Uganda - The African Mirror

Nov

2023

Uganda October coffee exports up 3% on bumper crop in southwest

UGANDA'S coffee exports in October were up 3.4% year on year, helped by a bumper crop in the southwest of the country, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) said in a report. Uganda is Africa's largest exporter of coffee beans and earnings from the shipments are one of the country's main sources of foreign exchange. The East African country shipped 470,080 60kg bags in October, the UCDA report said. Though volumes were up only 3.4%, the October shipments fetched $79 million for an 18% jump on the same month last year. "The monthly coffee exports performance was higher than the…

Nov

2023

By The African Mirror

IS-allied rebel group commander charged with murder of honeymooning tourists

NEWS

A commander in an Islamic State-allied rebel group was charged with nine offences including the murder of a honeymooning tourist couple and their aide in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park, court papers showed. Kyoto Abdul Rashid, of the militant Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), was captured earlier this month in a night-time operation by the Ugandan military in which six rebels were also killed. Rashid "with malice aforethought caused the murder" of the couple David and Celia Barlow and their Ugandan aide Eric Ayai, according to a charge sheet seen by Reuters. David Barlow was British while his wife was South African. Rashid was also…

Nov

2023

By The African Mirror

Nyege Nyege music festival in Uganda continues despite terror warnings – and with less pressure from morality police

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

FIRST staged in 2015, the globally touted Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda is an annual four-day dance party featuring hundreds of deejays. It’s also a major tourism drawcard that caters to 15,000-odd lovers of electronic dance music. However, Nyege Nyege is most often in the headlines for creating controversy. Last year the event, the first after a three-year break due to COVID-19, nearly didn’t happen. Uganda’s parliament banned it – and not for the first time – on the grounds that it promoted “sexual immorality”. Eventually, the prime minister gave it the go-ahead. This year the festival, being held at…

Nov

2023

By The African Mirror

American couple in Uganda accused of torturing boy plead guilty to lesser charges

NEWS

A U.S. couple previously charged in Uganda with aggravated torture and child trafficking pleaded guilty to lesser charges and will now pay a range of fines of up to 105 million shillings ($28,000), according to a court ruling. Nicholas Spencer and his wife Mackenzie Leigh Mathias Spencer, both in their early 30s and from South Carolina, were detained in December last year and initially charged with the graver offences against a 10-year-old boy they had fostered and were living within Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The charge of aggravated child trafficking carries the death penalty in Uganda while aggravated child torture draws a…

Nov

2023

By The African Mirror

US to evict Gabon, Niger, Uganda and Central African Republic from trade program

NEWS

U.S. President Joe Biden said that he intends to end the participation of Gabon, Niger, Uganda and the Central African Republic in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade program. Biden said he was taking the step because of "gross violations" of internationally recognized human rights by the Central African Republic and Uganda. He also cited Niger and Gabon's failure to establish or make continual progress toward the protection of political pluralism and the rule of law. "Despite intensive engagement between the United States and the Central African Republic, Gabon, Niger, and Uganda, these countries have failed to address…

Oct

2023

By KANISHKA SINGH AND JASPER WARD

US warns businesses of risks in Uganda, citing anti-LGBTQ law

NEWS

THE United States issued a business advisory for Uganda, saying that businesses faced potential risks in the African country, citing an anti-LGBTQ law condemned by many countries and the United Nations. The advisory was issued by the U.S. Departments of State, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Commerce, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. THE TAKE Uganda's anti-LGBTQ law, considered one of the harshest in the world, was enacted in May and carries the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality," an offence that includes transmitting HIV through gay sex. It drew condemnation from Western governments, including Washington, and put in jeopardy…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Uganda vows to track down killers of tour guide, honeymoon couple

NEWS

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni vowed that Ugandan forces would track down those responsible for the deaths of a safari guide and two foreign tourists who were honeymooning in a national park. Ugandan authorities have accused the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) of killing the couple, a South African and a British national, and their Ugandan guide on Tuesday evening near the Queen Elizabeth National Park. The ADF, which began as an uprising in Uganda but has been based in the nearby Democratic Republic of Congo since the late 1990s, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State four years ago. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Congo-based Islamist group stages deadly ambush in Uganda

NEWS

A rebel group based in Congo and allied to Islamic State killed at least one man and injured another when it ambushed a truck in western Uganda overnight, the army said on Friday, in a relatively rare cross-border attack. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) started as a Ugandan insurgency but has operated from the jungles of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for almost three decades. In 2019 the ADF pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which has since claimed responsibility for a number of the group's bombings and massacres. At around 01:00 (1000 GMT) on Friday, five ADF fighters…

Sep

2023

By The African Mirror

Uganda’s anti-gay law causing wave of rights abuses, activists say

NEWS

THE consideration and passage by Uganda's government of one of the world's harshest anti-gay laws have unleashed a torrent of abuse against LGBTQ people, mostly committed by private individuals, rights groups said on Thursday. The Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), which was enacted in May, prescribes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts. At least six people have been charged under it, including two accused of the capital offence of "aggravated homosexuality". But the report, authored by a committee of the Convening for Equality (CFE) coalition, said the main perpetrators of human rights abuses against LGBTQ people this year - including torture, rape, arrest…

Sep

2023

By The African Mirror

Uganda in talks with Chinese credit agency for pipeline funds

BUSINESS

UGANDA is in advanced talks with Chinese export credit agency SINOSURE to provide credit for its crude oil pipeline after pressure from environmentalists forced some Western banks to recoil from the project, a top official said on Monday. The 1,445-kilometre (898-mile) East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is planned to help Uganda export its crude from oilfields in the country's west via a port on Tanzania's Indian Ocean coast. It is co-owned by the government of Uganda, France's TotalEnergie, China's CNOOC and Tanzania's Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC). The project will cost $5 billion, including the cost of credit and 40%…