How President Museveni’s Rwandan Tutsi origins power apartheid-style governance in Uganda

How President Museveni’s Rwandan Tutsi origins power apartheid-style governance in Uganda

Segregation in education began to take root as soon as President Tibuhaburwa Museveni enforced Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1997, followed by Universal Secondary Education (USE), without corresponding efficient equipping of the schools with necessary materials, or just salaries for teachers. Teachers have to engage in multiple types of work to make ends meet. Both UPE and USE are very poorly funded.

Read more
400,000 passport backlog headlines Kenyan minister’s acrimonious falling out with juniors

400,000 passport backlog headlines Kenyan minister’s acrimonious falling out with juniors

The cabinet secretary and the NIS senior have in the past been adversely named in the Westgate and Dusit terrorist attacks, but were cleared of criminal offences. The other official said to be behind the parallel passports office was tapped from the diplomatic world and is reportedly building a war-chest to run for a gubernatorial seat in 2027.

Read more
Trading Musevenism for Kyagulanyism: Uganda’s enduring identity politics and man-eat-man interests

Trading Musevenism for Kyagulanyism: Uganda’s enduring identity politics and man-eat-man interests

One unswerving Kyagulanyism states that Kyagulanyism is Ugandanism, which is self-rediscovery and self-empowerment of everyone in order to reinstitute the sovereignty of the traditional nation states of Uganda. However, I have not yet come across a clear integration, articulation and clarification of these ideals, although I have several times heard Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, the political head of the new political party National Unity Party (NUP), currently the majority political party in the parliament of Uganda.
Off we go

Read more
How Nairobi’s upmarket Kilimani estate became world’s alluring host of contraband ‘gold embassies’

How Nairobi’s upmarket Kilimani estate became world’s alluring host of contraband ‘gold embassies’

Police have red-flagged Kilimani and its environs as a sprawling crime scene that also hosts State House and the city’s “honourable” police stations – Kilimani, Kileleshwa, Muthangari and Upper Hill – where white collar criminals, international drug traffickers and gold smugglers prefer to be detained during arrest.

Read more
Modern knowledge: Unions, conventional wisdom and bureaucracy doomed in Uganda

Modern knowledge: Unions, conventional wisdom and bureaucracy doomed in Uganda

Although we live in a world environment in which 95 per cent of the time is wasted (e.g, Peters, 1992) and resistance to change is a known vice, subserved by all sorts of conventional wisdom, it is no longer guaranteed that one can go on wasting time or resisting change using popular conventional wisdom like in the past.

Read more
Why allegations that Rwanda President Paul Kagame took part in bank robberies in Uganda have never been investigated

Why allegations that Rwanda President Paul Kagame took part in bank robberies in Uganda have never been investigated

It is true that the small ethnic group that the rulers of Rwanda and Uganda belong to has continued to dominate employment opportunities in every sector of the economy. They also dominate business, the army, police, prisons and different paramilitary groups, intelligence and even administrative jobs such as those of resident district commissioners (RDCs) and permanent secretaries. 

Read more
Kenya walks tightrope as finance minister allays fears over foreign debts, shrinking hard currency reserves

Kenya walks tightrope as finance minister allays fears over foreign debts, shrinking hard currency reserves

Njuguna Ndung’u was responding to a research note by US investment bank JPMorgan which said on Tuesday that the East African nation was “walking a tightrope” to avoid a crisis due to a maturing dollar bond and persistent currency weakness.

Read more
East Africa becomes world’s leading illicit arms market as conflict and terrorism peak

East Africa becomes world’s leading illicit arms market as conflict and terrorism peak

Save for Tanzania, all the other countries in East Africa – especially those closer to the Indian Ocean – had an index of 7+ in illicit arms trafficking with the Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan and Eritrea at the summit. The high incidence, the report says, is related to internecine civil strife that make it difficult to enforce domestic laws or police the countries with the help  of international law.

Read more
It’s not just the economy, stupid! What was off-key about the Africa Climate Summit in Kenya

It’s not just the economy, stupid! What was off-key about the Africa Climate Summit in Kenya

The fact that Africa suffers disproportionately from the crisis – 17 of the 20 worst-hit countries are located on the continent even though it accounts for less than 4 per cent of global emissions – was prominently repeated at the conference.

Read more
African Union announces second drawdown of its military mission in Somalia by 3,000 troops

African Union announces second drawdown of its military mission in Somalia by 3,000 troops

Speaking at the handover, ATMIS Bio Cadale commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philippe Butoyi, called the transfer “a testament to Somalia’s leadership in rebuilding the country, protecting the population and ensuring security and stability”.

Read more