Pros and Cons of Uganda’s New ARV Therapy for Pregnant Women

Uganda has gotten plenty of kudos and some criticism over its roll out of the new antiretroviral therapy for pregnant women and their babies, known as Option B +.

Grappling to Give Uganda’s Fistula Patients Dignity

Ever since giving birth to a stillborn baby 15 years ago, Mary*, a peasant farmer from Mubende District in central Uganda, has continuously leaked urine.

DRC Conflict Hinders East African Integration

As the majority of East African Community countries signed an agreement paving the way for a single tourist visa in the region from 2014, some believe that Tanzania’s hesitance to agree to this integration is largely due to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

How to Tell the Biggest Stories of Our Times

What does gorilla conservation have in common with the provision of contraceptives to women? How does rural-urban migration contribute to global warming? What does city planning in Kenya have to do with coastal erosion in the Philippines?

Filming Uganda’s Own Stories

For four years Isaac Godfrey Nabwana made and sold bricks in Kampala’s Wakalinga slum. But now, thanks to his labours, he is building what he hopes will become Uganda's answer to Nollywood.

Report Finds Pattern of Inequity in Development Aid

Despite global efforts to provide development aid, the world’s poorest are getting poorer, says a new report by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD).

Lighting Up Kampala’s Informal Settlements

As he sits in the family lounge in Kamwokya, an informal settlement in Kampala, with the afternoon sunshine streaming through the door, Joseph Senkungu remembers a time when life, and his home, was very dark.

Ugandan Teen Turns to Poultry to Fight Poverty

When Eunice Namugerwa, an 18-year-old living in Kampala’s Kisenyi slum, decided to start a business to support her family last August, she scrawled three ideas down on a bit of scrap paper: a piggery, a fashion boutique and a chicken farm.

Putting Uganda’s Working Kids Back in School

Children around the world may complain about attending school and doing their homework, but not 14-year-old Raya*. For two years she was forced by her illiterate parents to spend every day, rain or shine, selling sugar cane from the family garden to customers on the streets of Entebbe, about 35 km outside the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

Driving Against Gender Stereotypes

It is swerves and roundabouts for Keddy Olanya, a 32-year-old wife and mother of three from Gulu, northern Uganda, who is one of only a handful of female drivers negotiating the country’s potholed roads on a bodaboda or motorbike taxi. 

From Slum Girl to World Chess Prodigy

Phiona Mutesi was a muddy, desperate nine-year-old foraging for food in Uganda’s biggest slum, Katwe, when she discovered, through her older brother Brian, a chess programme.

Civil Society Under Attack Around the World

In December 2011, 159 governments and major international organisations recognised the central role of civil society in development and promised to create an “enabling” operating environment for the non-profit sector.

Monetising Human Waste and 101 (Slightly) Crazy Other Ideas

One, two or more of the 102 newly launched out-of-the box ideas to improve global health could be world-changing breakthroughs.

‘Born in War, Grown up in War, Now Time for Rehabilitation’

Sungu Mizele, a Congolese national living in Yambio, in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, earns a living selling the fruit and vegetables that she grows in her backyard, at the local town market. On average, she earns nine dollars a day. But on a good day, when she has fresh supplies, she can earn up to 31 dollars.

Africa – Rising Investments, Rising Middle Class

Rising investments in Africa's service sector, the unlocking of its vast natural resources and the sound economic policies pursued by African countries in the last two decades are spurring the rise of the continent's middle class at a faster rate than population growth.

Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill Spreads Fear

Gay activist Gerald Ssentongo of Uganda is afraid to talk openly about his cause. Not only that, but he is terrified of being “caught” socialising with gay people and only meets his friends at night in out-of-reach places.

How African Men are Changing Traditional Beliefs

Charles Kayongo of Uganda is a father of two girls aged five and three. And even though age-old traditions among his ethnic group, the Baganda, say a man should have an unlimited number of children and a son as an heir, Kayongo refuses to have more children.

No Contraceptives Means More Illegal Abortions in Uganda

Every day at least five women are brought to the gynaecological ward of Uganda’s Mulago National Referral Hospital in Kampala for treatment for complications caused by crude attempts to terminate their pregnancies.

Conservationists Call for Ugandans to Stop Eating Chimps

Conservationists struggling to protect the remaining population of Ugandan chimpanzees have raised concerns that people around wildlife reserves in the west of the country have taken to eating the primates.

Nile Powers Uganda Slowly

Uganda is facing the unwelcome possibility of increased costs for building a projected 600-megawatt hydropower plant at the Karuma Falls, on the Victoria Nile, owing to construction delays.

Untreated Mental Illness the Invisible Fallout of War and Poverty

About 50 percent of Afghanis over 15 years of age suffer from mental health problems - depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. In northern Uganda, nearly every family suffered during the vicious 20-year rebellion during which thousands of children were kidnapped and turned into child soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army.