Is the Uganda government set to become an efficient deliverer of services to the 28 million Ugandans out there? At least this is what the nationals are supposed to believe if the benefits that accrue from the completion of the first phase of the National Data Backbone is anything to go by.

Is decentralization consistent with development goals? What can we learn from Uganda? This paper from the Economic Policy Research Centre, Kampala, reviews Uganda’s experience of decentralization to highlight its effects on the empowerment of local leaders and residents, local elite capture, service delivery and the promotion of sector responses.

Early one morning in 1993, Wilson Turinawe woke up to the crack of gunfire in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. Paramilitary park rangers were attacking his village. His thatched hut was set on fire. His wife grabbed their infant child and ran. Turinawe was slashed with a machete. He still has the scars. “They came with guns,” he recalls, with a disbelief in his voice that suggests the episode might have taken place just yesterday instead of fifteen years ago.

Uganda’s Batwa communities have been marginalised for decades. Now they are struggling to cope with extreme weather conditions, and want better homes to protect them from storms and landslides. Among the posh office premises of the Red Cross Society and the court of adjudicature on Muchingo hill, in Uganda's western district of Kisoro, are ramshackle houses in which a community of Batwa people live.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/soawr_logo.jpgMarren Akatsa-Bukachi, executive director of the Eastern African sub Regional Support Initiative for Advancement of Women (EASSI), Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe, executive director of Akina Mama wa Afrika and Patricia Munabi Babiiha, executive director of the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) speak to Firoze Manji about the challenges of persuading Uganda to ratify the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

The security situation may have improved in areas of Kenya hit by post-election violence, but many of the thousands of refugees who fled to Uganda are still too scared to return.

Ugandan rebels have walked out of peace talks because the government refused their demands for senior government posts, a rebel spokesperson said on Friday. The two sides have been meeting in Sudan-mediated peace talks since July 2006 in an effort to resolve a brutal 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda. Earlier this week, the talks took a major step forward with an agreement on how to prosecute alleged war crime

Uganda’s major trade partners are not only looking for food markets but also for seed markets. This has happened in a push that has been packaged as ‘‘the new green revolution’’ by corporations involved in biotechnology and chemicals. They have been supported by philanthropic organizations, notably the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Ugandan parliament will soon have a hearing on the draft Plant Variety Protection Bill, approved by the cabinet early last year. If passed unmodified, the bill is likely to entrench the rights of breeders and companies while curtailing the rights of small farmers to exchange, save and breed new varieties using hybrid seeds.

The Ugandan government has struck a deal with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) about where their leaders will be tried. LRA leaders accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes would be tried by a national court under the terms of the deal. Many of the people have been charged with horrific crimes – and international warrants have been out for their arrest for more than two and a half years.

Uganda has undergone a striking change in the profile of people becoming newly infected, with older and married individuals now making up the vast majority of new infections, according to findings from a national study of HIV incidence conducted in 2004-5 and presented last week at the Fifteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

A UNHCR emergency response team has been deployed to south-east Uganda where the number of Kenyan refugees fleeing poll-related violence across the border has risen to 12,000. The small refugee agency team will be based in the border town of Tororo. They will lead emergency response and coordination with the local and central authorities in the area.

Unwanted or unplanned pregnancy is a significant risk for women with HIV within 18 months of starting antiretroviral therapy, and in Uganda few were being offered family planning methods in order to avoid pregnancy, researchers reported on Tuesday at the Fifteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

The government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have resumed talks aimed at ending the 22-year conflict in northern Uganda and agreed to extend by a month the cessation of hostilities deal signed in August 2007. The talks, in the Southern Sudanese town of Juba, are being attended by observers from the US, the UN, European Union and several African states.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on Ugandan authorities to put an end to the harassment of journalists in the country after five journalists and editors of the privately-owned Daily Monitor newspaper were charged with defamation after they published stories alleging the government’s Inspector General is involved in a salary scam.

A delegation of eleven government officials from Malawi is in Uganda for a study tour on the implementation of information communication technology (ICT). The delegation also includes officials studying energy projects among others. "We are here to learn how the Uganda government is implementing universal access through various information communication technology projects," said the Malawian government manager for the Wide Area Network Patrick Machika who is also the leader of the ICT group.

A World Bank report has applauded Uganda for embracing new technologies in her development process. The report 'Global Economic Prospects 2008: Technology Diffusion in the Developing World' examines the state of technology in developing countries and the pace with which it has advanced since the early 1990s. "The report reveals both encouraging and cautionary trends," the bank said in a statement issued recently.

The Uganda government ministries and departments are now connected to each other and teleconferencing between them is possible. According to a statement issued by the information communication technology ministry, the network is being refined and will be officially launched in Kampala soon.

The Pan African ILGA, a body representing 41 movements of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexual people in Africa has written to the Commonwealth complaining about the behaviour of the Ugandan police towards LGBTI activists in Kampala during the Comonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kampala last November.

A survey commissioned by DENIVA (Development Networks of Indigenous Voluntary Associations) and I-Network (Information Network) in May - June 2007, in Uganda, has shown a close link between ICT and poverty reduction. The countrywide survey indicates that developments of ICTs tend to increase income inequality within a country and it requires relatively good education and special skills to make full use of it