Walking a lone street, downtown Kampala. - Photo by Edward Echwalu

For many Ugandans 2011 has been full of tonnes of sad moments and memories. Memories that will probably not go away in a short time. The year started off with a lot of energy as Ugandan went to polls; to vote for the president (February, 2011). There was a big wave of anticipation – wishing that this would be the time of “change”. A time for Uganda to vote “right” and have a new president.

Question was, if Uganda voted for a new president, what would be next?

Anyways, this was was all wishful thinking – Museveni who has been president since 1986 won with a landslide victory (as usual).

Edward Echwalu a professional Ugandan photo journalist followed all of these events and his blog post gives you a comprehensive summary of the events with pictures. PICTURES OF THE YEAR 2011.

In Uganda, over 80 percent of the total population depends on agriculture as the sole source of livelihood. However, the changes in seasons have greatly affected food and crop yields in the country. Prolonged droughts, pests and diseases have made agriculture barely reliable to majority of the peasant/ rural farmers. As a result farmers have resorted to engaging in other economic activities such they don’t have to totally rely on agricultural produce.

The Challenge:

On the African continent majority of the population is illiterate and not aware of impacts of climate change on social and economical development. So, how do you ensure that the communities get ready to take on a challenge that they are not even aware of?

Majority of the Africans live in failed states which means that civil societies have very little/ no influence on government policies. For example, recently the government of Uganda under the influence of President Museveni’s directive tried to give away part of Mabira Forest to Mehta Group an investor who owns the Sugar Cooperation of Uganda Limited. The civil society in Uganda openly challenged this directive and vowed to protect Mabira Forest. Under such circumstances, the smaller communities have very limited room for negotiation with the governments to influence government policy.

Outside Africa:

Javie Ssozi (left), with Teddy Ruge of Connect4Climate at the World Bank in D.C

Two months ago I had the opportunity to meet the Connect4Climate team in Washington D.C – Connect4 Climate is a World Bank project, the goal of C4C is to raise awareness about climate change issues around the world, with an initial focus on Africa. The team is looking to engage the youth through use of new media. Connect4Climate is already engaging the African youth on climate change through social media and a photo/ video competition.

After meeting with the Connect4Climate team, I took the pleasure to meet Dr. Vernon R. Morris, the Director, Principal Investigator at The NOAA Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Howard University (http://ncas.howard.edu). Dr. Morris has conducted various researches on Climate Change across the Sub-Saharan Africa and he agrees that Africa is a very special case when it comes to climate change.

A word with Dr. Morris, the Atmospheric Science expert:

In my conversation with Dr. Morris he pointed out one of the findings of his research from the Sub-Saharan Africa which basically shows that global warming can expose dangerous bacterium which can cause diseases like blindness. He added that the recent research in the western Sub-Saharan African shows that blindness is becoming a common disease in parts of northern Mali. “We followed the track of this bacterium and the findings show that due to the direction of the wind, the bacteria is moving west towards the Atlantic ocean.”

“In Chad, we used the satellite data to analyze the issues of climate change in the region. We found that Lake Chad is shrinking. When we talked to the people who live just along the shores of Lake Chad, they said that they had not noticed any significant changes in the size of the lake!” says Dr. Morris.

What this means is, even though the African communities are willing to understand and make sense out of climate change, there is limited awareness and limited access to aggregated data to help the ordinary people understand issues of climate change better.

A Projection on Africa:

As you already know, most of the countries inside Africa are low developed which means that they have limited access to resources which would come in handy in the efforts of climate change mitigation. And by resources I not only refer to money; I am talking about (skilled) human resource (specifically on climate change issues), research, information facilities/ programs and infrastructure.

I must recognize the role of the various civil society groups and local NGOs in Africa which are activating action on climate change.

While developed countries like the United States, Germany, China and Japan have highly invested in research, training experts, building infrastructure and in raising awareness on global warming and climate change, African countries remain too corrupt and irresponsible to consider the effects of climate change as a major threat to life.

Quick Way forward:

Even though the developing countries have conducted extensive research on climate change in and outside Africa, it’s very important that we (Africans) consider revisiting those almost abandoned banks/ techniques of indigenous knowledge that our ancestors used centuries/ decades ago. Those should be our climbing stones towards finding sustainable solutions to reduce on the effects of climate change on lives.

The developed countries have a huge role to play in terms of giving African countries access to visual data from the research conducted on the African continent and perhaps relate this data to other continents of the world. As such, African countries will have access to information which will help the wider communities digest the meaning, implications and effects of climate change and global warming.

Individual African countries will perhaps find the cost of access to satellite resources very high but forming if African countries through the European Union collectively invest in climate monitoring networks and regional climate models for Africa.

International organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, “African Union” and many others understand their role in influencing government policies in developing countries. They should take advantage of that same influence for the better good to ensure that governments in African integrate issues of “climate” in their policies.

African governments should also understand and recognise the role of civil society, scientists and NGOs in climate change mitigation. From my experience in Uganda, the government of Uganda has oppressed civil society groups like the “Save Mabira Activist”.

Children collecting water at a bore hole in Amuru district, Northern Uganda

I would be surprised if any Ugandan came out to support the violence the world witnessed not just last week during Dr. Besigye’s brutal arrest or even on what is now known as “Black Friday” (29^th March). The military and anti-riot police using live bullets and all sorts of aggressive tactic to disperse the angry protesters: that alone triggers insecurity. This is not new to Ugandans as we have seen a lot of this in the past 3 weeks. Such misuse of power is aimed at intimidating people and denying them of their constitutional right – to demonstrate and hold the government accountable.

Watching these devastating scenes in pictures and videos on that day left me puzzled and wondering whether the security bodies in Uganda had completely gone out of their minds. Many Ugandans (and the whole world at large) are now more concerned and doubting Uganda government’s capability to protect the people.

Even though most of the Ugandans will/have not come out openly to demonstrate or demand the government to reduce the prices of fuel and other commodity prices, they remain worried and concerned. Fuel, food and commodity prices continue to skyrocket while the incomes of Ugandans are remaining stable. At the moment, even the middle income earners can barely afford the minimum living standards!

Knowing that majority of the citizen live on less than USD 1 a day, how does the government expect people to survive the current crisis? Of course many people will continue to join the protests because the Uganda government has failed to come out with a convincing statement defining a possible plan to cut/ regulate fuel and commodity prices.

Silence is NOT consent – the government of Uganda should STOP taking Ugandans for granted in times when they need a serious intervention. Listen to the silence of the people and give them a voice. Do NOT add more masking-take to their lips! Thats all Dr. Besigye is going.

A Police officer carries away a sign post used by protesters to elaborate commodity prices

The government however remained quiet amidst the allegations. Following the silence of the government the opposition leaders continued to lobby the government to reduce fuel prices claiming that this would help stabilize the commodity prices in the country. They also threatened to launch a peaceful demonstration which they called the “Walk to Work” campaign – calling upon people to leave their vehicles at home and walk to work to boycott use of fuel as a way to provoke government reaction. The opposition leaders issued a public statement which was aimed at informing the general public that the Walk to Work campaign was to commence on Monday 11^th April and that it would go on every Monday and Thursday of the week until the government addressed people’s demands.

On Sunday 10^th April, the press statement broadcast over Television by the Inspector General of Police – Maj. Gen. Kale Kaihura assured Ugandans that demonstrations like “Walk to Work” were not going to be allowed in Kampala. He continued that the Uganda Police and other security agencies were on alert and committed to protect the people of Uganda and their property. He therefore urged the people not to worry but turn up for work the following day.

On the morning of Monday 11^th, the opposition leaders started their walk to work (from their homes) as they had earlier communicated. They were however voluntarily joined by “stray” people in the walk. Even though some of the people joined in protest of the high prices, others were just taking that opportunity to hang around the popular opposition leaders who included – Dr. Kizza Besigye (Forum for Democratic Change), Nobert Mao (Democratic Party) among others. Before they got too far, the police and military intervened with blockades and ordered the opposition leaders to retreat.

A live coverage on NTV and NBS (local televisions) shows peaceful protestors being dispersed by police with use of teargas, rubber bullets and gunfire. This brought an end to the peaceful demonstration giving birth to a heated up scuffle between the police and protesters. The angry protestors were reacting in self defense to resist arrest and beating administered by the police and military. Protesters reacted to the excessive force by throwing stones and setting up fires in the middle of the roads. Many people sustained injuries from the rubber bullets, gun shots and others were beaten by the police. A number of opposition leaders were arrested that same day even though some of them were released on bail.

The police and military quickly got on top of the situation and a few hours later the situation was back in control. However for the opposition leaders’ plans to continue the Walk to Work on Thursday of the same week were still in order. Police remained ready with blockades on the roads. As soon as the opposition leaders connected to the main roads from their homes the military intercepted and tried to arrest them. The angry protesters this time came in handy to protect the opposition leaders and fellow protestors from the military and police brutality. The heated up arguments turned into arrests for the unlucky opposition leaders. This is the third time the opposition leaders are being arrested with in just a period of 8 days.

By day two of the Walk to Work campaign, the protests had already spread to several parts of the country – apart from Kampala district, media houses reported demonstrations in Masaka, Mbarara, Kayunga, Mukono, Gulu, Soroti and Wakiso among other districts.

Even though some of the leaders remain behind bars, the ones who were released have assured the general public that tomorrow they will Walk to Work!

In his Nation address, the incumbent president of Uganda (Museveni) highly criticized the opposition for inciting violence. He advised Ugandans not to join the Walk to Work campaign claiming that the opposition leaders are just being selfish and trying to topple his government. “My farmers are actually very happy about because they are reaping highly from the high commodity prices” said the president.  In his speech this afternoon, Museveni has advised the Boda Boda riders in Kampala not to boycott the Walk to Work campaign tomorrow. He has promised to give the Boda Boda drivers’ association Ugandan Shillings 200 million.

Museveni’s national address mainly focused on accusing his political rivals, this has raised concern among many of the Ugandans as seen in the comments here: http://redpepper.co.ug/welcome/?p=5796

The opposition leaders maintain that the Walk to Work protests will continue tomorrow – that will be day 3!

The future of commodity prices in Uganda remains uncertain.

Summary of Other Stories that are making headlines on the Walk to Work Protests in Uganda

• Story of the boy who was shot in the head: http://newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/752571
• Another Pregnant woman was shot in the stomach: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/752177
• Two people were shot dead in Gulu.
• Presidential Candidates arrested in Third Day of the Protests: http://dispatch.ug/2011/04/18/presidential-candidates-arrested-in-third-day-of-protests/
• Chaos breaks out in Uganda as Protests continue: http://dispatch.ug/2011/04/14/chaos-breaks-out-in-uganda-as-protests-continue/
• NTV’s YouTube video feed clearly shows the military and police harassing innocent civilians: http://www.youtube.com/user/ntvuganda
• With Responsible leadership, Uganda will survive the crisis: http://newvision.co.ug/D/8/20/752551

Please Call Kizito Malumba (of Youth Aid Uganda, our hosting partner)to confirm participation and regarding the venue 0782323191, or 0704323191.
In summary, the four parts of the workshop will be:
1. About GlobalGiving (what is it, how to join)
2. Fundraising strategies (both online and local tips)
3. How social media is part of your fundraising
4. Introducing the Storytelling project — helps with evaluation and raising awareness about issues.

The following will be:

#1 – Expanding your FUNDRAISING. We will cover both local and international online strategies. (Note: You’ve already heard this part of the workshop, sorry for the redundancy as this will be new to most attendees. Part #2 and #3 are NEW to you.)

#2 – GlobalGiving tools for:

• donor management,
• corporate relations,
• volunteer recruiting,
• recurring donors,
• integrating with social media,
• beneficiary feedback as part of your evaluation strategy, and
• how we can make your a stronger candidate for external grants

#3 – Introducing our Storytelling project. We’ll explain how thousands of brief narratives from East Africa can transform your understanding of your work and improve your monitoring and evaluation.

Please respond to reserve a spot. You are encouraged to invite members from other organizations your work with. Please have them email me to reserve a spot as well.

Please alert any of your partners that are not already on GlobalGiving that the deadline to self-nominate and submit Due Diligence for the next (April) open challenge is March 1st, 2011. Refer them to http://www.globalgiving.org/open-challenge-nomination/ for what is required.

Note that we will provide drinks and a lunch, but we will NOT REIMBURSE your travel or lodging expenses. This training is free and open to any organization that wishes to attend, as long as they RSVP in advance.
About Storytelling: GlobalGiving has launched a storytelling effort that should provide you (and all organizations in your community) with timely information about the complex issues, needs, and efforts that affect your work.

Results of our 2010 storytelling pilot  project are online: http://www.globalgiving.org/story-tools/

Looking forward to meeting you in person!

The role of fetching water in the African Traditional Society was assigned to the women and children. Up to the present day, women and children still carry this burden along while the men continue to generate income from water sources. In cities and on the country side of many developing countries you will see women and children in small and big groups carrying jerrycans of water on their heads. Access to water in many developing countries remains a very big challenge – dirty water sources, long distances to and from water sources (usually up to 4 kilometers).

What does this mean for these women and children?

The burden of having to fetch water means that the women and children often have to fore-go other activities – for the women, they end up having limited time to grow food and limited participation in entrepreneurship. The children on the other hand, end up missing out on education and playing. This has further widened the income disparities between men and women. No wonder the economies in developing countries have not registered much development.

The African Traditional Society also regarded women as the food growers. The women and their children were given the task of ensuring food security in their homes. However, the ownership of family plots was always solely reserved by the men. This means that the men had more influence over what is grown on these plots of land. In the same way, the men would take ownership of the agricultural produce. This is still the case in many developing countries.

So, what can be done?

Women should be empowered! But how can the women be empowered in the “modern times”. Many women missed out on the opportunity to go to school. However, this is not a time to regret on the mistakes that we cant take back. This is a time to effect change, a time for a new beginning of a era where Women and Men are equal.

Every tool can help, every project can cause impact. Technology, Football, Music, Art, Education,  Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, to mention but a few have been very key tools in women empowerment.

Whats your contribution towards women empowerment?

The struggle continues…

A few weeks ago I was one of the panelists at the “Villages in Action” conference in Kikuube village located in Masindi, Uganda. This “first” ever village conference, was organized by Teddy Ruge of Project Diaspora.

Almost 50% of all the conferences organized world-wide have the agenda of rural development. However, most of these conferences are hosted in big cities, 5-Star hotels and most of the participants (including panelists) are people who have very limited insight of rural livelihood. This means that the rural people are always under represented.

It is against the above (specific) reasons that I think the “Villages in Action” conference was a very relevant conference to the people of Kikuube village and Uganda at large. This conference took the microphones closer to the rural people (for their voices to be heard) and the cameras closer to their faces (for them to show the world the part of the villages like they have never seen). Orange Uganda (one of the Telecoms) generously sponsored the conference with a dedicated 17Mbs fast internet connection to enable a live video stream of the conference (first of the kind in Uganda).

The young people of Kikuube village show-cased some of their technological innovations: * Radio made out of scrap radio part, * a woofer made out of a calabash and speakers cased in old jerry cans/ boxes and * a motorcycle made out of old plastic parts (and wood) tied together with banana fibers.

At this conference I learnt very many things, but most importantly, I learnt the reasons why many villages have remained backward even though they have a lot of potential to develop. Reasons include:

• the rural people don’t have access to media,
• they don’t have access to resources (information and capital) and
• no mentors

So, without the above (among others) all their potential, good ideas and innovations always go unnoticed.

This festive season I spent 7 days in my home village visiting family and monitor the work done by rural farmers under the Rural Farming for Development project. During my stay in the village, I got a chance to see some of the innovations in my villages. And this time, I took each one of them very seriously.

Mr. Bugembe John is a local folk who has always blown people’s minds since I was a little boy because he is always trying to make something cool out of his ideas and scrap. When I visited my village a few years ago he was developing a Wind turbine which he used to generate some power to light his house for a while. This time I took the liberty to visit him and we had a very short but very momentous chat about locally-made technology and rural development.

“The challenge here (in the village) is, I develop gadgets but I don’t have capital! So, usually it’s a very huge sacrifice for me to keep investing my small finances into all these ideas that I have to implement them”, Mr. Bugembe said with an unhappy face.

“Recently I made a low-cost water pump; over here, let me show you”, he said with a happy face while walking me towards his little pig-sty where he keeps the water pump.

He showed me a demo of how the water pump works – see you Tube Video. When I talked to one of the local farmers about the water pump, he said “yes, Bugembe made a water pump – and its indeed powerful.”

Mr. Bugembe is just one of the many African-Innovators who have the ability to develop technologies that are localized for the African communities, at cheap costs. But these innovators have a challenge of limited access to resources – both in terms of funds and information.

I don’t know about everybody else, but I think Africa is at the point where we can make our own stuff, use it and share it with the world. The major advantage in this is people will get more localized technologies, easy to maintain and at cheap prices because things are made locally. The first step towards achieving this is to promote the rural innovations (and ideas) through the available media, provide mentorship to local innovators and make capital available to those who need it.

During my stay in my home village this festive season, I learned yet another lesson about the hardships in water access in rural Uganda. This time I managed to capture a very short video (2:40) for you to watch.

Even though I remain very puzzled (because the situation has been like this for the past 15 years or so), I continue to ask myself whether people in this village should remain hopeful that one day safe water will come closer to them.

And this is where I want to ask our leaders – Members of Parliament (etc): “what have they done to improve on safe and clean water access which seems to be getting worse?”

Even though I prefer mobile internet to SMS, I am not sure whether I would trade my SMS functionality for the mobile internet functionality – even though I can still keep both!

Of course some people would frankly say “YES”, because of the well known SMS limitations:–

• Each message is limited to 160 Character,
• SMS is more expensive as opposed to data (if you think about it, literally),
• SMS is getting outdated (a concept that I don’t agree with!).
• Some people don’t know how the SMS functionality on their phones works

The other obvious reasons as to why one would choose mobile internet over SMS in a country like Uganda (and/ Africa) today:

• Phone calls are becoming cheaper and cheaper with the current competition among telecoms
• The growth of mobile internet in Africa and Uganda to be more specific

That being said, what are the advantaged of SMS over Mobile Internet?

As Mobile Internet continues to rollout in Uganda, SMS remains a useful extension of online services. SMS marketing and advertizing is becoming a major trend in Uganda because it is cheap when sent out in bulk. “Often I receive advertizing SMS messages from different short codes (not to mention my carrier) either advertising products, events or even services.”

Most importantly other people/organisations are using SMS more innovatively to disseminate relevant information to the wider communities. For example, over the past 2 years I have provided technical support on Women of Uganda Network’s SMS campaigns aimed at raising awareness of Violence Against Women. Text To change – “uses state of the art mobile phone technology to collect and disseminate health information”. The Kuyu Project is developing “StorySpaces“  – an application which aims at using the tools that the end users are most familiar with, which in this case is the mobile phone, and turning it into a tool for participating in global conversations. Its such innovations that

Every other year gives me assurance on the relevance of SMS as a tool for extending online services and breaking the barrier of the “digital divide”.

And there is no doubt SMS is technically cheaper than data in the long run because once an SMS is stored in your inbox, you can read the message as many times as you want with NO extra charges. But lets look at data (mobile internet for example) – even though the cost is shared between the sender and the receiver, that is, the sender pays for uploading the data and the receiver pays for downloading the data; the receiver will be charged every time he/she revisits the same data. This makes data quite expensive.

SMS cannot work as a substitute to the (mobile) internet in any case and often the cost of SMS to me can never go unrealized (because its post paid) as opposed to the postpaid mobile internet charges.

Question remains, how badly is the mobile internet revolution in Africa likely to affect the SMS based applications, usage and innovations?

“Safe and clean drinking water is a human right”, declares the United Nations. However, its such a shame that to many rural communities around the world, this “human right” is still a “myth”. Many communities don’t have access to safe and clean drinking water.

Personally, I have a very special interest in observing the way people access water in rural Uganda. Often I carry a digital camera, to take photos on water access.

From my observation, I have noticed that many rural areas have hardships in accessing water sources – they often have to walk more than one kilometer to find the nearest water source. Often these are swamps, lakes, rivers, streams, or even mere trickles of water. A few rural communities have access to boreholes while others have managed to dig up water wells to enable free access to water.

Even though many of these communities will not complain openly, they often face hardships. Hardships range from the long-inconveniencing distances that people have to walk to access water to threats of infections from water born diseases like typhoid, dysentery and bilharzia that people are prone to due to dirty and unsafe water. Rural people live with and suffer from, but know little about these threats because they are not informed but cases of typhoid, dysentery and bilharzia are very common in rural areas and the biggest cause is drinking dirty water.

I believe our communities need more information on improved water access, their rights and health information.

Communal Water Access - Apac District, Nothern Uganda

In the cities like Kampala, the story of water access is really saddening. People have to depend on broken water pipes to access free water. Others will look for streams on the suburbs of the cities where they live because many people still live in poverty and them, clean water (which they have to pay for) would not be very helpful when they don’t even have food. Often people choose to spend more on food and improvise with water by looking for free water sources in the neighborhoods. Even though the many urban poor don’t have to walk kilometers to access free water, they are at the same risk of catching diseases from this free-unsafe water.

Now the question remains, what can the United Nations do to ensure that even the rural-poor communities of the world get improved access to clean and safe drinking water?

At the same risk of catching diseases from this openly available water– so easy to reach in the short term, yet so costly in terms of health after all.