Uganda

A DECADE AFTER achieving independence from Britain in 1962, the Republic of Uganda began a 14-year period marked by dictatorial governance, civil war, mass murders, atrocities, and extensive human rights abuses that sapped the country of both human and physical resources. By the end of that period, some 400,000 Ugandans had lost their lives. In 1987, many young Ugandans came under the influence of Joseph Kony, who further drained the country of its resources by recruiting soldiers for what he called The Lord's Resistance Army. Kony's tactics involved kidnapping children between the ages of eight and 12 and coercing them to be soldiers by threatening their lives and the lives of their families. Even after Kony was expelled, he continued to reinforce this children's army from neighboring Sudan. International organizations are currently involved in a massive effort to rescue and rehabilitate these children and bring an end to Kony's influence in Uganda. By the 1990s Ugandans had begun to recover politically and economically, dispensing with political parties to elect a new president and legislature.

Uganda's abundant natural resources include sizable deposits of copper and cobalt, hydropower, limestone, and salt. Nearly 26 percent of Uganda's land area is arable, and 82 percent of the work force is engaged in some form of agriculture. The abundant rainfall and fertile soils make it easy to grow a variety of products. Coffee is the major export crop, accounting for the lion's share of export revenue. Since 1986, international agencies have been assisting the Ugandan government in economic reform. In 2000, Uganda qualified for debt relief through funding from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative and the Paris Club. The return of exiled Indian-Ugandan entrepreneurs has also had a positive affect on the Ugandan economy.

With a per capita income of $1,700, Uganda is ranked 190th in world incomes. Income disparity exits, with the richest 10 percent holding more than one-fifth of the country's wealth and the poorest 10 percent sharing only four percent of resources. Over a third of Ugandans live in poverty, and nearly onefifth of the population is seriously undernourished. The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports rank Uganda 144 out of 232 countries on general quality-of-life issues.

While landlocked, Uganda has an abundance of lakes and rivers that provide 36,330 square miles of water resources. The largest body of water is Lake Victoria, which Uganda shares with Tanzania. Uganda also borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC), Kenya, Rwanda, and the Sudan. The terrain of Uganda is comprised of an alluvial plateau rimmed by mountains. Elevations range from 621 meters at Lake Albert along the border of the DROC to 5,110 meters at Mount Stanley. Most of Uganda experiences a typically tropical climate that is marked by two dry seasons from December to February and from June to August. The climate of northeastern Uganda is semiarid.

The population of 28,195,754 faces major environmental health hazards, including an HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate of 4.1 percent. Some 530,000 Ugandans live with this disease, and another 78,000 have died from it since 2003. Forty-four percent of the population do not have sustained access to safe drinking water, and 59 percent do not have access to improved sanitation. Therefore, Ugandans have a very high risk of contracting food and waterborne disease that include bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever and the waterborne disease schistosomiasis. In some areas, the population has a high risk of contracting African trypanosomiasis, popularly known as the “sleeping sickness.” Ugandans have a lower-than-normal life expectancy (52.67 years) and growth rate (3.37 percent), and higher-than-normal infant mortality (66.15 deaths per 1,000 live births) and death (12.24 deaths per 1,000 population) rates. Ugandan women produce an average of 7.1 children each. The female literacy rate of 60.4 percent makes disseminating health information somewhat difficult.

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