Day: June 19, 2023

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni says he is no longer infected with Covid-19.

Eleven days after testing positive, Mr Museveni says he is now “a veteran graduate of the war with that enemy”.

He made his Covid status public on 7 June - his diagnosis was subsequently a subject of widespread debate and speculation across East Africa.

On Sunday, he announced that he had tested negative in a long and wry statement on Twitter.

He urged Ugandans to follow his health strategy by avoiding risk factors such as smoking and alcohol, exercising and eating healthy African food.

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Covid over as a public health emergency, it is still a global health threat.

Source: BBC

Pope Francis has led prayers at the Vatican for the victims of an Islamist attack on a school in Uganda.

About 40 people - mostly students - were hacked, shot and burned to death in the western town of Mpondwe on Friday night.

The Ugandan army has said it's pursuing the militants, from a group known as the ADF.

They kidnapped six students before escaping across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The attack has also been condemned by the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni who described it as criminal, desperate and futile.

The families of some of the victims have begun burying their loved ones.

Source: BBC

Ugandan police say they have arrested 20 people suspected of collaborating with Islamist militants believed to have attacked a school last Friday.

The head teacher and school's director are among the detained.

Forty-two people - mostly students - were killed at Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe in western Uganda.

Many were burnt to death in their dormitory.

The Ugandan army is still hunting Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militants, who have reportedly moved back over the border into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where they are based.

Source: BBC

The Ugandan authorities say they have arrested three people in connection with an attack on a school on Friday in which about 40 people were killed.

Most of the victims were students at the Lhubiria school in the western town of Mpondwe.

Many were burnt to death in their dormitory.

District Commissioner Joe Walusimbi said the arrests followed tip-offs from local residents.

But he added that the Ugandan army was still hunting for the Islamist militants who have been blamed for the attack and reportedly fled into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Source: BBC

When Betty Ocira Acayo arrived in northern Uganda with her five children, her first concern was where she and her family would live – followed closely by how she would feed them.

Betty’s family crossed the border in 2016, alongside over 500 000 other people, mostly women and children, fleeing violent conflict in South Sudan. The Government of Uganda welcomed families like Betty’s, providing a home for her family in Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement and a 40x40 metre plot of land for her to farm. While Betty had some experience of kitchen gardening, many refugees from South Sudan arriving in Uganda had primarily been livestock keepers, with limited experience of farming.

Many of the 1.5 million refugees in Uganda are in the same situation as Betty – they have been displaced outside of their country for longer than five years, and they don’t know when it will be safe for them to return home.

Despite the inclusive policies that grant refugees land for farming as well as the right to work and move freely in Uganda, a lack of economic opportunities means that more than half of refugees continue to rely on emergency distributions of food and cash to meet their basic needs. Over 90 percent of refugees are highly economically vulnerable, with more than one third experiencing food insecurity.

Refugees have long said that relying on emergency assistance is not a long-term solution. They wish to become self-reliant and simply need the tools and skills to do so.

In that light, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) invests in self-reliance for the benefit of everyone – from the country and communities that host refugees, who are often themselves food insecure, to the refugees, who can build skills to support their livelihoods in their place of displacement or back home, should it become safe to return there.

Betty was invited to join FAO’s Refugee Agricultural Value Chains for Economic Self Reliance project. Funded by the IKEA Foundation, the project’s goal is to build sustainable livelihoods for both refugees living in the Kiryandongo settlement and Ugandans living in the neighboring communities around it.

Through the project, Betty joined an FAO-implemented Farmer Field School where, by working on an experimental garden side-by-side with other refugees and Ugandans, she learned effective agricultural techniques, including vertical gardening, to maximize the space in her plot. She also learned irrigation techniques that require less water, an important consideration in water-scarce Kiryandongo.

Participants were also provided with chickens and taught to keep them. The eggs served as a needed source of protein or income for many families. In addition to crops for her family’s consumption, Betty and the other Farmer Field School participants were given seeds and learned how to grow passion fruit specifically to sell.

In South Sudan, Betty had only grown crops for her family to eat. In contrast, the Farmer Field School in Kiryandongo promoted building skills related to business development, marketing and financial literacy. This helped Betty and the other farmers in her group formalize and register with the district local government, which opens up access to additional financing, including government grants.

They have also formed a savings group that allows members to put away money collectively and lend to members for emergencies or for investment back into their agricultural businesses.

For Betty and the other women who make up 70 percent of participants, the project has been transformative. When Betty’s husband died in South Sudan, her family lost their breadwinner. Now she has taken on that role, selling passion fruit, eggplant and other vegetables in the local market, keeping money aside for emergencies and using the rest to feed her children.

“I realize that the skills I have gained have changed my life,” says Betty. She even shares these new skills with others in the settlement: “Many others come to learn from me.”

The passion fruit crop has proven popular in the local market, and if in the future the new farmers scale up production, FAO will be able to connect them to larger buyers from the capital who can buy the fruit in bulk. This will further increase the sustainability of the passion fruit value chain in Uganda and improve the economic outcomes for farmers.

In the meantime, beyond self-reliance, the project is also contributing to the peaceful coexistence of refugees and their host communities. It is not uncommon for tensions to arise between refugees and local communities, especially over access to natural resources like water and trees and an imbalance in humanitarian and development assistance between the groups. FAO is working with the Government of Uganda to address the root causes of these tensions by creating sustainable forestry management plans and promoting the use of alternative energy sources.

Meanwhile, the project is also helping to improve the relationship between the groups, specifically by including host communities in all of the project activities and creating mixed Farmer Field School groups of Ugandans and refugees so that they can learn new skills from each other and collaborate towards a common goal.

In the course of growing and selling produce, host community members and refugees work together in mutually beneficially ways, and the overall improvement in financial security for both groups has helped to alleviate tensions.

As the number of refugees living globally approaches 37 million and the average length of time that a refugee is displaced is 20 years, governments need new strategies to ensure refugees are living dignified lives, not stuck in limbo without the prospect of a long-term solution. In Kiryandongo and in refugee settlements worldwide, there is a huge opportunity to unlock the full potential of agriculture to help people address their own needs and improve their lives.

Source: EMM/ FAO

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres:

The Secretary-General strongly condemns yesterday’s attack against the Lhubirira secondary school in Mpondwe in western Uganda, reportedly by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) group. The latest reports indicate that dozens of people were killed, mostly students, and that several others were abducted. Those responsible for this appalling act must be brought to justice.

The Secretary-General extends his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and the Government and people of Uganda. He calls for the immediate release of those abducted.

The Secretary-General reiterates the importance of collective efforts, including through enhanced regional partnerships, to tackle cross-border insecurity between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda and restore durable peace in the area.

Source: EMM/ EMM

A bereaved Ugandan border town on Sunday began burying the victims of a brutal attack on a school by suspected extremist rebels that left 42 people dead, most of them students, as security forces stepped up patrols along the frontier with volatile eastern Congo.

Source: France24.com

In tonight's edition: Twenty people are arrested in Uganda, suspected of collaborating with the notorious militia group blamed for last week's tragic and deadly school attack. Also, a phone application is saving lives in Gabon by linking potential blood donors to those who need an urgent transfusion. And as Senegalese Muslims prepare for the religious feast of Tabaski, sheep farmers who provide the traditional sacrifice are set to lose out as fearful customers stay away from celebrations.

Source: France24.com

Grieving families prepared to bury their dead in western Uganda while others desperately searched for loved ones still missing after militants killed dozens of students in a school attack.

Officials say at least 41 people, mostly students, were massacred on Friday in the worst attack of its kind in Uganda since 2010.

Victims were hacked, shot and burned in the late-night raid on Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe, which lies less than two kilometres from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Pope Francis offered a prayer on Sunday for “the young student victims of the brutal attack” that has shocked Uganda and drawn condemnation from around the globe.

Ugandan authorities have blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia based in DR Congo, and are pursuing the attackers who fled back toward the border with six abductees in captivity.

Fifteen others from the community, including five girls, were still missing, said Eriphaz Muhindi, chairman of Kasese district, which shares a long and forested border with DR Congo.

Seventeen victims were burned beyond recognition when the attackers set a locked dormitory ablaze, frustrating efforts to identify the dead and account for the missing.

Muhindi said they had been taken away for DNA testing, a process that could take some time.

Families desperate for news waited all night in the cold outside a mortuary in Bwera, a town near where the attack occurred.

Those able to identify loved ones inside the mortuary embraced and wept as they received the bodies and took them away in coffins for burial.

Others milled about anxiously, still without any information of their relatives.

The government said it would assist with funeral arrangements and supporting the injured.

Thirty-seven students died in the attack, said Uganda’s first lady and education minister, Janet Museveni.

The badly burned bodies of 17 male students were found in their dormitory which was totally destroyed by fire.

Witnesses said they locked the door when they heard gunshots.

Twenty female students tried to run to safety but were hacked to death with machetes.

Investigators said a security guard at the school gate was shot dead as the attackers forced their way in, while three members of the public were also killed.

The African Union, France and the United States, a close ally of Uganda, offered their condolences and condemned the bloodshed.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: “Those responsible for this appalling act must be brought to justice.”

Museveni said the army would track down “these evil people and they will pay for what they have done”.

But questions have been raised about how the attackers managed to evade detection in a border region with a heavy military presence.

Major General Dick Olum said that intelligence suggested the presence of the ADF in the area at least two days before the attack, and an investigation would be needed to establish what went wrong.

Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but the measures have failed to blunt the group’s violence.

Originally insurgents in Uganda, the ADF gained a foothold in eastern DRC in the 1990s and have since been accused of killing thousands of civilians.

Attacks in Uganda are rare but in June 1998, 80 students were burnt to death in their dormitories in an ADF raid on Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DR Congo border.

More than 100 students were abducted.

Friday’s attack is the deadliest in Uganda since 2010, when 76 people were killed in twin bombings in the capital Kampala by the Somalia-based group Al-Shabaab

Source: Nam News Network