In The Magazine

By Roberts Katende In light of the endemic famine in Uganda and the need for sustainable solutions to the problem, the Deputy Director of World Food Programme in charge of Hunger, Sisulu Sheila visited Uganda last week. The Independent’s Roberts Katende talked to her about the new strategies. Below are …

By John Njoroge LC V boss’ ordeal shows how unfulfilled promises endanger public officials At first, he is hit with a bottle top but within seconds, stones, sticks, dirty water and dust are hitting him from all directions. A crowd numbering in the hundreds has steadily gathered around him and …

By Melina Platas The facts, the figures and their implications Over the last two weeks, the dispute on “indigenous people of Bunyoro”versus Bafuruki has dominated political debate in Uganda. Sparked off by President Yoweri Museveni’s letter to the Minister for the Presidency, Beatrice Wabudeya, the debate has been short on …

By Bob Roberts Katende Patience  we use one name to preserve her anonymity – faces a gloomy future. For the past one year, she has been suffering from incessant malaria, headache, and an irritating skin rash. She is HIV positive and has been advised to start taking anti-retroviral drugs. Unfortunately, …

By Prof Mahmood Mamdani This is an edited version of Prof. Mahmood Mamdani’s presentation at the Abu Mayanja Annual Lecture on August 7, 2009 at Kampala International Conference Centre. I am greatly honored to have been asked to give this lecture. I met the late Abu Mayanja in 1961. I …

By Mubatsi Asinja Habati In 2000, a proposal to privatise some services at Entebbe International Airport was hatched. This came after a study, Big Push Strategy, by the UN Conference on Trade and Development recommended that Entebbe be transformed into a modern cargo handling centre in Africa. The study was …

By Andrew M. Mwenda  In this column last week, I argued that after every successive election in Uganda, the quality of government has tended to deteriorate. Many Ugandans think this is because our nation has a sham democracy. ‘Were we to have genuine democracy,’ my friend Erias Lukwago, MP for …

By Andrew M. Mwenda & Molly Lister Did minister Onek touch a live wire? Sometime early this year, then minister of state for micro finance, Gen. Salim Saleh, went to meet the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Keith Muhakazi. He had a couple of documents with him …

By Andrew M. Mwenda It is difficult to conduct a debate on anything in Africa whose premise is the reality on the ground. Most debate ‘ whether on public policies or political institutions, on democracy or accountability ‘ uses as its reference point, the experience of the Western world. Take …

By Onghwens Kisangala About three weeks ago, President Museveni on a local TV talk show strongly defended the quality of government services as he whipped out the growth of health sector from a few hundred hospitals in the 1980s to thousands of them today. However in an interview with The …