City Life

The gateway to African economic revival in a place once famous only for a hijacking

Lucy Beresford

21 October 2006

Uganda’s economic revival depends above all on one thing: security. Along its Western border, Uganda has suffered from a continuing power vacuum in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while its north-eastern region has been terrorised for two decades by the Lord’s Resistance Army, infamous for its use of children as fighters and sex slaves. This civil war has resulted in a humanitarian crisis thought to have displaced 1.8 million people; the LRA’s territory is now a wasteland — its once-thriving agricultural base destroyed. A recent truce is proving fragile.

Newly discovered oil deposits near Lake Albert to the east of the country (30 million recoverable barrels, apparently) need to be protected, as does the workforce. And in the major tourist attraction of gorilla trekking, every group of tourists is accompanied by Ugandan army soldiers, AK-47s slung over their shoulders — a practice put into place following the killing in 1999 of eight tourists, including four Britons.

Many ordinary Ugandans are finding out for themselves that increased tourism brings benefits. People who previously eked out a living on the banana plantations are establishing new communities around the national parks, home to the endangered mountain gorillas. In Bwindi, fledgling entrepreneurs offer a nice line in freshly baked cakes and wooden gorillas: the splash of white on the back to denote the rare Silverback males is done with Tippex. The strongest men in the village act as porters to trekking tourists; mine earned £40 for a day’s work, a month’s wages for a farm labourer. But he earned it, carrying me piggy-back for four hours in humid temperatures after I’d injured myself, up near-vertical inclines, hacking at the jungle as he went — the park is not called the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for nothing.

Despite rumours at home and abroad of corruption, Museveni pursues a commendably long-term approach to tourism: only 24 people a day are allowed to trek the gorillas, to avoid stressing the primates and compromising their immune systems; a recent conference at one of Entebbe’s lakeside hotels explored increased vocational training opportunities for Ugandans, now that the country needs more hotel managers and chefs; and water experts from Britain are advising the Ugandan authorities on how to tackle the fact that 30 per cent of urban dwellers and 40 per cent of the rural population lack any water supply.

There’s a lot at stake for this stunningly beautiful, friendly country. Full economic progress is being hampered by potholed roads, water shortages and power-cuts; there is no national airline, and credit cards are not widely accepted. But as one expat told me, ‘The government here is very forward-thinking; it just needs to get the basics right.’