I.

Introduction

Uganda, landlocked republic, eastern Africa, bordered on the north by the Republic of Sudan, on the east by Kenya, on the south by Tanzania and Rwanda, and on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A former British protectorate, Uganda became a fully independent member of the Commonwealth of Nations on October 6, 1962. Uganda has an area of 241,038 sq km (93,065 sq mi). The capital of Uganda is Kampala.

II.

Land and Resources

The land surface is diversified. About 85 per cent is an elevated plateau, draining into the centre to form Lake Kyoga. The main lowlands are located in the Rift Valley, which runs down the western side of Uganda, and contains lakes Edward and Albert. Mountains rise to snowy peaks in the Ruwenzori range on the south-west border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Uganda's highest mountain, Mount Stanley, with two peaks—Margherita Peak at 5,109 m (16,762 ft) and Mount Alexander at 5,105 m (16,750 ft)—is located there. There are also highlands on the eastern border with Kenya. The remainder of the country, about 5 per cent of the area, comprises land at between 1,500 m and 2,000 m (4,900-6,560 ft), inland of Lake Victoria, containing some of the most heavily populated areas. Much of the south is forested, and most of the north is covered with savannah.

A.

Rivers and Lakes

Almost 20 per cent of the area of Uganda is open water. The country includes George and Kyoga lakes, and parts of the lakes Victoria, Edward, and Albert. These lakes and most of Uganda’s rivers form parts of the basin of the upper River Nile, which leaves Lake Victoria and flows to Nimule on the Sudan frontier.

B.

Climate

Despite being a tropical country lying along the equator, Uganda normally has a mild, equable climate, mainly because of its relatively high altitude. The temperature ranges from about 15.6° to 29.4° C (60° to 85° F). There are two distinct rainy seasons: March to May, and September to November. The mean annual rainfall varies from some 760 mm (30 in) in the north-east to about 1,520 mm (60 in) near Lake Victoria.

C.

Natural Resources

Uganda’s most important natural resource is its rich soil, which provides the basis for the diverse agricultural economy of the country. In addition, Uganda has exploitable deposits of gold, copper, cobalt, tin, and tungsten, ample water-power resources for producing hydroelectricity, and rich fish resources in the lakes.

D.

Plants and Animals

Uganda has a wide variety of plant life, from the mvuli tree and elephant grass of the Uganda plateau to the dry thorn scrub, acacia, and euphorbia of the south-west. The country also provides a habitat for many animals, some of which are protected in national parks. The chimpanzee inhabits the rainforests, and some elephant, eland, and hartebeest, as well as lion and leopard, are found in the grasslands. Many wild animals were slaughtered during the Amin regime, but numbers are returning to former levels.

E.

Environmental Concerns

Uganda is among the poorest African nations. Access to safe drinking water and sanitation services is limited, and cases of cholera have increased in recent years. The average life expectancy in Uganda is among the lowest in the world. Uganda's extreme poverty has led to significant damage to the country's environment. Civil unrest in the country during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in poor land conservation practices and rampant poaching. Since the mid-1980s, the political situation in Uganda has improved and poaching has been curbed. Soil erosion, overgrazing, and desertification continue. In order to provide more land for agricultural use, many forests have been cleared and wetlands have been drained. Of Uganda's forestland, 0.9 per cent (1990-1996) is destroyed each year, in part because 89 per cent (1995) of the country's energy requirements are met by burning wood.

Uganda is situated in an area of rich biodiversity, incorporating four vegetation regions. The country provides habitat for 992 bird species and 338 mammal species. About 9.6 per cent (1997) of the country's land is protected in parks or reserves. Uganda has ratified international agreements intended to protect biodiversity, endangered species, marine life, wetlands, and the ozone layer. The country has also signed treaties limiting nuclear testing, chemical and biological weapons, and trade involving endangered animal species.

III.

Population

Almost all the inhabitants of Uganda are black Africans of the Bantu migration. About 70 per cent of the people speak a Bantu language; they live in the southern half of the country and include the Baganda, Basoga, Banyoro, Nkole, and Toro ethnic groups. Most of the remaining people speak a Nilotic language; they live in the north and east, and include the Acholi, Lango, and Karamojong ethnic groups. In the late 1960s Uganda also had a sizeable Asian population (741,000 of Indian and Pakistani origin in 1969). Idi Amin’s expulsion of non-citizen Asians in 1972 led to all but about 4,000 leaving the country. Many have returned during the 1990s.

A.

Population Characteristics

Uganda has a population of 31,367,972 (2008 estimate). The country has an average population density of about 157 people per sq km (407 per sq mi). About 12 per cent of the population is urbanized. Average life expectancy in 2008 was about 51.3 years for men and 53.4 years for women.

B.

Principal Cities

Kampala (population, 2003 estimate, 1,246,000), near Lake Victoria, is Uganda’s largest city and main commercial centre, as well as the capital. Important towns include: Jinja (population, 2002, 86,520); Mbale (population, 2002, 70,437); Entebbe (population, 2002, 57,518); and Gulu (population, 2002, 113,144).

C.

Religion

About two thirds of Uganda’s inhabitants are Christian, and approximately 16 per cent is Muslim. The rest follows traditional religions.

D.

Language

English is the official language, of which there are about 1 million second-language speakers. Forty-two other languages are spoken, nearly all of which are Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo, including: Chiga (1,391,442 speakers), Ganda (3,015,980), Nyankore (1,643,193), and Soga (1,370,845). The Indo-Iranian languages of Gujarati and Hindi are both spoken, each by about 1 per cent of the population. Nubi, an Arabic-based creole is spoken by some 14,800 people.

E.

Education

Education is not compulsory in Uganda, but a universal system of primary education is planned. The British educational system has been influential in Uganda, and missionary schools have played an important role in educating the people. The literacy rate was about 71.6 per cent in 2005. In 2000 about 6.53 million pupils attended some 11,578 primary schools in Uganda, and some 605,220 students were enrolled in more than 900 secondary, technical, and primary teacher-training schools. All schools charge fees. Around 74,090 students were enrolled in higher education. In 1999–2000, 2.3 per cent of the country’s gross national product (GNP) was spent on education. Uganda’s leading institutions of higher education are Makerere University (1922), Uganda Technical College (1954), both in Kampala, and Mbarara University of Science and Technology (1989). The Institute of Teacher Education and the Uganda Polytechnic are both in Kiambogo.

F.

Culture

Uganda’s chief libraries are the National Reference Library and the National Library of Medicine, both housed at Makerere University. Museums include the Uganda Museum (with materials on archaeology, ethnology, music, and science), in Kampala, and geological and zoological museums, both in Entebbe.

IV.

Economy

Uganda’s GNP (World Bank estimate) in 2004 was about US$6,887 million, equivalent to US$300 per capita. The Ugandan economy is largely dependent on agriculture; the sector provided about 32.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, and almost all export earnings. A good deal of farming is at subsistence or semi-subsistence levels. The principal cash crops, cotton, plantains, millet, maize, coffee, and tea are dependent on fluctuating world markets.

Uganda lacks direct access to a seaport and has few mineral resources. However, projects to exploit further cobalt and copper are in developmental stages.

Political tensions have, at times, sharply curtailed cooperation with Uganda’s east African neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania, whose ports are the main outlets for Ugandan trade. Unsettled internal political affairs and civil war in the 1970s and 1980s hurt Uganda’s economy badly, as did drought conditions in the north in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and, more recently, in 1997. However, more settled internal conditions since 1986, combined with economic policies aimed at encouraging both agriculture and industry, and the rebuilding of the country’s shattered infrastructure, have enabled remarkable recovery to take place in many areas. In the past decade, Uganda’s GDP has grown annually by 6.4 per cent. A privatization programme due for completion by 2002, along with reduced inflation, return of Asian capital and expertise, and efficient use of World Bank aid, is helping to take Uganda through its next vital phase of development. Efforts have been stalled, however, by torrential rains that reduced the coffee and cotton harvests, and by continuing involvement with Sudan’s civil war. Further growth and measures to alleviate poverty, concentrated mainly in the north, depend greatly on donor aid and on the replacement of aid by foreign investment. Further reforms are planned, including reform of the communal land system.

In 2001, Uganda, together with Tanzania and Kenya, revived the economic grouping known as the East African Community. This organization, last in existence in 1977, aimed to improve trade, promote greater links between the three countries, and attract outside investment to the area as a whole.

A.

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

Crop-farming and livestock-raising are the primary occupations in Uganda, and the agricultural sector is one of the priority sectors for increased productivity, with many projects funded both locally and externally. Cotton, tea, and coffee are the main commercial crops and constitute about 90 per cent of the yearly value of exports. Alternating drought and floods in 1997 threatened the thriving coffee and cotton sectors. Farm production in 2006 included, in tonnes, bananas (around 10 million); cassava (4.93 million); sweet potatoes (around 2.23 million); sugar cane (1.95 million); maize (1.26 million); millet (687,000); sorghum (around 398,000); coffee (133,310); and peanuts (around 143,000). Livestock included some 6.97 million cattle, 8.03 million goats, 1.65 million sheep, and 22.8 poultry.

Woodlands cover about 4 million hectares. Exploitable forests consist almost entirely of hardwoods; mahogany is the main timber export. The annual cut in 2006 included about 40.5 million cu m (1,431 million cu ft) of wood, more than 85 per cent of which was used as a household fuel.

Uganda’s many large lakes mean that it has potentially one of the largest freshwater fisheries in the world. However, the export market has yet to be exploited, and the fish caught are consumed locally. The catch in 2005 was about 427,575 tonnes; major species landed include tilapia, Nile perch, and carp. Carp and tilapia fish-farming is a growing industry.

B.

Mining

In the late 1980s the annual production of copper ore (metal content) was only about 64 tonnes. Uganda has substantial deposits of copper, however, and mines are being re-opened. In 2004, an estimate 178 kg of gold was produced. Salt, tungsten, and tin are mined in small quantities. Further exploitation of minerals will be headed up by a scheme, jointly financed with a Canadian company, to construct a cobalt mining plant at Kasese.

C.

Manufacturing

Most of Uganda’s manufacturing industry is centred in the Jinja-Kampala-Tororo area, and is related to the processing of the country’s agricultural output. Textiles, shirts, footwear, processed food, beer, soft drinks, and matches are manufactured on an increasing scale.

Idi Amin nationalized the many British companies operating in Uganda in 1972, and took over the businesses of many of the expelled Asians, including factories as well as large estates. Economic mismanagement and civil war meant that by the late 1980s many were barely functioning. Since 1986 the government has tried hard to persuade foreign investors to return to Uganda, as well as former Ugandan Asians settled in Britain, to rebuild these plants. Compensation arrangements were worked out and privatization programmes began in 1991.

D.

Tourism

Because of Uganda’s spectacular lake and mountain scenery, tourism was an important industry before the political turmoil of the 1970s and the 1980s curtailed visits by foreigners. Since 1986, however, it has undergone a revival, although expansion has been limited by continuing infrastructure problems and a shortage of international hotels. In 2006 receipts from tourism totalled US$137 million.

E.

Energy

In 2003 Uganda produced an estimate 1,729 million kWh of electricity. Almost all electricity is generated in hydroelectric plants, primarily at the large Owen Falls scheme on the Victoria Nile near Jinja, which has been expanded since the early 1990s and now accounts for most of the total installed capacity of 162 MW. Other hydroelectric plants are on the Kagera and Kiruruma rivers.

F.

Currency and Banking

The unit of currency is the new Uganda shilling (1,731 shillings equalled US$1; early 2008), issued by the Bank of Uganda, which was founded in 1966. As part of efforts to control rampant inflation, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government in 1987 devalued the currency by 77 per cent and introduced the new Ugandan shilling worth 100 old shillings. Four foreign banks operate in the country, in addition to two local private banks, one state-owned commercial bank, two development banks, and one cooperative bank.

G.

Commerce and Trade

In 2004 exports earned US$639 million, while imports cost US$1,657 million. The leading export by far is coffee; cotton and tea are also of growing importance. Leading imports include machinery and transport equipment, petroleum, primary and fabricated metal, paper and paper products, food, and cotton textiles.

Uganda’s major trading partners include Kenya, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. Uganda, with Kenya and Tanzania, was a member of the East African Community (EAC), an organization designed to foster economic cooperation and development, until it was dissolved in 1977 after much conflict among its three members. In 2001 the three countries revived the EAC.

H.

Labour

The Ugandan workforce was estimated at about 12.6 million people in 2006. Around 69 per cent of workers are engaged in farming (2003), largely on a subsistence basis.

I.

Transport

Uganda has about 3,480 km (2,160 mi) of paved roads, as well as some 26,840 km (16,678 mi) of other roads, many of them passable only in the dry season. In 1999 there were 2.1 passenger cars for every 1,000 people. In 2004 the country was served by 259 km (161 mi) of railway, which is operated by Uganda Railways and is currently being rehabilitated, and there are rail links with the Indian Ocean via Kenya. A planned US$20 million rail link between Kampala and Johannesburg will reduce Uganda’s dependence on Kenyan and Tanzanian trade routes and expand trade links with South Africa. Ships on Lake Victoria link Uganda with Kenyan and Tanzanian ports. The national air carrier, the state-owned Uganda Airlines, is in the process of being privatized. The main international airport is at Entebbe on Lake Victoria.

J.

Communications

The government operates Radio Uganda, which broadcasts in English, French, Arabic, and several African languages, and a national television system that serves an estimated 610,000 receivers. Since media control was relaxed in 1993, a number of independent television and radio stations have opened. About 46,000 telephones are in use; a programme to expand the telecommunications network through privatization is expected to more than treble the number of telephone lines by 2002. The official government daily newspaper is New Vision, published in Kampala; in total there are 7 daily newspapers, as well as several weekly newspapers and magazines.

V.

Government

Uganda’s modified parliamentary form of democratic government was suspended after a 1985 military coup. Since 1986 the government has been dominated by the National Resistance Movement (NRM; the political wing of the National Resistance Army), led by Yoweri Museveni. A return to civilian rule at an unspecified date has been promised. As part of this process, discussions on a new constitution began in 1993. The National Resistance Council (NRC), which consisted of 278 members in 1989, was dissolved in 1996 to prepare for elections of a new legislature; it is still dominated by the NRM. Ugandans voted to retain a “no-party” system after a national referendum on the issue in 2000.

A.

Executive and Legislature

Since 1986 Museveni has been President of Uganda, and as such head of state and head of government. The president is elected for a five-year term by the interim legislature, the NRC, and is assisted by the prime minister and Cabinet. The Cabinet is appointed by the president.

Since 1986 the NRC has acted as the legislature, pending the introduction of a new multi-party constitution. The NRC comprised 210 elected and 68 presidentially appointed members. The first elections for the council were held in 1989; in March 1994, elections were held for a 214-seat Constituent Assembly, which was formed primarily to debate and finalize a new constitution, which was adopted in 1995. The National Parliament consists of 292 members, 214 elected without party-label in single-seat constituencies, 53 seats are reserved for women, and 25 for representatives of the armed forces, the disabled, youths, and workers.

B.

Political Parties

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) is the dominant political party in Uganda. While parliamentary government functioned, the leading political organizations were the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC; founded 1960), the Democratic Party (DP; 1953), the Uganda People’s Democratic Movement (UPDM; 1980), and the Conservative Party (1979). Since 1980, political parties have been allowed to exist, but not to campaign, under the 1986 ban on political activity. The UPC, the DP, and the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) are junior partners in the coalition government dominated by the NRM. The UPDM is one of the parties operating in exile. In 2003 the national conference of the NRM called for freedom of operation for all political parties.

C.

Judiciary

The highest tribunal in Uganda is the Supreme Court of Appeal, which hears appeals from the high court, presided over by the chief justice and 29 other judges. The country also has magistrates’ courts with different areas of jurisdiction depending on the grade of magistrate.

D.

Local Government

Uganda is divided into 10 provinces, which are subdivided into 39 districts and 154 counties. The counties are divided into sub-counties, which form the basic administrative units.

E.

Health and Welfare

Health services were severely depleted by war and are being restored; as AIDS is a growing problem, a national programme to raise public awareness has been set up. In 2004 there were 12,086 people per doctor and the infant mortality rate was 66 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2008. In 1990, 3.4 per cent of the country’s GDP was spent on health care.

F.

Defence

The Ugandan army was reorganized in the early 1980s. Discipline remained lax, however, and the government acknowledged in 1984 that unauthorized troop activities had caused the deaths of thousands of civilians. The regular army was absorbed into the National Resistance Army (NRA) after the latter took power in January 1986. The NRA included 45,000 personnel in 2004. Military expenditure in 1997 was estimated by some experts as possibly being as high as 20 per cent of the national budget. The official proportion was 12 per cent. In 2003, Uganda spent US$154 million (2.4 per cent of its GDP) on defence.

G.

International Organizations

Uganda is a member of the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the African Union, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

VI.

History

A composite of four kingdoms and many peoples, Uganda was a focal point of European rivalry before being ceded to Britain in 1890.

A.

Pre-Colonial Kingdoms

In the 1,500 years before Europeans arrived in the area, the lake region of Africa, with its temperate climate and good soil, was a crossroads for invasions of Bantu agriculturists and Nilotic cattle herders. A fusion of these peoples occurred, and by the 15th century Bunyoro, the first of the great Ugandan kingdoms, had been founded. During the next two centuries its armies brought much of central Uganda under its control. These areas were ruled by governors subordinate to the great king of Bunyoro.

In the late 18th century, during a period of conflict, the governor of Buganda declared his independence, and the new kingdom quickly became the major lake state. Two smaller kingdoms, Ankole and Toro, also became independent of Bunyoro. Each of these, with variations, modelled its society and political system on the mother state. Buganda was ruled by a semi-divine king (kabaka) who was advised by a council of great nobles (lukiko), and the land was divided among the nobility and farmed by the peasants. Cattle were symbols of power and were owned by the nobility. The state was defended by a standing and conscript army obedient to the king’s desires. Although powerful, Buganda never completely dominated the other kingdoms and scattered Bantu groups.

B.

British Rule

The first Europeans to visit Uganda were the British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Grant, when they were searching for the source of the River Nile in 1862. They were followed by Samuel White Baker and Charles George Gordon, commanding Egyptian troops. The explorer Henry Morton Stanley, welcomed by Kabaka Mutesa I (reigned 1852-1884), reported the king’s eagerness to understand Christianity. Soon both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries were working in Buganda.

Within a decade the factions they created caused a civil war. Once isolated, the region, with its rich soils, had become by 1890 a major object of the European nations’ scramble for African territory. Britain, after securing German recognition of its rights, moved to secure Buganda. Frederick Lugard, working for the British East Africa Company, ended the civil disturbances, and his successors used the Bugandan army to help conquer the other kingdoms and peoples.

By 1896 a British protectorate administration had extended its authority over most of the region, and the name Uganda was adopted. Final details concerning the administration of Uganda were settled by a series of agreements in 1900, the most comprehensive of which guaranteed special status to Buganda, including the continuation of its social and political system.

C.

Towards Independence

Britain’s almost 70 years of rule in Uganda was a centralized European bureaucracy superimposed on a federation of kingdoms and peoples. This worked relatively well until the independence movements of the 1950s, when Buganda demanded separation from Uganda. Only after Kabaka Mutesa II was exiled for two years in 1953 was it possible to proceed with developing a united government.

D.

Obote as First President

After much experimentation, a federal constitution was promulgated in April 1962. The Uganda People’s Congress won the elections, and Milton Obote became prime minister. Independence was granted in October. Dissension continued, however, and in May 1966 Obote sent the army into Buganda and drove the kabaka into exile. He then proclaimed a new republican constitution, which formally abolished the kingships, and became Uganda’s first president of a unitary government.

E.

Idi Amin’s Reign of Terror

Bugandan recalcitrance, a fall-off in the economy, and charges of corruption led to an army coup in January 1971. Power devolved upon the army commander Idi Amin, who began eight years of terror and misrule. He increased the size of the army, murdered his political opponents, and began a reign of terror directed at the people of Buganda, Obote’s Lango people, and at their neighbours, the Acholi. It is estimated Amin ordered the killing of around 300,000 Ugandans. He also expelled more than 60,000 Asians, many of whom were entrepreneurs, from the country (1972).

By 1978 Uganda was bankrupt, in the grip of internecine warfare, and the government dependent on massive loans from Arab states friendly to Amin. After Uganda went to war with neighbouring Tanzania in late 1978, Tanzanian forces allied with Ugandan rebels drove Amin from the country early the following year and he was allowed to escape to and settle in Saudi Arabia.

F.

Uganda After Amin

Three provisional presidents served before elections under a new constitution were held in December 1980. Obote’s party won amid widespread reports of electoral fraud, and he became the president once again. Uganda, however, had changed fundamentally. Once thriving, the nation had suffered prolonged economic disaster, with an inflation rate of more than 200 per cent, no consumer goods, few jobs, rampant crime, famine in the north, and no effective government in the countryside.

In 1982, after Tanzanian troops had been withdrawn, anti-government guerrillas became active, bloody internecine feuds (a legacy of the Amin period) flourished, and thousands of young men were arrested, suspected of being guerrillas. Thereafter, Obote’s regime became as murderous and autocratic as Amin’s. More than 100,000 Ugandans were killed or starved to death over the next three years.

G.

The Museveni Government

In July 1985 a coup overthrew the government; Obote fled the country and settled in Zambia. The National Resistance Army, led by Yoweri Museveni, formerly a Marxist, which had been fighting to overthrow Obote since 1981, continued the fight against the military regime which ousted him, and after four days of fighting in Kampala took over the country in January 1986. Among its first priorities was the re-building of a nation state from a country reduced after 15 years of misrule and violence into feuding factions. By involving all ethnic groups in the government, as well as most of the main political parties, the pragmatic Museveni largely succeeded in this. Peace was restored to almost all the country, except the northern border area near Sudan, where small rebel groups concentrated, and where arms were readily available from the civil war in Sudan. Uganda’s relationship with Rwanda, which had been strained in the late 1980s, improved after the introduction of a cooperation agreement between the two countries in August 1992, which sought to improve border security.

With the assistance of large-scale foreign aid, efforts were made to rebuild the economy and infrastructure. Former Asian residents were invited to return, and a programme of economic liberalization introduced to bring the budget under control, encourage agricultural production, and attract foreign investors. During 1993 and 1994 debate began on a new constitution, as the first stage in a process of returning the country to a democratic government.

A new constitution came into force in 1995, which made provision for a referendum in 2000 on the introduction of a multi-party system. It also legalized political parties although still banned them from any activity. In the 1996 presidential election Museveni was returned to power, having won 74 per cent of the popular vote. In the 1990s Museveni grew in prestige as an African statesman.

Tensions between Uganda and Kenya, and between Uganda and Sudan, regarding the sheltering of each country’s rebel forces resulted in continued border raids and invasion threats. In March 1997 the matter reached crisis levels when the northern border with Sudan was closed. Sudanese support for Ugandan extremist Christian rebels in the north displaced some 200,000 people. In November floods in eastern Uganda made hundreds homeless.

Prime Minister Kintu Msoke retired in April 1999. President Museveni appointed in his place the former minister of education and sports, Apolo Nsimbabi. In an effort to curb the epidemic spread of AIDS, the government initiated a voluntary Human Immunodeficiency Virus screening programme. According to 1997 data, as many as 11 per cent of children in Uganda were orphaned by Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, part of a widespread orphan crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of the policies adopted by the government, the growth of the epidemic was showing signs of slowing by the end of the century.

H.

Into the New Millennium

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Development Association announced, in February 2000, a plan of substantial debt reduction for Uganda. This recognized progress made by the government in combating poverty and in improving the economic picture generally.

In March 2000 international public opinion was shocked by the death of over 1,000 members of a millennial cult in the south-western area of the country, in one of the worst mass murder-suicides in history. Over 500 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God were found in the burned-down remains of their church; hundreds more bodies were discovered in mass graves on property belonging to cult leaders Joseph Kibwetere, a former Roman Catholic priest, and Cledonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute. Ugandan authorities issued arrest warrants for the cult leaders, who were believed to be in hiding.

The main political event of 2000 was the referendum promised by the 1995 constitution, which took place in June. Ugandans voted to maintain the status quo by rejecting multi-party politics and keeping Museveni and his NRM in power. Museveni’s position was further upheld in the elections of March 2001 when he was returned to office with almost 70 per cent of the vote. His nearest rival, Dr Kizza Bisegye, who received 28 per cent, immediately mounted a challenge on the grounds that the vote was rigged, but most observers were satisfied that Museveni was the true winner.

In April 2001, Uganda announced that it would finally be withdrawing its troops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where they had been deployed in backing the rebels against the government since 1998. Uganda’s intervention in the conflict had received international condemnation, and had led to battles with Rwandan forces, also in the country. Troops were pulled out of the DRC in May 2001. Uganda and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in November 2001, brokered by British minister Claire Short.

In legislative elections held in June, marred by violence and deaths, the “no party movement” of the president secured a majority by winning more than 230 seats, according to government results. Otherwise, the result of the voting remained inconclusive. Museveni appointed a new Cabinet following the election but retained Apolo Nsibanbi as prime minister. A conclusive peace deal was signed with the DRC in September 2002 as troop withdrawals from that country continued. Meanwhile, there was also conclusion to the internal war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. The rebels had been fighting against government forces for more than 15 years. In December 2002 President Museveni signed a peace deal with rebels of the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF).

The Red Cross brought to an end its work in northern areas of the country in February 2003 after one of its convoys was attacked by LRA rebels. Despite LRA’s announcement in March 2003 of a ceasefire and an end to abductions and ambushes, attacks continued, as did the government’s military operations to counter the insurgency.

With the failure of attempts to broker talks following a temporary cessation of hostilities in April, the government announced its intention to conduct an all-out offensive against the LRA in the north. The government’s continued failure to quell the LRA rebellion led 34 MPs from the north to boycott the legislature, accusing the government of not taking the conflict seriously enough.

In March 2003 a national conference of the ruling party, the NRM, demanded that political parties be granted freedom to operate. The conference also called for the scrapping of the law restricting the country’s president to serving only two terms.

In May 2003 Uganda pulled out its last remaining troops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Former president Idi Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia in August 2003.

The massacre of more than 200 civilians by LRA rebels at Belona Camp north of Lira in northern Uganda in February 2004 brought fresh criticism against the government for its failure to defeat the LRA. Human rights campaigners abroad had also criticized the tactics of the Ugandan armed forces.

In March 2004 the presidents of Uganda and the neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania signed a protocol for the introduction of a customs union between the three countries. A constitutional amendment was approved in 2005 that paved the way for President Museveni to stand for a third term. He duly won the election held in February 2006 by gaining 59 per cent of the vote.