A report published last month by the Montpellier Panel - an eminent group of agriculture, ecology and trade experts from Africa and Europe - says about 65 percent of Africa's arable land is too damaged to sustain viable food production.
Norwegians know something of life in a climate change world. Migratory birds arrive earlier in spring, trees come into leaf before previously expected, and
palsa mires (wetlands) are being lost as permafrost thaws.
Until last month, Allen Nambozo's only source of income was the cabbages, carrots and bananas she grew along the slopes of Uganda’s Mount Elgon in the eastern district of Bulambuli.
Eric Turyasingura chases after a ball made from plastic bags outside his mud-brick home in the mountains of southern Uganda.
Yelling in his tribal tongue, Nkore, “Arsenal with the ball! Arsenal with the ball!” he jostles with his younger brothers for possession.
Over the years, Cassius Ntege, a fisherman from Kasenyi landing site on the Ugandan side of Lake Victoria, has observed the waters of the lake receding. And as one of the many who depend on the lake for their livelihoods, he has had to endure the disastrous consequences of the depleting lake.
Before she entered the Miss Uganda beauty contest, 24-year-old Fiona Nassaka was a farmer.
When Abudu Zikusoka was a small boy his father would bring people to their home in Ndesse village in Central Uganda’s Mukono district. He would watch as they packed the family’s harvested coffee into sacks and then loaded it onto their bicycles.
Growing up with five brothers, soccer-mad Majidah Nantanda had half a team to compete against at home in Makindye, a suburb in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. But at her school, in the 1990s, there were two sports rules: “Netball for the girls and football for the boys,” recalls the 32-year-old, as she stands on the sidelines of a boy’s game in Makindye.
HIV/AIDS activists are adamant Uganda will not achieve an “AIDS-free generation” now a “backwards” HIV/AIDS Bill criminalising the “wilful and intentional” transmission of the disease has been signed into law.
Barbara Kemigisa used to call herself an “HIV/AIDS campaigner”. These days she would rather be known as an “HIV/AIDS family planning campaigner”.
When Peninah Mamayi got her period last January, she was scared, confused and embarrassed. But like thousands of other girls in the developing world who experience menarche having no idea what menstruation is, Mamayi, who lives with her sister-in-law in a village in Tororo, eastern Uganda, kept quiet.
Though West Africa’s massive Ebola outbreak may be dominating the spotlight within the global health community, HIV/AIDS remains an enormous issue for Africa as a whole - a sentiment that Washington officials made clear this week in their discussions of legislative and technological setbacks plaguing progress in fighting the epidemic.
Olga Mugisa, 11-years-old, takes to the microphone in front of her peers, the Ugandan flag proudly draped behind her and green plants framing the stage. She has an important message to share with her fellow students: “If you cut one, plant two.”
New legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress that would make the rights of sexual minorities a foreign policy priority for the United States.
The late Malian writer and ethnologist Amadou Hampâté Bâ said, “In Africa, when an old person dies, it is a library that burns”, so huge is the loss of oral stories and information. It’s a saying that rings true with the Acholi ethnic group, that was left devastated by the war in northern Uganda. “Our culture believes, when someone dies, there is a grave and it documents the loss. Now we need to look beyond the graves,” Acholi chief Rwoth Achoro says.
When Gerald Abila received an iPhone as a gift almost two years ago, the Ugandan law student didn’t just use it to text his friends. He used it to create what would eventually become the first entity of its kind in East Africa — a tech savvy, multi-award winning, organisation that uses Facebook, Twitter, SMSes, and radio and television partnerships to provide free legal advice and consultations.
Ugandan AIDS bodies and campaigners have warned that the “ugly clauses” of an HIV bill passed by Parliament late Tuesday, which includes the criminalisation of the “wilful and intentional” transmission of the disease, will see many in this East African country “shun the healthcare system”.
Every morning at six a.m. before he goes to school, and every night at six p.m. after he gets home from school, Emmanuel, 11, knows what he must do: take his antiretroviral pills.
As she sits in a Kampala hotel holding a mobile phone that rings frequently, Sandra Ntebi tells IPS: “I’m really exhausted. I don’t know where to start. We have many cases pending.” Ntebi manages a hotline and is helping Uganda’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community find alternative, safe accommodation after they have faced harassment.
Silence is golden, it is said. But not for Constance Nansamba* from Uganda, who paid a dear price for keeping silent about being HIV positive and pregnant at age 18.
On a Friday afternoon men wearing kamis — long white traditional robes — climb the steps to Somcity Travel, a small family business and travel agency in Kisenyi slum, in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The agency boasts that they “fly all over the world” but to one destination in particular — Somalia.