forth magazine


Ugandan discussions

Sat 06 Feb, 2010

JACQUI RUSSELL argues for more development – and transparency – in Uganda as a way of guaranteeing rights

ON TUESDAY February 2, the Ugandan blogger known only as Gay Uganda, sent a Twitter message to reassure his followers that no harm had come to him. His silence had been caused by an all-too-common-in-Uganda power cut.

In Uganda, only five per cent of the population is connected to the national grid. Prohibitively expensive, electricity in resource-rich Uganda heavily relies on costly imported fuel, despite natural oil seepage, and the first oil well that was dug in 1938. World War II intervened and only in the 1990s did interest turn again to Uganda’s vast natural resources. This might have been the luckiest thing that ever happened to Uganda.


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