The country and its people

Uganda is a relatively small country, about the size of the United Kingdom, and with a population of approximately 22 million. Over 80 per cent of Ugandan people live in villages and small trading centres. Uganda has only one city, the capital, Kampala.

Despite its small area, Uganda encompasses remarkable physical and biological diversity. This diversity is a consequence of the fact that the heat and humidity associated with equatorial Africa – the equator lies just a few miles to the south of Kampala – are modified by Uganda's altitude and its distance from the sea. Although Uganda is a land-locked country with no coastline, around 20 per cent of the country consists of lakes – the largest and best-known being Lake Victoria. These lakes help to moderate the equatorial climate and also explain why Uganda, located hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, exports millions of pounds-worth of fish each year.

Much of Uganda is a plateau, approximately 1000m above sea level. To the east, near the border with Kenya, are free-standing volcanic mountains such as Mount Elgon, Mount Moroto, and Mount Napak, where equatorial mountain forests survive in sharp contrast to the vast and semi-arid plains that stretch northwards to Sudan. The western borders are even more spectacular, with the high and rugged peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains towering over glaciers and snowfields and, at low altitudes, dense forests.

The most important physical feature of the country is the River Nile. For many centuries, long before European powers defined Uganda as being strategically important because of its identification as the source of the Nile, the river was a natural meeting point for different I political systems, ecological g zones, and ethnic groups.

Uganda's fertile crescent ...

Physical features and the climate are the principal determinants of the most important element of the country's economy, agriculture. By and large, the soils of Uganda to the south and west of the River Nile are fertile and well watered. These lands – lying between the Kenyan border to the east, Mount Elgon, the River Nile, and Lake Kyoga to the north, and the spectacular Rift Valley to the west – form a fertile and productive crescent. In the past, luxuriant equatorial forests clothed much of this land. The remnants of these are to be found in isolated forests such as Mabira, which lies between Uganda's two biggest urban centres, Kampala and Jinja.

Such an environment provided the conditions for significant agricultural development, a relatively dense population, and, consequently, the division of labour and the creation of relatively complex patterns of production and consumption. The result was the emergence of a number of kingdoms with hierarchical structures, in which chiefs were appointed by a king, peasant farmers were required to offer part of their agricultural production as tribute, and military force was used to secure or enforce territorial expansion. These kingdoms, particularly Buganda, played a critically important role in the history of the colonisation of Uganda as well as in the political and economic development of independent Uganda. The map above shows Uganda's administrative boundaries as they were at independence in 1962. Amongst all the kingdoms, Buganda is the largest and most central.

The inhabitants of these kingdoms are, with few exceptions, Bantu-speaking peoples. Uganda lies at the northern edge of the vast area of sub-Saharan Africa occupied by Bantu speakers and it is in Uganda, broadly speaking at the River Nile, that the Bantu meet the societies of the north and the Horn of Africa.

... and semi-arid rangelands

North of the Nile, a different ecology prevails. The land stretches away in vast plains; population density is lighter; rainfall is lower and less reliable; surface water becomes more scarce and drought more common. In the north-east region, Karamoja, where the environment is at its most harsh, cattle herding is the most common livelihood. People and animals move with the seasons in search of pasture and water, and there is a limit to the size and duration of settlements. Further west, where the climate allowed the practice of agriculture as well as animal husbandry, patterns of shifting cultivation are common.

The search for new lands, grass, or water had important impacts on social organisation among these pastoralist groups. Social systems revolved not around kingdoms under the authority of a monarch, but around smaller units such as clans, subject to the authority of a chief or elder, and with leadership based on the achievement of consensus. To this day, eastern Uganda is the most heterogeneous part of the country in terms of its people, languages, and production systems.

Fundamental divisions or common destiny?

The map below portrays the major ethnic groups and languages in Uganda. Bantu languages are confined to the arc around Lake Victoria, while the north and east is a mixture of Sudanic, Nilotic, and Hamitic languages. Bantu speakers comprise about two thirds of the population of Uganda. Their numerical majority helps to explain current patterns of political supremacy; yet a commitment to national unity requires that Uganda's leadership employs specific measures to enable all groups to feel themselves to be equal citizens. If the religious, political, and ethnic divisions which have proved to be so destructive in Uganda are to be reduced and replaced with a stronger sense of nationhood and national identity, the role of economic and social development as a means of minimising differences, rather than accentuating them, will be critical.

For the present, however, this distinction between a northern and eastern bloc and a southern and western bloc remains valid not least because this divide is most often used by Ugandans themselves to describe their country. In applying this classification, however, there are striking differences of interpretation. For some, the River Nile is a dividing line, a geographical expression of fundamentally different political systems, perspectives, and cultures. For others, the Nile is the common thread, the visible expression of a common destiny that links all Ugandans.

Regional politics – conflict and co-operation

Uganda lies close to the centre of Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya – upon which it relies heavily for access to the outside world – and to the south by Rwanda and Tanzania. To the north lies Sudan, a nation which has suffered civil war for much of the last 40 years. This conflict inevitably impacts on Uganda. There are more than 100,000 Sudanese refugees on Ugandan soil. Many of them have been in Uganda for years, and have been settled in permanent sites. The current Ugandan...