Ugandas population growth is still rising and it ranks fourth in the world. The current population of about 31.3 million lives mostly in rural areas. The population is ethnically, culturally and religiously very heterogeneous and complex. In Uganda, one can distinguish about 40 ethnicities, who form two major groups based on their culture and language: the Bantu people in the South and the Nilotics and Nilohamites in the North. The official language is English, since 2005 Swahili is also an official language.
Uganda belongs to the region of East Africa, which is often referred to as the cradle of mankind. Archaelogical findings suggest that humans already populated Uganda over 150.000 years ago. Uganda, in the heart of Africa, stayed out of the focus of other countries for a long time. At the end of the 19th century, scientists reached the area belonging to Uganda today on their search for the origin of the Nile. The country became a British Protectorate. About 70 years later, in the year 1962, Uganda became independent. In 1966, then President Milton Obote was already expelled from the country. After that, Obote appointed himself head of government.
In April 1971 Idi Amin plotted a military coup. Immediately after this, the mass murder began for which Amin’s regime became infamous. In total, about 250,000 to 300,000 people died violently during the eight years of Amin’s regime. Ugandan rebels, among them current head of state Yoweri Museveni, freed Uganda from Amin’s terror regime in April 1979 under the lead of Tansanian troups.
In September 1980 Milton Obote was elected as the new head of state. However, the elections were far from free and fair. Obote’s regime exceeded Idi Amin’s regime in its brutality and violence. Between 1981 and 1985, about 1 million Ugandans died.
After Obote’s disputed reelection, Yoweri Museveni started a guerilla war in the South West of Uganda. In 1986 Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) conquered Kampala and Museveni came to power. Today, Museveni has been the President of Uganda for almost a quarter of a century. Although the government has signed all important international treaties and conventions, the reality is different. The right to free speech and the freedom of the press is still violated. Military courts still issue death penalties and there are accounts of prisoners being tortured.
Museveni’s usurpation was also met with resistance. People in Uganda are still today afraid of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under their leader Joseph Kony, who fights for the formation of a religious state. “Probably the world’s most brutal rebel group“ (Jan Egeland, Forrmer United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator) is accused of a having commited multiple crimes. They looted, murdered and tortured basically at random. Mainly children were abducted, forced to fight for the LRA and exposed to sexual, physical, and psychological torment. In the past years, about 500 children were abducted every month. Almost all of the population of Northern Uganda has been internally displaced by Kony’s rebel groups. In February 2008, the 22 year-old conflict in Northern Uganda finally took a turn. The peace negotiations between the LRA and the government were started. Since then, the security situation of Northern Uganda has changed significantly: for months there have been no abductions and only rare assaults. However, rebel leader Kony still has not signed the peace treaty and many people still live in refugee camps.