Opinion

We need to seize the ‘handwashing with soap’ moment COMMENT | Dennis Alioni | Uganda’s handwashing rate shot up to an unprecedented 86% in the last three months, surpassing the country’s 2020 National Development Plan II target of 50% and the 2019 average of 36%. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, …

Ongo communal forest becomes another victim of the COVI-19 pandemic; a case of custodians becoming destroyers COMMENT | Daniel Abowe | The Ongo communal forest in western Uganda is shared by four villages of Ogadra, Kibali, Onieni, and Abangi in Kasenene parish, Budongo sub-county, Masindi district. In 2017, ECO-TRUST supported the Ongo …

  Why the utopian dream of a COVID-free Uganda may have become a springboard for private profiteering THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | On June 24 morning I walked into Kikuubo, the epicenter of Uganda’s trade, in Kampala city. I found tens of thousands of people congested on …

  COMMENT | Jjuuko Nathan | Lawyer Apollo N Makubuya on the 25th of June 2020, petitioned the President of the republic of Uganda, the Speaker of parliament and the Lord Mayor among others, praying for the decolonisation and renaming of streets, monuments and other landmarks in Uganda. Motivated by …

Reflections on the passage of an icon who did so much to shape who I am today THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | It is exactly one year this week since our mother, Mrs Constance Kabakali Muhangazima, left us! While we were happy that she had retired from …

*The writer is the Country Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Uganda. The column is written on behalf of 34 agencies participating in the UN-led joint appeal against the impacts of COVID-19 in Uganda COMMENT | El-Khidir Daloum | WFP | One sunny day in June 2019, in …

Advocates of a dead year for schools are similar to the advocates of a continuous lockdown of the economy to defeat COVID-19 OPEN LETTER |  Ass. Prof Mesharch Katusiimeh Rwebiita |  Your Excellency, as government is mulling over the fate of education institutions in this COVID-19 new normal, a group is …

Elections are like a soccer match.  If a game is going to be reduced from 90 to 60 minutes, then players should be consulted COMMENT | Crispin Kaheru |  Uganda’s electoral preparations are starting off from a ‘complicated place’. They are happening in an environment of restrictions.  Political players can’t …

The plan by government to decentralise the management of COVID-19 is a highly welcome one that if implemented, will de-congest and ease the pressure on Regional Referral Hospitals COMMENT | Walter Akena | On June 11th 2020, Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Hon. Matia Kasaija delivered the Budget …

  Why Museveni’s focus on corruption as the biggest problem of tax administration misses the big picture THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | During his national address after the reading of the 2020/21 Budget, President Yoweri Museveni decried the low ratio of tax to GDP in Uganda, which …