are seeds! Watch my poem grow”. 

The poem took on a new dimension a month later when Nyanzi was charged with violating the Computer Misuse Act 2011 sections on cyber harassment and “obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent” content production. The prosecution had argued that she intentionally harassed and humiliated the president through her post. The academic was also charged with “offensive communication”, but she was found not guilty. 

The Computer Misuse Act 2011 has provisions for offensive communication, which is defined as where a person “disturbs or attempts to disturb the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person with no purpose of legitimate communication”. It also has provisions for cyber harassment, which is defined as the use of a computer for “making any request, suggestion or proposal which is obscene, lewd, lascivious or indecent”. A person can also be charged for cyber harassment if they knowingly allow someone to use their computer for the defined purpose.

Nyanzi has used Facebook as a platform to critique Museveni’s regime. Nyanzi’s poetic non-fiction posts on Facebook have won her admiration among some local writers and the academia and she has emerged as the regime’s most serious and profane adversary.  She has also defended her writing stating she pays for her posts on social media and can write what she wishes. Ugandans have to pay a tax to the government for their social media usage under the Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill, paying about 5 U.S. cents a day. 

“For me, I don’t have guns, I don’t have money, I don’t have clout, I have Facebook and I have language. And I think we can continue be polite and continue suffering,” Nyanzi told journalists at court before her conviction.

Her trial attracted huge numbers of supporters and sympathisers, with the magistrate’s court in Kampala usually being filled to capacity for each appearance. She would occasionally plead with her supporters to calm down in court as she continued to speak out against Museveni’s rule while in the dock.

Nyanzi’s lawyer, Isaac Semakadde, told IPS that an 18-month jail sentence for an allegedly obscene post that was allegedly uploaded by Nyanzi is irreconcilable with not only the principals in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—an international human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations of which Uganda is a signatory of—but also Uganda’s bill of rights.  

“The conviction is based on computer misuse admittedly through circumstantial evidence that is what I heard the magistrate say…. It was processed only through political interference,” said Semakadde.

Nyanzi, who was arrested in November and has remained behind bars since then after she refused to apply for bail, will serve out the remaining nine months of the sentence. 

Meanwhile, her lawyer vowed to fight for the repeal of the Computer Misuse Law. 

Responding to the guilty verdict, Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International’s Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, said in a statement: “Stella Nyanzi has been criminalised solely for her creative flair of using metaphors and what may be considered insulting language to criticise President Museveni’s leadership. The mere fact that forms of expression are considered insulting to a public figure is not sufficient ground to penalise anyone. Public officials, including those exercising the highest political authority, are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.” 

Amnesty International said that Ugandan authorities must scrap the Computer Misuse Act 2011 which has been used systematically to harass, intimidate and stifle government critics.

Freedom of speech and expression have been increasingly under attack in Uganda. United States Ambassador to Uganda, Deborah R. Malac, had cited Nyanzi’s arrest as one of those attacks on World Press Freedom Day.  

She said Nyanzi’s trial showed that constitutional rights and freedoms apparently had limits, particularly when those opinions were critical of the country’s leaders. “And when a government constricts the rights and freedoms of its citizens, the future and the development of the country suffer as well,” Malac had stated. 

Nyanzi’s case is just the latest in a series of growing constraints that the media here faces.  

In mid-July, a journalist-turned preacher, Joseph Kabuleta, was arrested and detained for four days after calling Museveni as a gambler, thief and liar in his Facebook postings. 

Media professionals have had their houses broken into, their possessions stolen, their phones monitored, and their lives routinely threatened. The Observer newspaper has on several occasions been attacked by suspected government operatives.

Dr. Danson Sylvester Kahyana, a Ugandan poet and lecturer at Makerere University’s Department of Literature, told IPS that Nyanzi’s arrest and conviction will have a gaging effect on writers with a critical mind and could see more Ugandans withdraw from social media as a medium for free expression. 

Ugandans have recently turned to social media to express their views and opinions, which are not published in mainstream media because of self-censorship. 

Kayhana, who is also the President of PEN Uganda chapter, an activist group pushing for rights of writers and journalists, defended the jailed poet’s erotic, non-fiction style of writing that has caused trouble with the Kampala regime.

 “Most people have said Stella Nyanzi is vulgar, rude and so on. But one thing that they have missed out in is that it is this rudeness, this vulgarity that makes her be heard. If you write in a civil way or in a way that care about your image, chances are that you will be silenced,” said Kahyana.

He made reference to Uganda’s world-renowned associate professor of Literature at Makerere University, and one-time judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Dr. Susan Kiguli, and Professor Timothy Wangusa, a Ugandan poet and novelist who also served as Dean of Arts at Makerere University and Minister of Education for the country.

 “There is nothing new that Stella Nyanzi [has said] that these two writers have not said. Because they have engaged in issues of dictatorship, misrule, corruption in their works.

“But how come the nation knows more about Stella Nyanzi than them? It is because they have chosen to use civil language. That kind of language ends up in the library.”

Elephants in an area infested by the invasive sickle bush. The Uganda Wildlife Authority fears that the management of the shrub could be a challenge as the plants rapidly colonise grasslands in the Queen Elizabeth National Park, the country's most diverse park. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KASESE, Uganda, Jun 12 2019 (IPS)

As climate change leads to increased temperatures in East Africa, a thicket of invasive thorny trees with the ability to withstand harsh climatic conditions have begun threatening Uganda’s second-largest park, home to a rare breed of tree climbing lions and one of the highest concentrations of primates in the world.

The Queen Elizabeth National Park forms part of the Greater Virunga Landscape, considered the richest part of the African continent in terms of vertebrate species. The park is Uganda’s most diverse and boasts 5,000 species of mammals, including: 27 primates such as chimpanzees, red-tailed and monkeys, and baboons; birds; amphibians; reptiles; hippos and elephants.

But conservation experts at the Queen Elizabeth National Park are fighting to stop the spread of Dichrostachys cinerea, commonly known as sickle bush.

There is a fear that the further spread of of the shrub, which has a long tap root and various lateral roots that make it difficult to remove, could further place at risk the already endangered species that exist here. A recent  Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report found that there is massive loss of biodiversity globally that could “undermine human well-being for current and future generations,” according to Sir Robert Watson, the outgoing chair of the IPBES.

Though not new to the country or the region, the invasive plant, which is native to South Africa and known for its medicinal uses, has begun spreading rapidly across the park, taking up in recent years an estimated 40 percent of the almost 2,000 square kilometres that the park covers.

Edward Asalu, the chief warden here, told IPS that the spread of these thickets was affecting animal settlements in this ecologically diverse part of the country.

“This issue is being studied but we know that it is largely linked to climate change,” he said, alluding to the increased temperatures in the country. He added that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also contributed to the fast spread of the sickle bush.

According to a climate risk assessment report on the country by the Climate and Development Learning Platform, which aims to integrate climate change into development programming, “climate projections developed for Uganda … indicate an increase in near-surface temperature for the country in the order of +2°C in the next 50 years, and in the order of +2.5°C in the next 80 years.”

Robert Adaruku is a tour guide with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and has noted that increased temperatures have affected the growth of the sickle bush.

“As the temperature goes high, such kinds of plants like the sickle bush are able to survive in a hotter environment are able to expand. Because the weather or environment will be favouring their expansion,” he told IPS.

The sickle bush and its recent rapid growth due to increased temperatures has led it to become the latest threat to Uganda’s wildlife conservation efforts. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Thicket drives away animals
The spread of the sickle bush is evident as one drives along the road overlooking the Kazinga Channel, a 32 kilometre stretch of water that joins Lake George and Lake Edward. The channel has previously been considered the ideal spot to view game.

A lonely male elephant is spotted in the early afternoon under a thicket of sickle bush. There is no grass underfoot.

Asalu told IPS the thickets were not easily penetrated by most animals and that “grazers like antelopes, warthogs and buffalos are avoiding those thickets because they can’t find food under there.”

“We have areas which were grasslands but are now being taken over by thickets. Animals, especially the herbivores, like open areas where they can be able to see the carnivores trying to eat them. That is why you cannot find them in area colonised by the sickle bush,” Asalu explained.

Adaruku explained that he first noticed the sickle bush in the park way back in 1997. “The sickle plants were there but on a very small scale. As time goes on it has been able to expand and colonise this area.”

Sickle bush spreading rapidly across Africa and beyond

But it is just not this park that the sickle bush is taking over. Asalu confirmed that Tanzania’s Randilen Wildlife Management Area also recently had to deal with the spread of the sickle bush.

Quoting a study by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), a non-profit inter-governmental development and information organisation, Asalu said that Dichrostachys cinerea spreads very fast because it can produce up to 130 shoots from the mother stem.

Studies from West Africa have found that the sickle bush is mostly found in warm, dry savannahs but it can grow in more than three climate groups.

CABI said the subspecies spreading in East Africa is thought to have originated in countries such as Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa and is spreading all over the world.

“Dichrostachys cinerea has a high reproductive rate, meaning that they produce many seeds throughout the year. Although not all offspring are successful, the plants that do establish themselves can typically expect a long lifespan due to their tolerance to natural disturbances like fire, drought and pests,” reads part of a 2017 report by CABI.

It added that the ability by the sickle bush to prosper on nutrient-poor soils and disturbed areas made it very adaptive and resilient in its native region of South Africa.

A 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications found that alien invasive species, like the sickle bush, have the ability to expand rapidly at higher latitudes and altitudes as the climate warms, out-pacing native species. The park is estimated to be 914m above sea level, while Uganda is about 140 kms above the equator.

Geofrey Baluku is a part-time tour operator around Kilembe and Kasese, the areas alongside the Queen Elizabeth National Park. He is also concerned about the spread of the sickle bush.

“It is a serious problem. What will happen to this park if all the animals go away?” Baluku said in an interview with IPS.

He told IPS that the sickle bush is not entirely new to the area but the rate at which it is expanding was.
“We have used those same plants to treat some diseases. It is very good soothing to tooth ache.
“But …even elephants don’t eat their leaves. Other small animals don’t want to stay in areas colonised by sickle bush so they move to other areas, including where there are human settlements,” Baluku said.

Uganda Wildlife Authority wardens at one of the areas formerly colonised by the sickle bush. The authority has undertaken restoration efforts since July to clear the Queen Elizabeth National Park of the shrub. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

A problematic plant

Dr Peter Baine, a research officer at Uganda’s invasive species research unit, told IPS that the sickle bush forms a canopy in a colonised area, releasing chemicals that kill the grass underneath.

“It is quite problematic to other plants because of its ability to spread fast, grow fast, disperse numerous seeds, and the seed’s ability to last in soil up until a year,” he said.

Baine did not rule out the fact that its rapid spread could be linked to climate change. He told IPS that invasive species and climate change are two of the primary factors that alter ecological systems.

He said the National Agricultural Research Organisation and UWA were conducting studies to understand the interaction between climate change and the sickle bush for a possible management plan to fight the problem.

Restoration Effort

The UWA has in the past burnt the sickle bush but discovered that the tree would sprout again after a few weeks.

Since July, the authority has embarked on a new restoration effort, involving the uprooting and burning of the plants in colonised areas.

About six hundred hectares of sickle bush had been uprooted by May when IPS visited the Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Asalu told IPS that there remains a huge challenge ahead because uprooting and burning the sickle bush requires huge financial resources that are not readily available.

But in the meantime the current efforts for eradication are making a difference. IPS saw a number of animals, including buffalo and bushbucks (African antelopes), in parts of the restored area.

*Writing with Nalisha Adams in Johannesburg

Fishermen on the Ugandan side of Lake Victoria. Uganda has ventured into non-traditional methods of fishing on the lake with a few of companies using cage fishing. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
JINJA, Uganda, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

Colvince Mubiru had heard about cage fish farming on Uganda’s lakes. The small business owner decided to try his hand at it and spent USD8,000 to set up farming cages for Nile Tilapia on Lake Victoria, expecting to reap a huge profit. But just six months into his enterprise, he made huge losses.

“It was too costly to manage so I could not continue because I could have lost all I had,” Mubiru tells IPS.

Both Uganda and neighbouring Kenya have introduced cage fish farming as a sustainable method of ensuring a steady supply of fish stock from Lake Victoria.

Africa’s largest lake, Lake Victoria, is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. It has, according to the Lake Victoria Fisheries Management Plan III, “experienced dramatic ecosystem change over time resulting into loss of more than 500 endemic haplochromine fish species.”

Uganda began promoting cage fish farming in 2006. Cage culture encloses the fish in a cage or basket made up of floats, anchors and a frame, submerged to a depth of 10 metres.

In Uganda, small tilapia of no less than one gram are stocked in nursery cages at a density of 1,000 – 2,500 fish. These are reared to at least 15 grams in eight weeks, graded, and stocked in production cages and then reared for a further six to seven months to reach a weight of 350-600 grams before they are harvested.

Fifty-two-year-old Joseph Okeny first became a fisherman on Lake Victoria in 1997. But he abandoned wild fishing two years ago at a time when illegal fishing methods were rife and fish were scarce in Lake Victoria. He has since started a boat cruising business instead.

“You could stay on the lake for almost the entire day but could not get enough fish for consumption at home and for sale,” Okeny tells IPS.

But things have changed since Okeny stopped fishing for a living. According to the Status of Fish Stocks in Lake Victoria 2017, released in December by the NaFIRRI of Uganda, the Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) of Kenya and the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI), fish stocks in the lake have recovered by 30 percent compared to 2016 figures.

This also included the stock of Nile perch, a fish not native to the lake, which was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase in stock is noted also in a study by the Makerere University-based Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC), which said aquaculture fish production in Uganda alone increased from approximately 10,000 MT per annum in 2005 to approximately 100,000 MT per annum in 2013 – accounting for around 20 percent of the total national fish production in Uganda. The study said 899 tonnes of fish were being produced in Uganda from cages in every six- to eight-month production cycle.

It also stated that there were 28 registered cage culture farmers in Uganda, with a total of 2,135 cages around Lake Victoria alone. However, KMFRI reported last month that this figure is now close to 3,696.

IPS travelled to Uganda’s Jinja district area on Lake Victoria and discovered that six cage fish farms are owned by foreign investors.

The largest of the six sells fish retail to residents around Bugungu where it has established several nursery ponds. It exports the rest to Kenya, DRC and Europe.

Asked why there were no local fish farmers with established cages on the lake, Okeny believes that adopting that technology requires financing that locals cannot afford.

Aside from the cost of the cage, which can start at USD 350, seed or fingerlings, depending on the size, can cost about USD 270, according to Uganda’s National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI). There is also the added cost of feed for the fish.

Fish farming cage on Lake Victoria. Cage culture encloses the fish in a cage or basket made up of floats, anchors and a frame, submerged to a depth of 10 metres. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Dr. Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, a Fish Biology and Ecology specialist with NaFIRRI, has worked in Uganda’s fisheries research for over 40 years, and agrees with Okeny about the cost.

“Cage fish farming is extremely expensive and you are keeping fish in a small area. If you don’t look after them very well, it is not only the environment which is going to lose, but you are also going to lose,” Ogutu-Ohwayo tells IPS.

“It is not cheap when compared to farming in ponds. And that is why cage fish farming must be practiced as a business just like you rear broiler chicken,” says Ogutu-Ohwayo.

Pointing to an abandoned cage floating within the area allocated to fish cages of an international company, Okeny says some locals tried to invest in cages but got their fingers burnt.

“They thought that cage fish farming brings money and they also started fish farming without having enough capital to buy feed,” explains Okeny.

“These people started without consulting those who have experience. So they failed and most of them withdrew from the business. So that is why you see only one cage remaining,” says Okeny.

Researchers of the survey “Prospects of Cage Fish Farming in South Western Uganda” published in June suggest that lack of funds is the main constraint in cage aquaculture and not lack of feed and fingerlings, as has been suggested in other studies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Gerald Kwikirizaa, one of those involved in the survey, told IPS that the results suggested that lack of funds to purchase inputs was the main constraint in cage aquaculture in South Western Uganda.

He suggested that the government could boost cage fish farming through subsidising feed cost for small-holders, especially if quality floating feed is produced locally.

This cage fish farmer plans to harvest fish from the fishing cages on Lake Victoria. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

Fishery development is one of the key global development goals in Agenda 2030, which comprises the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with countries seeking to support the restoration of fish stocks to improve safe and diversified healthy diets.

Ending hunger, securing food supplies and promoting good health and sustainable fisheries are among the topics to be discussed at the first global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference being held in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 26 to 28. Over 7,000 participants from 150 countries will be discussing, among other things, how to build safe and resilient communities and to ensure healthy and productive waters.

According to Ogutu-Ohwaayo, cage fish farming is common in the Great Lakes of North America. He said Africa should utilise its inland waters to produce more fish instead of relying on declining wild fish populations.

He added that if properly and systematically developed, it can be another means of food production, explaining that 21 percent of Uganda is made up of fresh water, meaning land for food production is scarce. “So we must use our water to produce food. And cage fish farming is one way of using our waters, in addition to other services, to actually produce food,” Ogutu-Ohwayo further explains.

He said Uganda’s population, which is growing at over three percent a year, cannot survive only on wild fishing, which has stagnated.

Ogutu-Ohwayo said aquaculture is the fastest growing food industry in the world and provides an option for meeting the deficit in fish production.

Uganda’s fisheries production for capture fisheries and aquaculture is estimated at 400,000 tons per year, which is not sufficient to meet growing demand. The six kg per capita fish consumption is far below the FAO-WHO recommended level of 17.5 kg.

“My conviction is that Africa should not be left behind in cage fish farming. And we have the capacity not to be left behind if we do it well,” said Ogutu-Ohwayo, also a board member of the International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR), a scientific organisation made up of researchers studying the Laurentian Great Lakes, other large lakes of the world, and their watersheds.

There have been regional efforts to address the declining fish stocks through innovative technologies.

Ogutu-Ohwa told IPS that he is mobilising fellow researchers from the African Great Lakes region to develop best practices for what he described as an “important emerging production industry.”

“You must follow best management practices. Just like you would manage a zero-grazing cow. You must put in adequate management. We as scientists are doing our best to develop these best management practices,” says Ogutu-Ohwayo.

A project known as Promoting Environmentally, Economically and Socially Sustainable Cage Aquaculture on the African Great Lakes (PESCA) is part of the efforts to address social and environmental concerns related to cage culture.

It operates in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi and generally in the African Great Lakes. PESCA has been operational since the beginning of June 2018.

“There have been concerns that cage fish farming is going to spoil the quality of the water. We want to develop tools that would promote cage fish farming in an environmentally and social way,” said Ogutu-Ohwayo.

Meanwhile, Okeny tells IPS that the introduction of cage fish farming and the efforts by the government to fight illegal fishing seem to be paying off.“Now when people go fishing they come back with good fish because that bad practice has been controlled,” says Okeny

He has seen the negative and positive aspects of cage fishing farming. “I think cage fish farming is very productive going by the amount of fish harvested by [a cage fishing company] fish. And because of that, they are paying their workers very well,” Okeny tells IPS as he docks his boat after a busy day.

A Congolese man transports charcoal on his bicycle outside Lubumbashi in the DRC. Credit: Miriam Mannak/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Oct 15 2018 (IPS)

In Africa, over 640 million people – almost double the population of United States – have no access to electricity, with many relying on dirty sources of energy sources for heating, cooking and lighting.

While not offering a solution to the electricity gap in Africa, Brian Kakembo Galabuzi, a Ugandan economics student, can offer a cleaner and cheaper solution.

Galabuzi is the founder of Waste to Energy Youth Enterprise (WEYE), which is registered as a limited company that makes carbonised fuel briquettes from agricultural waste materials and organic waste.

Galabuzi got the idea after networking with other students concerned about global energy poverty at the 2015 International Student Energy Summit in Bali, Indonesia. Energy poverty is defined as the lack of adequate modern energy for cooking, warmth, lighting, and essential energy services for manufacturing, services, schools, health centres and income generation.

WEYE was created with the basic idea of commercialising grass root bio-waste to energy solutions in order to create a youth-led clean cooking transition in Uganda.

The promise of a financial income or benefit have been effective hooks to get young people to embrace sustainable energy as a source of income. The  youth promote sustainable energy because they want to earn from it, says Galabuzi.

“We believe that the benefits of sustainable energy, such as time saving, clean air, environmental conservation and good health are not what the highly-unemployed youth what to hear,” Galabuzi tells IPS.

“The majority of the world’s population is youth – of which the biggest population is unemployed. This why we designed a solution based on financial benefit (income generating opportunity) for unemployed youth and women,” he says.

Resource rich but energy poor

Africa is energy rich but nearly two thirds of its population of more than 1,2 billion have no access to electricity.

The African continent has an estimated 10 terawatts of potential solar energy, 350 gigawatts (GW) of hydroelectric power and 110 GW of wind power. All these sources can be harnessed with the right investment, a 2015 study by influential consulting company, McKinsey & Company found.

However, poor investment in off-grid connections in Africa means that polluting fossil fuels and biomass are major energy sources. However, off grid connections can provide clean and affordable energy to millions of people while helping reduce carbon emissions and preventing indoor pollution.

Growing energy demand in Africa and other developing economies presents an urgent need for the promotion and provision of more affordable and cleaner energy. Wood, charcoal, grass and solid waste, such as animal and human waste, are forms of biomass that can be converted into fuel and used as energy sources.

In Africa, over 640 million people have no access to electricity, with many relying on dirty sources of energy sources for heating, cooking and lighting. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

A clean energy business

And students like Galabuzi are seeing opportunities here.

While acknowledging that his company is not the first to make briquettes, Galabuzi says what is unique is that the briquettes are made from organic waste materials and sold to institutions that use firewood – 80 percent of which harvested in Uganda. Recent studies indicate that Uganda is at risk of losing all its forest in 40 years unless it halts deforestation. This is largely due to population growth and increased demand for land and firewood energy.

“Our solution guarantees our clients a 35 percent reduction in cost of cooking fuel, 50 percent reduction in cooking time and, most importantly, a smoke free cooking environment for the cooking staff,” Galabuzi tells IPS.

Galabuzi says despite the presence of solar, hydro power and gas as alternative sources of cooking energy, fuel briquettes are affordable and efficient energy alternatives.

A pilot of the fuel briquettes at St. Kizito High School, a school based in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and the first school to adopt WEYE’s technology, showed encouraging results. Galabuzi explains the school registered an annual financial saving of over USD 2,500, a 50 percent reduction in cooking time and increased job satisfaction among the cooking staff due to the healthy, clean and smokeless cooking conditions.

“Our project uses organic waste from farmers and food markets such as maize cobs, banana peels and many others, which were considered useless,” he says.

“We offer the farmers and waste collectors monetary value for this organic waste and give them a new avenue to generate income, boosting the agricultural and waste management sectors.”

Galabuzi says his business has the potential of employing over 40 individuals in waste collection, sorting, production, marketing, distribution and finance.  It also has a potential market of over 30,000 institutions in Uganda. Already WEYE is training youth and women how to make briquettes and to start up their own briquette companies, with support from the Uganda government youth fund.

The WEYE Clean Energy Company Limited is authorised to sell charcoal briquettes and clean cook stoves in Uganda. The business model was tested during an 8-week ‘Greenprenuers’ programme run by the Global Green Growth Initiative, Youth Climate Labs and Student Energy (SE).

Felistas Ngoma, 72, from Nkhamenya in the Kasungu District of Malawi, prepares food in her kitchen. Credit: Charity Chimungu Phiri/IPS

Students driving sustainable energy transition

SE is a global organisation, based in Alberta, Canada. It builds the potential of young people to accelerate subsistence energy transitionthrough training, coaching and mentorship.

The interest in energy by SE, which has a membership of 50,000 young people from 30 different countries around the world, led to a partnership with Seoul-based Global Green Growth Initiative (GGGI) to promote the young ‘greenpreneurs’ programme. This programme gives the youth opportunities to turn innovative ideas into green businesses in sustainable energy, water and sanitation, sustainable landscapes and green cities.

“We got interested in greenpreneurship because a lot of people in our network are interested in energy but are more at a systems level and how energy connects to gender, empowerment, access to clean sources of fuel, access to energy in remote areas and smart technology,” Helen Watts, director of Innovation and Partnerships at SE, tells IPS.

Global discussions on energy, while politicised, have previously been at commercial and academic levels. But SE has opened a platform to promote wider discussions on finding and implementing innovative solutions to solving the energy challenge and help meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

Watts says the partnership with GGGI is an opportunity to open up GGGI’s youth entrepreneurship model, which is country specific, into a global accelerator model with young people from emerging and developing economies. Another organisation, the Youth Climate Lab, an innovation lab space organisation that seeks to build the capacity of young people to participate in the climate policy, innovate and collaborate on climate adaptation and mitigation, has been brought in as a partner.

“Young people have this incredible capacity to break the kind of zero sum game of sustainability of profitability,” says Watts.

“They have an amazing ability to think outside boxes of what has been done and collaborate with different peers and community members to map out these incredible solutions to both grow their communities and local economies while providing cleaner, affordable solutions to different challenges community members are facing.”

SE was started in 2009 by a group of students who worked in the energy industry in Canada and every two years it organises an international summit on the future of sustainable energy as a platform to talk about energy transition.

The first International Student Energy Summit in 2009 brought together 350 students from 40 countries. The 6^th International Students Energy Summit was hosted in Mexico in 2017 with 600 students from 100 countries. Next year the summit will be in London and is expected to attract 700 students.

SE has also developed energy chapters in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America and South Asia, which are like student clubs in post-secondary institutions. The chapters are supported to help members develop their green energy ideas into reality in their communities. The first chapters were established in United Kingdom, Nigeria and Canada.

“Energy has really captured me and inspired me to dedicate my entire career to energy transition projects because of how fundamental energy is to our everyday lives,” Sean Collins, a co-founder of SE, tells IPS, adding that the value of energy is embedded in the work of SE that there is consideration of both energy’s striking benefits and its impacts.

“I think the thing I am most proud of has been our work to set the expectation that youth deserve a seat at the table in all energy conversations as a peer with older generations, policy makers, legacy industry and other groups. It is our generation that will be primarily responsible for the practical transition to a lower carbon economy, so we need to be an active participant in these discussions from day one.”

Fostering discussions and implementation of energy innovations creates impact. Businesses like Galabuzi’s WEYE clean energy company can be potential models to provide energy to more 600 million people in Africa who go without electricity.

Old taxi Park in Uganda's Capital Kampala. The Green Growth Strategy in Uganda seeks to introduce rapid bus transport and light railways to avoid this type of congestion. Credit Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Oct 3 2018 (IPS)

Locals in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, always have two or three things to say in a conversation about how the city is developing. Some say it is filthy because of the growing waste; others say it is a slum because of its unplanned settlements; and then there are those who say it is just plain inconvenient because of the traffic congestion created by the boda boda (motorcycle taxis) and commuter taxis that honk incessantly as they make their way along the streets.

But Juliana (not real name), a student from Seven Hills International School, has a solution to the capital’s urbanisation crisis.

“I’m praying that a hurricane hits Kampala so that we would have no choice but to re-organise it,” she says. She is part of a class team working on a project to turn Kampala into modern city.

“What would be the name of that hurricane? This was a big statement. Have our children given up?” asks Amanda Ngabirano, an Urban Planning lecturer from Makerere University.

Ngabirano, has been working in partnership with the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) on plans for a downtown car-free zone. She disagrees with Juliana on the suggestion that the entire city should be razed and says it can transition to a low carbon future based on the Global Green Growth Institute’s green cities model.

A green city is an urban area that moves toward long-term environmental protection, social inclusion, and economic sustainability. A green city, according to GGGI, is understood as an urban area that moves toward long-term environmental protection, social inclusion, and economic sustainability. GGGI is a treaty-based international organisation that promotes green growth.

Ngabirano tells IPS that there is still an opportunity to green Uganda’s urban settlements.

A city impacted by growth

Uganda is slowly urbanising with about 19 percent of its population living in urban centres. It is projected that 30 percent of Uganda’s almost 42 million people  will be urban dwellers by 2035.

Kampala, the country’s biggest city, is faced with a number of problems–which include the growth of informal settlements, encroachment on wetlands, and inadequate sewage and water treatment plants to service the city’s population of 1.5 million–all of which are exerting pressure on the natural environment.

Urban planners and environmentalists have concluded that Uganda’s current “grow dirty now, clean up later” style of urbanisation is not sustainable.

However, the government has embarked on reversing the damage to its natural resources. With support from development partners, the government is looking towards a green growth strategy that emphasises the need for a more harmonious relationship between development and the environment.

In partnership with GGGI, the government recently developed the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy 2017/18 – 2030/31.

Launched last November, it will be implemented over the next 14 years and is estimated to cost USD11 billion.

Urban green growth model

The strategy suggests a new urban growth model that encourages a more compact, connected national transition by 2040. It projects to increase access to basic services by over 33 percent, reduce the aggregate infrastructure investment requirement by 11 percent, and reduce greenhouse gases by 27 percent.

Peter Okubal, the GGGI country representative to Uganda, tells IPS that his organisation has already embarked on policy changes and formulations to enable this East African nation to follow a green path to its development.

“Our analysis suggests that improved urban policy is not enough – correcting ongoing issues in the economy will be just as important for a successful urban transition,” Okubal says.

Uganda’s Vision 2040 suggests eight priority interventions to catalyse better urban growth. If implemented, they could boost GDP by USD4.3 billion by 2040, as well as provide new jobs and positive environmental benefits.

Okubal says that there is indeed an opportunity for Kampala and other cities in Africa to change the trajectory that they are on by adopting the green cities model of urbanisation.

“The population living in green cities is rapidly growing. So if the governments took advantage and developed cities that are competitive, then they are likely to reap the urban dividend rather than getting the confusion associated with urbanisation,” explains Okubal.

GGGI has supported Uganda’s ministry of lands and urban development complete the national urban policy through its green cites programme. It has also supported the process of development of a strategy to implement the green cities road map.

The road map provides a step-by-step process through which a city can be transitioned from an ordinary one to one that is competitive, compact and coordinated.

“That is the model that we promote. [For] cities in Uganda should be able to connect to each other, they must be competitive. That means that they should be able to generate businesses, they must be livable at the same time but also productive in nature,” Okubal says.

The Uganda Vision 2040 proposes four regional cities and five strategic cities in the course of Uganda’s urbanisation. These are the capital city Kampala, the regional cities of Gulu in Northern Uganda, Mbale in Eastern Uganda, Mbarara in Western Uganda, and Arua in West Nile region.

“Uganda is endowed with rich natural diversity that necessitates incorporation of sustainable and consumption practices into the economy to ensure the sustainability of natural resource capital,” Paul Mafabi, director for environment at Uganda’s ministry of water and environment, tells IPS.

He says well-planned urban settlements based on a green cities model could save the country’s natural resources.

“Most of these resources are non-renewable or in case of degradation, [result in] loss or extinction, their restoration demands a lot of financial, moral and physical input,” says Mafabi.

Chebet Maikut, Uganda’s commissioner for climate change, tells IPS that GGGI’s efforts towards a green growth model, especially in urban areas, cannot be underestimated.  “GGGI is currently helping government to work on the monitoring, verification framework for Uganda, which is quite essential under the transparency framework of the Paris Agreement which emphasises the need to track progress and report on the country’s progress on tackling climate change.”

Waste Management

In a related development, GGGI is taking steps towards addressing the increasing solid waste management crisis in the country. It recently completed the national urban solid waste policy. The document provides a framework in which the government of Uganda can manage solid waste nationally.

“The current waste management approach that the government has been using in Kampala is what we call pick and dump. Pick the waste from the household and dump it into land fill. Now GGGi proposes an alternative to that,” says Okubal.

“If we treated waste as a resource, and indeed waste is a resource, then we can leverage on the amount of waste generated to create 4 million jobs over the next 15 years,” he further explains.

According to Okubal, there are plans to develop a bankable project estimated at USD15 million to address the waste challenge in Uganda’s cities and urban authorities.

Financing Options For Green Growth in Uganda

Uganda’s government needs to mobilise USD11 billion over the next 15 years. It also needs USD2 billion dollars to be spent over the next five years. Some development actors have doubted whether the government can raise that funding from its budget or through development partners. But Okubal is of a different opinion.

“There is quite a lot of money out there. The money is out there but the governments are failing to tap the money,” he argues.

He explains that it is possible for governments to access those funds in different forms, either through routine budget cycle or through major players within the green economy.

“The EU [European Union] has, for example, allocated 60 million euro to be spent over the next two years to support the government of Uganda to implement the green growth strategy,” he explains.

Sweden, Norway and other individual EU countries are, according to Okubal, considering funding green growth efforts in Uganda.

“We have the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility and there are other international windows for funding for a green economy. All these are opportunities which the government of Uganda can tap into,” Okubal says.

The government plans to introduce the bus rapid transit and light rail which will either be run through a private/public partnership arrangement or by the a private sector led financing model.

The United Nations Development Programme country office in Uganda recently mobilised USD 24.1 million from the Green Climate Fund to implement the Presidential Initiative to restore the country’s degraded wetlands.

Uganda Police Force manhandle a journalist covering a demonstration in Kampala, Uganda. Courtesy: Wambi Michael

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Sep 27 2018 (IPS)

Last month, a horrifying video circulated on social media in Uganda. It shows Reuters photographer, James Akena, surrounded by Uganda Peoples Defence Force soldiers who beat him as he raised his hands in the air in surrender. He was unarmed and held only his camera. 

Akena suffered deep cuts to his head and injuries on his hands, neck and fingers for which he had to be hospitalised. He is yet to resume work.

But a month after Akena’s torture, there is no evidence that the soldiers who assaulted him have been punished, despite the Ugandan army issuing a statement against the soldiers’ unprofessional conduct, saying orders had been issued for their arrest and punishment.

Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces General David Muhoozi insisted in an interview with IPS that action was being taken against his soldiers.

“We don’t need anyone to remind us that we need to [hold] those who commit torture to account. Those ones who assaulted the journalist, we are going to take action. They have been apprehended. So it is within in our DNA to fight mischief,” Muhoozi told IPS.

Akena was photographing protests against the arrest and torture of popular musician turned politician Robert Kyangulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine. He had been in the process of taking photographs that would expose the brutal conduct of the army and the police while they dispersed demonstrating crowds.

A week later, president Yoweri Museveni told members of parliament from his ruling National Resistance Movement party that his security had told him Akena had been mistaken for a petty thief taking advantage of the demonstration.

Human Rights Network For Journalists – Uganda (HRNJ) executive director Robert Sempala told IPS that the abuse of journalists has continued despite assurances from the army and Uganda Police Force. He said about 30 journalists have been beaten by the army between Aug. 20 and Sept. 22, 2018.

“They insist that they arrested those soldiers but the army has not disclosed their identities. So we are still waiting to see that they are punished or else we shall seek other remedies, including legal action,” Sempala said.

Maria Burnett, an associate director at Human Rights Watch in charge of East Africa, expressed doubt whether the arrest of those who tortured Akena would mean that journalists would not be beaten in the future. 

“Security forces have beaten journalists with limited repercussions for years in Uganda. Other government bodies then censor coverage of army-orchestrated violence. 

“Beating journalists serves two purposes: It scares some journalists from covering politically-sensitive events, and, at times, it prevents evidence of soldiers beating or even killing civilians from reaching the public,” Burnett said in a statement.

She said threatening and intimidating journalists curtailed the public’s access to information – information they could use to question the government’s policies.

“With more and more cameras readily available, beating or censoring the messenger isn’t feasible in the long term. It will only lead to more fodder for citizen journalists and more questions about why the government resorts to violence in the face of criticism,” observed Burnett.

The Ugandan government uses its national laws to bring charges against journalists, revoke broadcasting licenses without due process of law, and practice other forms of repression. In this dated picture Laila Mutebi, 26, presented the Evening Voyage, on Uganda’s 101.7 Mama FM. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

Dr. Peter Mwesige, a media scholar and head of the African Centre For Media Excellence, said: “This is unacceptable. We call upon the government to rein in members of the armed forces who are now presiding over this frightening erosion of press freedom and free expression in Uganda. As we have said before, press freedom and freedom of expression are not just about the rights of journalists and the media to receive and disseminate information.”

He said stopping journalists from covering political protests and violence denied citizens access to information about what was going on in their country.

“No degree of imperfections in our media ranks can justify the wanton abuse that security forces have visited on journalists,” said Mwesige.

Sarah Bireete, the deputy executive director at the Centre for Constitutional Governance, told IPS that the violence against journalists was part of the shrinking civic space in Uganda. 

She said there were efforts to silence civil society groups who worked in the areas of governance and accountability.

“Such abuses also continue to extend to other groups such as journalists and activists that play a key role in holding governments and their bodies to account,” said Bireete.

The Ugandan government uses its national laws to bring charges against journalists, revoke broadcasting licenses without due process of law, and practice other forms of repression.

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has used ill-defined and unchecked powers to regulate the media. 

The UCC, for instance, issued on Sept. 19 a directive to radio and TV stations in Uganda restricting them from carrying live coverage of the return of Kyangulanyi to the country. The legislator was returning from the United States where he had gone for treatment after he had been tortured by the army. Most of the media outlets heeded the directive.

The government has moved further to restrict press freedom by restricting the number of foreign correspondents in Uganda.

The Foreign Correspondent’s Association in Uganda (FCAU) on Sept. 12 issued a statement calling on the Uganda government to stop blocking journalists from accessing accreditation. 

It said at least 10 journalists wishing to report in Uganda had not been given government accreditation even after they had fulfilled all the requirements.

“Preventing international journalist from working in Uganda adds to a troubling recent pattern of intimidation and violence against journalists. Stopping a number of international media houses from reporting legally inside Uganda is another attempt to gag journalists,” read the statement. 

Section 29(1) of the Press and Journalists Act requires all foreign journalists who wish to report from Uganda to get accreditation from the Media Council of Uganda through the Uganda Media Centre. The journalists are required to pay non-refundable accreditation fees depending on their duration of stay in the country. 

IPS has learnt that a number of journalists have since returned home after failing to secure accreditation.

Uganda Media Centre director Ofwono Opondo told IPS that the government has not stopped the accreditation of foreign journalists but was reviewing the guidelines.

Magelah Peter Gwayaka, a human rights lawyer with Chapter Four, a non-profit dedicated to the protection of civil liberties and promotion of human rights, told IPS: “Not long ago we had a BBC reporter, Will Ross, who was deported. The implication is to force journalists to cower down, to stop demanding accountability, to stop demanding all those things that democracy brings about.”

“So if the army is going to stop demonstrators and it beats up journalists like we saw the other day, no civil society [can stand] up to say please can we account? Can we have these army men arrested?” Gwayaka said.

The enforcement of the online content regulations has scared people from stating their opinions online in Tanzania. Credit: Erick Kabendera/IPS

By Erick Kabendera
DAR ES SALAAM, Aug 24 2018 (IPS)

JamiiForums was Tanzania’s largest whistleblowing online platform, with one million visitors each day. But now some 90 percent of staff has been retrenched and the owners are considering shutting down their offices since the June implementation of the country’s online content communication law.

Across this East African nation, social commentators and celebrities have shut down their blogs as many cannot afford the hundreds of dollars required in licence fees to register them. And internet cafes may start closing down too as the new law requires them to install expensive security cameras.

A once-famous blogger in Dar es Salaam tells IPS he was forced to close down his blog because he couldn’t afford paying USD 900 in licence fees to register it in compliance with the new regulation.

A minimum jail sentence of 12 months

In June many bloggers and content providers were contacted by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and asked to immediately shut down their services and apply for a license within four days.

It was the beginning of the enforcement of the country’s Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Regulations 2017. Civil society and digital rights activists have condemned the regulations as draconian.

This is what the law states:

• All blogs, online forums, content hosts and content producers must register online and pay licence fees of up to USD 900;
• Internet cafes must install surveillance cameras to monitor people online;
• Material deemed “offensive, morally improper” or that “causes annoyance,” is prohibited and a minimum fine of USD2,230 or 12 months in jail as a minimum sentence is recommended for anyone found guilty;
• Social media comments are even subject to the new regulations.

The regulation, however, doesn’t provide a maximum jail term, meaning a magistrate could send an offender to prison for an indeterminate period of time.

Terrified of saying something wrong online

The source, who wished to remain anonymous, tells IPS that other bloggers he met in recent weeks who have paid the licence fees and registered with the TCRA have complained that they are registering a low number of visitors to their blogs. In addition, visitors have stopped leaving comments as they are afraid of being arrested and taken to court.

“The ordinary people are scared to make comments on blog posts. They are scared because a single post could either land a blogger or their followers in the hands of authorities,” Maxence Melo, one of the founders of JamiiForums, tells IPS. He adds that authorities are focused on implementing the law but have not educated bloggers about what is deemed “offensive, morally improper” or “causes annoyance”.

In addition, people can be charged for not having passwords on their computers, laptops and smartphones.

A senior government attorney tells IPS on the condition of anonymity, because he wasn’t authorised to speak on the matter, that this act will be used against people who post defamatory content or hate porn online but claim that a third party had access to their mobile phone or devices and posted the content without their consent.

Since the June implementation of the act, the impact has been far-reaching across the country.

The owner of a famous internet café in Tanzania’s commercial capital says he has at least 50 customers a day but he wasn’t aware of the new requirement for internet café operators to install CCTV cameras on their premises.

He tells IPS that one hour of computer use costs 35US cents, which is not enough to sustain his business. So he supplements this with a stationary business in the cafe.

“Installing CCTV cameras would cost about USD500, which is a lot for a small business like mine. So if the authorities come and ask me to do it, I will have to shut down the business,” he tells IPS, requesting to remain anonymous.

A challenge to Tanzania’s freedom of expression

These regulations together with other laws aimed at curtailing freedom of expression and press freedom are one of the reasons for Tanzania’s poor performance in the latest Freedom Index rankings. The country ranks 93 out of 180 countries across the globe.

There is also the Cyber Crime Act, which can be used to arrest dissenting journalists and citizens and the Statistics Act, which limits the publication of data to the government’s Bureau of Statistics. Both acts were passed before the 2015 elections and activists are worried that worse is yet to come as the country prepares for the 2019 local governments elections and the 2020 general elections.

Rugemeleza Nshala, a prominent Tanzanian lawyer, tells IPS that freedom of expression is facing the biggest challenge in recent times here.

“We have reached a point where former Ugandan president Idi Amin’s famous quote when he said ‘there is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech’ is becoming relevant in Tanzania.

“Newspapers are shutdown unconstitutionally, and citizens criticising the president are arrested and magistrates, who want to please the president, jail suspects without hesitation,” Nshala tells IPS.

Last year alone, three newspapers were suspended:

• In June 2017, the Tanzania Information Services banned a weekly Swahili newspaper Raia Mwema for 90 days after it had published a story claiming that president John Magufuli would fail in his job as president;
• In September 2017, another weekly newspaper, MwanaHalisi, was suspended for 24 months;
• In June 2017, the Mawio newspaper was also banned for 24 months.

Nshala says that enforcement of the online content regulations has scared people from giving their opinion openly according to Article 18 of the Constitution of Tanzania, which grants citizens freedom of expression and opinion without interference.

And it seems that for now the online content laws have succeed in squashing the voice of JamiiForums.

Melo says that the impact of the country’s new online content law, together with three cases JamiiForums is facing in court—which has resulted in them appearing 122 time in court over the last two years—has made them retrench 64 employees. They have only eight now, and are considering closing down their physical offices.

In the past JamiiForums has been threatened and forced to share user data with the regulator or the police. In one incident, the TCRA forced them to reveal the identity of users who had leaked details of mass corruption in the country’s biggest port and the case has been pending since 2016.

That case, together with two other lawsuits that are pending against JamiiForums, made Melo cautious when the TCRA wrote requiring blogs to shut down before applying for a licence. Melo and his team decided to voluntarily shut down their website for 21 days and registered within four days. They have since had an opportunity to sit down with the regulator to express their concerns about the new law.

“We were concerned with sections of the law, which gives content providers only 12 hours to remove content deemed inappropriate from online. In one case, the regulator had submitted a letter to us at 5 pm asking us to take down content failing to do so could result in us ending up in court. The law doesn’t give us a room to consult with the source of information and your lawyers before removing the content,” Melo tells IPS.

Maria Sarungi, director of the social media citizen movement Tsehai, the Change Tanzania, tells IPS that prior to the enforcement of the regulations, the ability to freely post content online had liberated the media industry.

“Some online TV [platforms] such as Millard Ayo started off as bloggers and have grown into full-fledged media houses because of the [former] liberal policies for online content,” Sarungi says.

Uganda just as repressive

However, Tanzania isn’t alone in establishing such repressive legislation against freedom of expression. Its neighbour Uganda introduced a daily fee of USD0.5 to anyone accessing social media after its president Yoweri Museveni had suggested the introduction of the law to curb online gossiping.

However, activists and lawyers have challenged the law in court. Uganda’s Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said in parliament on Jul. 11 that the government was in the process of reviewing the tax, which is commonly referred to as the “gossip tax”.

Rosebell Kagumire, a Ugandan blogger, says despite many young urban Ugandans using virtual private networks to avoid their location being detected and to bypass the tax, recent statistics show that Facebook usage went down by 75 percent in the first weeks.

She further says that apart from limiting access to information and freedom of expression, the tax has prevented young unemployed Ugandans from getting online in search of employment. In addition, small enterprises that have their base on social media have declined.

“Besides limiting access to information and expression, this tax is economically punishing the poor. Recent pressure against the legislation has seen the government come up with amendments but the fees (including the mobile money transfer tax) are anti-freedom of expression and hinder digital inclusion,” Kagumire tells IPS.

In Tanzania, for Nshala, it is not all doom and gloom.

He says the constitution gives final say to citizens about how they want the government to be governed and therefore citizens have to stand firm to protect the country’s democracy. He finally says political leaders must understand that they are servants of people and have to accept criticisms.

Participants at a gay pride celebration in Uganda. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2017 (IPS)

A group designated as a hate group for its “often violent rhetoric” against LGBTI rights was an invited member of the United States Official Delegation to the annual women’s meeting say rights groups.

C-FAM – one of the invited members of the United States official delegation to the meeting – has been designated as an Anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center “for its often violent rhetoric on LGBTQI rights” according to the International Women’s Health Coalition, who opposed the appointment.

Including C-Fam on the US delegation reflects ongoing disagreement between UN member states – and even within UN member states domestically – about the importance of including LGBTI rights within the UN’s work.

For the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) community, there were many reasons to come to this year’s annual women’s meeting with “battle scars,” and “eyes open” says Jessica Stern, Executive Director of OutRight Action International.

In a statement issued in response to C-Fam’s appointment to the US delegation, Stern said described C-Fam as an organisation with a “violent mentality” and said that “it is essential that the US uphold American values and prevent all forms of discrimination at the CSW” and that “the US government must ensure protection for the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Globally LGBTI people are among those most vulnerable to discrimination, violence and poverty.  Yet explicit references to LGBTI rights continue to be left out of major UN documents, including the annual outcome document of the CSW, Stern told IPS.

“The agreed conclusions of the CSW have never in all of its history ever made explicit reference to sexual orientation, gender identy or intersex status so that’s decades of systematic exclusion,” she told IPS.

“What we’re asking is that our allies in government and our allies in different civil society movements understand that we need them to stand up for and with us in demanding inclusive references to our needs.”

However Stern said that she was also “very happy to say” that there is ”extraordinarily strong representation of LBTI rights” in side events at the year’s meeting, which each year brings thousands of government and non-government representatives to New York.

LBTI representatives at this year’s meeting included Pepe Julien Onzema, a trans male Ugandan activist who was a presenter at a non-government side event on Wednesday.

Onzema told IPS that although he has seen some open-mindedness in including trans people in the feminist movement internationally that there are still some challenges.

“I see that the international (feminist) spaces are beginning to be receptive of trans people,” but Onzema added that thinks that there is still “a lot of work to do.”

“Even we as activists we are still looking at each others’ anatomy to qualify people for these spaces.”

However Onzema who was attending the CSW for the first time said that he had felt welcomed at the meeting:

“I’m receiving warmth from people who know I am trans, who know I am from Uganda,” he said.

The Ugandan government’s persecution of the Ugandan LGBTI community has received worldwide attention in recent years. International organisations both for and against LGBTI rights have also actively tried to influence the domestic situation in the East African nation.

The US Mission to the United Nations could not immediately be reached for comment on the inclusion of C-Fam in the US delegation.

Mercy Ssekide from Uganda’s Mabende District working together with her husband on their farm. Credit: FAO

By Sally Nyakanyanga
KAMPALA, Uganda, Jan 27 2017 (IPS)

Discussions around climate change have largely ignored how men and women are affected by climate change differently, instead choosing to highlight the extreme and unpredictable weather patterns or decreases in agricultural productivity.

Women constitute 56 percent of Ugandan farmers and provide more than 70 percent of agricultural production, nutrition and food security at the household level, according to the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET). However, despite the fact that women do most of the farm work, they only own 16 percent of the arable land in the country.Cognizant of women’s labour burden and time poverty, FAO ensures that all project activities are gender inclusive and participatory.

Stella Tereka, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) focal person on gender and climate change, says that discriminatory cultural practices that tend to favor men have limited women’s ownership and control over key productive resources in the country — a factor also exacerbating women’s vulnerability to climate change.

“The intensive labour burdens on women, especially the unpaid care work in the household, has resulted in women having less time to practice the learning, knowledge and skills gained from groups in their farming activities,” Tereka told IPS.

Winnie Masiko, the gender and climate change negotiator for Uganda at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), noted the lack of clear guidelines to incorporate gender in climate change projects.

“We need to develop a Gender and Climate Change Strategic Plan,” says Masiko.

The Ugandan Land Policy of 2013 grants women and men equal rights to own and co-own land, but this is not always the reality on the ground. Masiko says initiatives should focus on addressing embedded structural imbalances in order to bridge the gender gap, understand women and men’s varying needs, and pave the way for effective adaptation to climate change.

Edidah Ampaire, coordinator for Uganda’s Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation project, says that women’s rights and contributions are extremely constrained, especially in rural areas, and that little is being done by government particularly through policy to address the imbalance.

“Gender inequalities are rife in farming communities, putting women at a disadvantage,” says Ampaire.

Tereka stressed that promoting gender equality is at the core of FAO programmes and the U.N. agency has made deliberate efforts to ensure the inclusion of women in all their programs.

“It’s imperative that women get empowered and take part in decision-making at all levels – this way we can see them contributing effectively to the development of their family and nations,” Tereka said.

Through the Farmer’s Field School (FFS) methodology, “commonly known as schools without walls”, FAO has enabled both men and women with a common goal to receive training, share ideas, learn from each other through observation and experimentation in their own context. On average the FFS have about 60 percent women farmers participating.

Proscovia Nakibuye, a cattle farmer in Nakasongola district, said the FFS has taught her effective strategies to cope with climate change. “We have been taught good livestock keeping and to plant pastures,” says Nakibuye.

“Farmer Field School offers space for hands-on group learning, enhancing skills for critical analysis and improved decision making by local people,” Tereka explained. “FFS activities are field-based, and include experimentation to solve problems, reflecting a specific local context.

“Participants learn how to improve their agronomic skills through experimenting, observing, analysing and replicating on their own fields, contributing to improved production and livelihoods, The FFS process enhances individual, household and community empowerment and social cohesion.”

Nakibuye and her husband are seeing major changes both in their household and farming activities. “Before, my children were not going to school but now through increased sales of milk, I can afford a decent education for my children,” she said.

FAO has also utilized the Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) – a community based tool that enables women and men to plan the future they want and take action against barriers, including societal norms that inhibit gender equality and justice.

Mercy Ssekide, a farmer in Mubende District, joined the Balyejjusa FFS. “If you don’t cooperate with your family, the farming won’t be successful – that’s why I had to encourage my husband to join the FFS in order for us to work as a team,” she says.

“We are trained and encouraged to work hard to handle climate change and in order to meet our household needs. During off season we grow tomatoes and earn some money as locals and traders come and buy from us,” says Mercy’s husband.

Together, as a family, they have diversified and ventured into poultry, goat and pig rearing, and kitchen gardening. The Ssekide family are now deciding as a team on the use of their income — and are able to afford giving their two children a university education.

FAO, with funding from European Union, is implementing the Global Climate Change Project in the central cattle corridor in the districts of Luwero, Nakasangola, Nakaseke, Mubende , Sembabule and Kiboga.

Cognizant of women’s labour burden and time poverty, FAO ensures that all project activities are gender inclusive and participatory – particularly adjusting meeting/learning time to ensure women are involved and benefit from the skills and knowledge on climate smart agriculture.

Tereka believes that with an increasingly unpredictable climate, skills development in climate smart agriculture is critical. She urged the Ugandan government to revamp its agricultural extension system to be more gender-responsive, in order for farmers – especially women to – effectively put to good use the inputs being distributed by government under Operation Wealth Creation.

The FFS methodology is now being implemented in 90 countries with 4 million farmers across the globe having improved their skills and adjusted positively to the effects of climate change.

Nursery operators raise improved Robusta coffee seedlings in Uganda. Credit: IITA

By Sally Nyakanyanga
KAMPALA, Dec 22 2016 (IPS)

Coffee production provides a quarter of Uganda’s foreign exchange earnings and supports some 1.7 million smallholder farmers, but crop yields are being undermined by disease, pests and inadequate services from agricultural extension officers, as well as climatic changes in the East African country.

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), one of the world’s leading research partners in finding solutions for hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, is playing a key role in overcoming these challenges with simple, efficient practices like planting shade trees to protect coffee plants that require a cooler tropical climate.“The knowledge I’ve received towards adapting to farming that suits the changes in the climate, such as intercropping and planting shade trees, has transformed my life." --Coffee farmer Cathrine Ojara

Mujabi Yusuf, 41, a coffee farmer in the Nakaseke District of Central Uganda, told IPS prolonged droughts and unpredictable rainfall had been major setbacks.

“I have fed my family and sent them to school through coffee farming, but the weather has failed us,” says Yusuf. “Buying farming inputs such as fertilizer is a challenge because it’s expensive, yet for some time my farming production has been decreasing.”

Uganda has the largest population of coffee farmers in the world, yet 2 percent of its exports are not certified. It is Africa’s largest Robusta producer, accounting for 7 percent of global Robusta exports. The cost of production is low as a result of smallholder farmers using family labour and few inputs.

“Seasons have changed and become unpredictable. The rains sometimes come but for a short period. This has resulted in leaves wilting and eventually dying,” says Kironde Mayanja, a coffee farmer from Central Uganda.

“Drought stress, pests and diseases, poor quality of inputs, inadequate extension services and financial constraints inhibits farmers from adapting efficiently in Uganda,” says Elizabeth Kemigisha, IITA Communications Officer.

“There is a global awareness that if agricultural research for development is to have a positive impact on the beneficiaries of development efforts, all stakeholders in the process need to be on the same page. All stakeholders can all contribute to address the challenges of agricultural development and food security for all,” Kemigisha told IPS.

IITA generates evidence-based solutions such as a shade tree tool, farmer profiles and segmentation, new crop varieties, intercropping coffee and banana, as well as appropriate investment pathways for various stakeholders.

“Our research is used by non-governmental organisations and the private sector, and we work closely with governments, particularly National Agricultural Research Organisations (NARO). IITA has worked with HRNS as an implementing partner to conduct studies to enhance local knowledge on climate change adaptation in coffee growing,” Kemigisha said.

David Senyonjo, the Field Operations Manager in charge of climate change at HRNS, says his organization promotes and provides technical support for coffee production by working with smallholder coffee farmers.

“Research has helped to enhance farmers’ resilience to the adverse effects of climate change by providing them with the know-how to adapt to the changing climatic conditions,” says Senyonjo.

Cathrine Ojara, a female coffee farmer, is one such success story.

“The knowledge I’ve received towards adapting to farming that suits the changes in the climate, such as intercropping and planting shade trees, has transformed my life,” she says.

Ojara said she has been able to send her children to school and improve her household, as well as establish extra income through projects such as poultry.

Mayanja, who has an eight-acre farm, with the help of HRNS Africa has adopted new farming methods and his yields have increased from 20 to 50 percent.

“We have received training that has made me an expert in climate change and I have put to good use what I learnt to improve our crops. I have been practicing mulching, planting and managing shade trees, using fertilizers, digging water trenches and irrigation,” Mayanja told IPS.

Senyonjo noted that women face additional difficulties. “[They have a] lack of control over production resources like land, which in most cases is a prerequisite to having access to credit, hence women are less likely to use yield enhancing inputs like fertilisers,” he said.

“We don’t have our own land and due to time constraints and domestic responsibilities, we are unable to attend trainings on climate change,” Ojara told IPS.

While women do most of the farm labor, they only own 16 percent of the arable land in Uganda.

Hannington Bukomeko, a scientist with the IITA, said effective adaptation to climate change among coffee farmers requires low-cost and multipurpose solutions such as agroforestry, a practice of intercropping coffee with trees.

IITA has developed a shade tree advice tool, offering the best selection criteria for suitable tree species that provide various ecosystems services in different local conditions.

“Shade trees are one of the climate change adaptation practice we recommend for farmers. Shades modify the micro-environment so that it reduces the intensity of sunshine hitting the coffee plant as well as evaporation of water from the soil,” says Senyonjo.

Bukomeko explained that the tool helps coffee farmers to identify appropriate tree-selection.  “Farmers lack the knowledge on selecting the appropriate tree species, lack the tools and technical support to summarize such information to guide on-farm tree selection,” Bukomeko told IPS.

According to Bukomeko, the shade tree tool relies on local agro-forestry knowledge and scientific assessments of local on-farm tree diversity. “Users of the tool can identify their location in terms of country, province and ecological zone, select their desired ecosystem services and rank them according to preference. In return, the tool advises the user on the best tree options for a given location and ecosystem services,” says Bukomeko.

The shade tree tool was tested and validated for the studied regions, and found to serve the purpose of guiding on-farm tree selection for coffee farmers, according to IITA.

“Through government and other partners, the tool can be used by extension workers who will have mobile devices that can access the application tool,” says Kemigisha.

IITA has also conducted research on banana/plantain, cocoa, cowpea, maize, yam, and soy bean.

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy.

By Gabriel Odima
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Sep 27 2016 (IPS)

Uganda has and continues to play a major role in fueling the conflict in South Sudan. The recent events in South Sudan have brought that moral challenge into a very sharp focus.

The banishment of democracy from and suppression of the human rights of the citizens in South Sudan have persisted for the last five years since the birth of the nation. What appeared to be a hidden agenda is beginning to emerge in South Sudan.

These sad events in South Sudan have some similarities with events in Uganda. In 1981 thirty five years ago and fifteen days after elections in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni plunged Uganda – where peace had returned following the fall of Idi Amin – to war. Museveni launched the war in what became known as the Luwero Triangle, a district adjacent to and north of Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

The war was a direct attack on democracy. It made the policy and work of the newly elected government in healing and reconciliation, development, rehabilitation, and transformation towards a culture of peace extremely difficult.

Like the case of South Sudan, the international community turned a blind eye. The continued support of Museveni’s rule in Uganda for the last 30 years raises very serious concern regarding the implications of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. The circumstance in which Museveni launched his war against the constitution and people in February 1981 exposed most clearly that he is a man of violent disposition who has a thirst for power in its most naked and atavistic form. Single handed, Museveni has exported this violent approach to South Sudan.  Indeed, all the subsequent wars which he waged in Luwero, Northern Uganda, Eastern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo and South Sudan were totally unnecessary and cannot be justified.

During the Luwero war, Museveni and his army exhibited a very high degree of a most ignoble mendacity- not only as a war exigency but also as a means to conceal their crimes against humanity. They would, for instance, attack a village posing as government troops, cause much havoc, including massacres, and then on cue, the aggressors would hurriedly depart from the scene only for second unit of Museveni’s army to conveniently arrive to rescue the village from”government troops”. The second unit using a combination of persuasion and coercion would then cause the exodus of the villages to fortresses under the control of the insurgents after ransacking and destroying much of and in the village. The ignoble mendacity in the fact that at the time those atrocities were committed by Museveni’s army, road, foot paths and even  cattle tracks had been heavily manned by them and government troops were nowhere in the interior of Luwero District or in the village.

It became routine and an article of faith in Museveni’s subsequent wars in Northern Uganda, East, West Uganda, as well as in Rwanda, DR Congo and South Sudan, for atrocities committed by his army to be credited to his victims.

Those who are in the position to help the people of South Sudan to find and form a basis for harmony and rebuilding of South Sudan carry a very heavy burden and responsibility.

The Ugandan military regime, right from its installation in 1986 by the gun and bloodshed, has consistently, arrogantly and cynically suppressed and never permitted the citizens and their organized political parties to enjoy the freedom to hold opinions on political or public matters except the opinion of the regime. The fact that never, in the past, had the people of Uganda known so much death, oppression and repression as under the present military regime has been and is still being strenuously concealed by world leaders.

The cause of Democracy and the enjoyment by the citizens of human rights and freedoms have suffered in Uganda and South Sudan and will continue to suffer so long as politicians, church leaders and foreign governments and media give support and credibility to oppressive and repressive regimes established by the gun. The support and the credibility sometimes give the impression that the givers have removed the victims, that is, the oppressed citizens from the human race.

The general trend has been in many African countries for the Church leadership, politicians, the media and the international community to turn a blind eye on the atrocities in Uganda and South Sudan.

There are several reasons for the silence of these groups on democracy and observance of human rights in Uganda and South Sudan. Two of them stands out. The first is the tendency of both the spiritual and laity Christian leaders in a country faced with a difficult political or economic situation to accept wittingly or unwittingly a regime established by the gun and bloodshed. The second is the powerful influence of external forces namely, foreign governments, international media and human rights organizations when they give support and accolades to regimes established by the gun and bloodshed.

In 1971, the international media uniformly described Idi Amin repeatedly and for a whole year as “the gentle giant”. The evidence of massacres and terror by Amin’s soldiers was of no interest to the media until much later. Foreign governments also showed no interest in the evidence and Amnesty International, for instance, never reported even once throughout Amin’s rule of over eight years on the observance of human rights in Uganda.

In the case of South Sudan and Uganda, for instance, the military regime waged vicious wars to hold on to power and to ignore the lives of their citizens. There will be no peace in South Sudan as long as President Museveni of Uganda continues to play a role in fueling the conflict there.

The promotion and development of democracy and its attendant enjoyment of human rights by the citizen is under attack in Uganda and South Sudan not only by those holding the guns but also by the donors who provide funds indiscriminately. The donors know that no military regime in Africa, from Kampala through Juba is accountable to the people but still credit such regimes with accountability.

It is amazing and foreboding of hard and evil days ahead for Africa that although for the past 50 years, African countries have been largely ruled either by military dictators or single parties, opinions in the donor countries which have been in recent years strongly against single party rule are now shifting towards and in favor of military rule and against multiparty rule.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IPS’s editorial policy.

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