Ugandan People, Society, Independence, Natural Resources and Economy
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, whose president is H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, is located in East Africa bordered on the east by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied but generally equatorial climate.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the area was ruled as a colony by the British, who established administrative law across the territory. Uganda gained independence from Britain on 9 October 1962. The official language are Swahili and English, and Luganda, a southern language, is widely spoken across the country. Several other languages are also spoken. President Museveni came to power in 1986.
Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, small deposits of copper, gold, and other minerals, and recently discovered oil. Uganda has never conducted a national minerals survey. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing over 80 percent of the workforce. Coffee accounts for the bulk of export revenues. Since 1986, the government – with the support of foreign countries and international agencies – has acted to rehabilitate and stabilize the economy by undertaking currency reform, raising producer prices on export crops, increasing prices of petroleum products, and improving civil service wages. The policy change are especially aimed at dampening inflation and boosting production and export earnings.
Since 1990 economic reforms ushered in an era of solid economic growth based on continued investment in infrastructure, improved incentives for production and exports, lower inflation, better domestic security, and return of exiled Indian-Ugandan entrepreneurs. Uganda has received about $2 billion in multilateral and bilateral debt relief. In 2007 Uganda received $10 million for a Millennium Challenge Account Threshold Program. The global economic downturn hurt Uganda’s exports; however, Uganda’s GDP growth has largely recovered due to past reforms and sound management of the downturn. Oil revenues and taxes will become a larger source of government funding as oil comes on line in the next few years.
Source : Embassy of Uganda, Denmark.
Leave a Reply