Kampala — Ethnic Supplies

Happy 49th birthday to Uganda

October 10, 2011 By idahorner 2 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

On 9th October Uganda celebrated 49 years of Independence from British rule.

As the country enters it’s 50th year of independence I thought I would ask some questions for us to discuss

What does independence really mean?
How has life changed for the ordinary Ugandan?
What has been achieved in the last 49 years?
Most people I come across will ask me where I am from and when they here that I am from Uganda the first thing they say to me is Idi Amin. But is there more to Uganda than Idi Amin?
What will the next 50 years look like?

I also have some observations too from the last 49 years

Idi Amin who expelled the Ugandan Asians sending the country into an economic quagmire
Museveni brought stability to country but 26 years on it would appear he is not ready to go
The Aids epidemic hit the country but the government fought back which meant that Uganda became a case study of best practice in the fight against Aids
Whilst the rest of the country enjoyed relative peace and development Northern Uganda suffered a terrible civil war under Joseph Kony of the Lords Resistance Army
Uganda proposed to pass an Anti Gay bill that was critised by the world when David Kato a gay activist died
The discovery of oil in the Albertine basin
The arrival of mobile phones in the country
Women in government
Walk 2 Work protests
A former Vice President was remanded in custody for his role in the disappearance of CHOGM funds
An unacceptable number of women still die in child birth
Why are 2 Million Ugandan children starving?

As I write this the Mo Ibrahim index of African governance has just been issued and here is how Uganda scores out of 53 African countries

Country index- 20th
Safety and rule of law 23rd
Participation and human rights 21st
Sustainable economic opportunity 18th
Human development 21st

Although Uganda is not at the bottom of the the ladder in any of the categories, is this good enough?

Who’s job is it to ensure that Uganda moves to the top 10?

I will keep it short so that we can have a discussion

Filed Under: Latest, Politics Tagged With: Africa, Idi Amin, Joseph Kony, Kampala, Mo Ibrahim Index, Uganda, YOWERI MUSEVENI

Being food poor

April 11, 2011 By ethnicsupplies Leave a Comment

We are at day 12 of the 30 day blog challenge and if you missed day 11 you can catch up here .

Today’s challenge is about revisiting some old posts and bringing them into one post.

This is something I have done before in a couple of posts. I am not sure what methods other folk use but I prefer to bring together posts I have written on a given subject matter. My most recent such was a collection of posts I wrote about International Women’s day and gender equality

For this post, I have brought together the issue of FOOD AVAILABILITY as it affects Africans in Africa. Food availability and poverty are interlinked and in fact the poor are the most likely to go poor and therefore find themselves needing and or being given Food Aid.

Being Food Poor- I am not even sure if this is correct terminology as in the sense of say folk being described as being as “cash poor but asset rich” or “time poor” but the posts I bring together here cover this very idea

Matoke

My first post on this matter is way back in 2008- Food distribution in Uganda – in this post I covered to issues Food Aid to a school at the source of the Nile- at time of visiting the school had just been removed from the World Food Promgram and the school governors were not very happy.

A few days later I came across peas for sale in a Kampala market. These peas had been donated by the Canadian government to the people of Rwanda who had been deemed as in need of food Aid. The other point I cover is Food distribution. This plays out very well in Uganda, in some parts food is going to waste whilst in others parts folk are starving to death.

The story of the Canadian peas got even more interesting and in this post AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY BY CANADIAN PEAS – the peas donated to Rwanda s food Aid made their way to a market stall in Uganda and finally to a Ugandan shop in Isleworth Middlesex England.

I recently revisited the issue of Food distribution in Uganda amidst reports of food shortages in North East Uganda and the big experiment by the WORLD FOOD PROGRAM

The issue of being food poor is one I will revisit from time to time because it has taken on an interesting twist. Europe fetching food from Africa- Yes Really.

With Europe running out of space to grow food for her growing population there is a new scramble for Africa called Africa Land grab. African land is being taken up by commercial farmers from Europe to grow food not for the Food poor of Africa but for Europeans, Arabs and Asians.

As if grabbing land from the food poor is not enough African waters have also been invaded. In this post SHOULD EUROPE BE TAKING FISH FROM SENEGAL I discuss the tough choices that we have to make in order to ensure that we do not threaten the food and water security of the Food Poor.

As if that all that was not bad enough some staples the food poor depend such as bananas have been hit by disease

So as you can see folk I am not quite done with this topic. I would appreciate your point of view on this issu of being food poor

Filed Under: food distribution, Latest Tagged With: Africa, Business and Economy, Kampala, Nile, Uganda, World Food Programme

#30dayblog- my work in pictures

April 5, 2011 By idahorner 1 Comment

Day 7 of the Nikki P’s blogging challenge is about the importance of photos in blogs. I thought I would share with you my grass root work in pictures, these photos focus on my activities in Uganda last year.

In May 2010 Ethnic Supplies was invited to jointly organise a Practitioners workshop up with folk at Business Fights poverty and DFID. The workshop focused on starting and scaling Inclusive business. I wrote about the workshop in a series of posts and if you missed those posts you can catch up here . The photos below are about that workshop which was held in Kampala Uganda.

In yesterday’s post I told you about my working day/pattern I told you that I collaborate with others and set time aside to do this. Last year I collaborated with folk at Project Diaspora to bring about the biggest SOCIAL MEDIA of the year VILLAGES IN ACTION. As stated yesterday I don’t necessarily have a typical working day and when such projects spring up I have often have to to rethink my schedule as this particular project involved me finding a sponsor for the event and then travelling to Uganda to represent the sponsor at the event. The photos below are from that conference

I really love this photo of the children sat under the tree as the watch the proceedings of the afternoon. They were the most disciplined children I have come across in a very long time

This is a behind the scenes photo, Teddy from project diaspora (with the camera) took as for a vilalge tour the day before the event

I loved this one too- the children did not want to lose each other in such a large crowd so they held hands as they walked until they found somewhere to sit down

This is the typical way that folk access clean water in the village

Mrs Businge the village councillor (in Blue) a turlly formidable African woman

This is one of the sugarcane growers, he was part of the enterprise panel

The geeks of Uganda Victor and Solomon are ICT professionals based in Uganda and formed part of the technology panel on the day. They are pictured here interviewing Teddy about technology in the village

large chunks of the woodland in the village have been cut down to make way for sugarcane, provide wood for charcoal for either cooking of brick making. One of the things we had to do on the day of the conference was to begin a process of replanting the woodland

After Masindi VILLAGES IN ACTION I hit the road to Ruhanga SW Uganda, where the the charity

LET THEM HELP THEMSELVES OUT OF POVERTY currently working. I love the beautiful scenery in Ruhanga

Ann second left is pictured with volunteers from Shepperton and the project director on the ground

This is Mike one of the volunteers at the project he loves Ruhanga so much he spends half of the year at the project

Christmas party at the community school- this was sponsored by our friends HASTOE HOUSING ASSOCIATION

We distributed 250 mosquito nets last December, I am hoping that we can do better next year

These are some of the parents whose children attend the school

We have a child sponsorship programme and these two girls are sponsored by my fab friends BIRDS ON THE BLOG and I

When I first got involved in the Ruhanga community project we were fundraising for this building, the community center. I didn’t know much about fund raising or charity’s per se, we organized a ball at the Hilton Hotel in Cobham Surrey and raised enough money to finish this building. Today is it used for computer lessons, it houses the project office office, has a space for the local seamstress who makes the children’s uniforms but also teaches other women in the village sewing skills and accommodation for two staff.