Uganda can save $700m annually if 10% of the value of Government procurement contracts was not lost to corruption, the World Bank has said. Rogati Kayani, the World Bank's East Africa procurement coordinator, said Uganda loses millions of dollars every year due to substandard procurement practices, which include false declaration, undervaluing of supplies, and outright corruption.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Uganda has congratulated the Ministry of Health for announcing a new initiative to further improve the health status of Ugandan children and women. “Child Days,” which the Ministry will formally inaugurate 3 May with the support of UNICEF, WHO and other partners, focuses on accelerating routine health service activities using outreach systems in place at the district level, and to do so twice a year. Activities throughout May, in all of Uganda’s 56 districts, will include provision of Vitamin A supplementation to children aged 6 months to 5 years; routine and catch-up measles immunizations for children under age 1; de-worming programmes for children aged 1 to 5 years; and vaccinations against maternal and neonatal tetanus for pregnant women.

Refugees often see the education of their children as a principal way of ensuring a better future for their family, regardless of whether that future holds a return to the home country, local integration in the country of first asylum, or resettlement to a third country. Just as importantly, education often plays a critical role in creating stability in the lives of refugee children. However, the current model of international assistance in countries of first asylum - that is, the first nation in which people find refuge outside their homeland - focuses on meeting immediate and important basic needs. Refugees are therefore increasingly seeking alternative ways to educate their children.
by Sarah Dryden-Peterson

Congolese refugees living in Uganda are now returning home voluntarily after an improvement in the security situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to an April 1 situation report by the Makerere University-based Refugee Law Project (RLP), repatriation had been informal with no involvement of the Ugandan authorities. In March, the RLP team visited Karugutu, Rwebisengo and Ntoroko sub-counties in Bundibugyo district, which are epicentres of the refugee influx. RLP reported that the refugees who wanted to go back to their country packed their belonging and left without informing the authorities in the area.

HIV prevalence in Uganda has dropped 70% since the early 1990s primarily because of a "successful" public HIV/AIDS prevention campaign that encourages avoiding "casual" sexual activity, according to a study published in the April 30 issue of the journal Science, BBC News reports (BBC News, 4/30). Drs. Rand Stoneburner and Daniel Low-Beer of University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom analyzed population-level HIV and behavioural data from Uganda and neighbouring countries -including Kenya, Malawi and Zambia - to assess the validity and determinants of declines in HIV prevalence and examine the potential influences of prevention interventions.

Cholera has broken out in eight districts, the health ministry said. Kampala, Kasese, Hoima, Arua, Nebbi, Kabarole, Masindi, and Bundibugyo have continued to report significant numbers of cholera cases since the beginning of this year, the ministry said. "As the rains increase, there is a likelihood of an upsurge of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera in several parts of the country. Already some districts such as Kampala in Namuwongo parish are experiencing an increase of these diseases. So far seven people are sick while two have been reported dead," said a statement.

The Ugandan cabinet has approved an emergency allocation of 1.2 billion shillings (about US $630,000) to aid civilians displaced by an 18-year rebel war in the north and east, a senior government official has said. The budget was in response to an unexpected surge in the numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the beginning of 2004, following a spate of attacks by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on civilian targets, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Moses Ali told IRIN.

United Nations agencies have begun an assessment mission in northwestern Uganda following the mass displacement of Sudanese refugees by Ugandan rebels, an official of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told IRIN on Monday. The UNHCR spokesman for Uganda, Dennis Duncan, said an assessment team comprising UNHCR, World Food Programme and UN Development Programme officials had been sent to the affected districts of Moyo and Adjumani "to figure out where it is safe and where it is not".

In northern Uganda war has raged for 18 years, and shows no signs of abating. People have grown tired of the government's pledges that it will soon end the rebellion by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which claims it is fighting to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments. Increasingly Ugandans are asking for talks between the government and the rebels. Over the past two decades the war in northern Uganda has forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes. Twenty thousand children have been forcibly recruited to fight by the LRA.

Thousands of Congolese refugees are still in Uganda more than a year after a peace deal was signed back home. The refugees are unwilling to return home for fear of ethnic reprisals because parts of eastern Congo, where the Hema and the Lendu – the principal actors in the tribal clashes from which they fled – are said to be still under the rule of warlords. The Congolese, estimated by the Uganda People's Defence Forces to be 10,000 in number, live in Bundibugyo district without refugee status. The Refugee Law Project (RLP) says that they are living in inhuman conditions.

Following a briefing by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, on the humanitarian situation in northern Uganda, the members of the UN Security Council on 14 April 2004 condemned the atrocities carried out by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and expressed their concern about the humanitarian crisis, in particular the large-scale displacement of the civilian population, as well as the abduction of children and their forced recruitment as soldiers. The Council members called on the Ugandan government “to enhance its protection for displaced persons and those providing essential services to them”, and called on all parties to facilitate safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to the civilian population in accordance with international law.

Thousands of people displaced by wars in neighbouring Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have at different times poured into Uganda to seek refuge and rebuild their lives. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Uganda is currently hosting 18,000 refugees from Rwanda and some 171,000 from Sudan. It is harder to give exact figures for refugees from the DRC. UNHCR says that technically the war in eastern DRC has ended, but since migration between western Uganda and eastern DRC has been such a regular part of life in the region for centuries, it is impossible to estimate how many Congolese refugees live in western Uganda.

The ESA CIP is an initiative of the Catalysing Access to Information and Communications Technologies in Africa programme. It is a new Centre dedicated to increasing the capacity of East and Southern African stakeholders to participate in international information and communications technology (ICT) policy-making and is being launched in Kampala, Uganda in April 2004. The following positions are available: Policy Research Associate; Executive Director.

The Nile Perch, popularly known here as ‘sabulenya’, is one of Uganda’s most consumed fish species after tilapia. It was introduced to Lake Victoria, the world’s largest inland fresh water lake, in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the Nile Perch constitutes up to 50 percent of the catch in Uganda, some of which is exported as fillet to Europe, Asia and the United States. The Nile Perch has become a cheap source of protein, often referred to as ‘aquatic chicken’. Yet statistics show that the majority of Ugandans go hungry.

An international consortium is set to launch the East and Southern Africa Centre for International Information and Communications Technology in Kampala, which will work to increase the capacity of the region to participate in international ICT policy-making. Officials of the consortium say there is widespread recognition of the role that ICT can play in poverty alleviation and socio-economic reform.

Health workers in government hospitals went on strike Wednesday to demand a pay increment, their union announced. The chairman of Uganda Medical and Allied Workers Union, Dr Apollo Nyangasi, told The Monitor by telephone that all negotiation avenues with government had been exhausted.

To bring security and democracy to northern Uganda, the government needs a new strategy, argues the International Crisis Group in a new report. The situation demands a comprehensive approach, in which greater political action and intensified humanitarian relief complement military measures against the murky and murderous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The UN calls the eighteen-year civil war, which has displaced 1.5 million people, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

A report funded by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has recommended the extension of universal education to O'Level to minimise the rate of school dropout and child labour. The research was conducted by the Makerere University Social Sciences Department and the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.

Government is considering posting medical doctors at sub-county level in a wider strategy aimed at delivering effective health services in villages. The state minister for primary health care, Dr. Alex Kamugisha, said this at a health workshop at Kolping House in Masindi town recently. "The rate at which mothers and children are dying is unacceptable and that is why the Government is working hard to reduce the distance to health facilities," he said.

Almost 700 lecturers of Makerere University in the Ugandan capital went on strike on Tuesday, demanding pay hikes ranging between 100 and 150 percent, their union said. "It has been decided after a meeting that all lecturers at Makerere University will stop providing their services to the institution until our pay package has been increased," the chairperson of the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA), Ezra Twesigomwa, told reporters.