Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Exploring the potential of radio for researchers to engage with the public
For the last 6 months, the team has been working together with Hamilton Kalyegira, producer at Voice of Toro, to develop a radio pilot based on the results of our research project. The objective of this collaboration is first and foremost to enable a wider audience than usual to benefit from the outputs of academic…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
A milestone for our project: sharing results at the 9th European Conference for African Studies (ECAS) in Cologne, Germany
At the end of May 2023, the whole team travelled to Cologne, Germany, to attend one of the major academic events in our field, the European Conference for African Studies (ECAS). ECAS takes place every two years, and this year it gathered 1900 delegates from 80 countries. The team was joined by Dr Pamela Khanakwa,…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Sharing results with research participants: a visit at the Leadership magazine offices
In August 2023, Florence Brisset-Foucault visited the offices of the Leadership magazine in Mbuya to brief the members of the editorial team about the progress of the research project. She also made a short presentation of the archival material she has used in her strand of research and that had been kindly made available to her by…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Disruptive feminism: Van Zirimu’s columns in the 1979 Ugandan press
By Florence Brisset-Foucault. Some of the most interesting and creative texts that were published in the Ugandan press in 1979 had the by-line ‘Van Zirimu’. Elvania Namukwaya, later Elvania Zirimu, or Van Zirimu, was born in 1938 in Bussi, present day Wakiso district. She joined King’s College Buddo in 1953 and Makerere in 1961, where…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
An exciting Public Dialogue in Gulu
On 21st March 2023, thanks to the kind support of Gulu University, the team was able to take part in a public dialogue together with intellectuals and politicians who took part in the events of 1979-80. An engaging audience of academics, students and members of the public were also present. Journalists from NTV and Daily Monitor covered…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Shillings, donors and planning: why the Commonwealth ‘Team of experts’ did not rehabilitate Uganda
By Justin Willis, Durham University. On 23 May 1979 a team of economic experts arrived in Uganda. Amin’s regime had collapsed only a few weeks earlier. The team’s members were drawn from seven Commonwealth countries, and the speed with which they had been assembled and sent was remarkable – a result of the personal interest taken…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
The team finally convenes for a writing and dissemination workshop at Mountain of the Moon University
On 16th and 17th May, with the kind support of the French Research Institute in Africa (Nairobi) and the French Embassy in Kampala, the team was finally able to meet “in real life” for two days of intensive writing and dissemination at Mountain of the Moon University, Fort Portal. We were welcomed by the friendly…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Women Representation at Moshi: Gender and Voice in the Planning of a Post-Amin Future, 1979-1980
By Anatoli Lwassampijja, Department of History- Makerere University One of the research strands of this project looks at the representation of women at the Moshi Unity conference. The conference was convened in March 1979 to bring together exiled Ugandans to plan for Uganda’s future since Amin’s regime was collapsing in the face of the Tanzanian…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Women Marginalisation in Parliamentary Politics. A glance at NCC application forms
By Jacqueline Namukasa, Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Makerere University This research was undertaken with an interest in women representation on the National Consultative Council (NCC) – the body created by the Moshi Conference in March 1979 as the basis of the transitional government that would take over in the wake of Amin’s…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
How to make history newsworthy? A workshop with journalists and academics
On the 25th June 2021, the team joined with a group of media professionals for a very stimulating workshop on how historical knowledge is and could be shared with larger audiences. We had a series of fascinating contributions from media professionals, whose work spans multiple formats and platforms: podcasts, blogs, radio and print journalism. They…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Exciting preliminary results… A summary of internal workshop discussions
We had a very productive workshop on Friday 18 June 2021, talking through all the research strands. This material will be coming out in future blog posts by members of the team, but here are some thoughts on the common themes that came out of the discussion. One was the problem of silences. The Moshi…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Summit politics: Uganda in regional politics, 1979-80
By Justin Willis, University of Durham This post is very much a work in progress. One strand of the project looks at the role of international actors in Uganda, and I have been looking for a way to focus the research for this strand – trying to find events that reveal how events in…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
The reinvention of a magazine in difficult times: the example of Leadership (Ep.1)
By Florence Brisset-Foucault, IMAF Paris 1, Institut universitaire de France The weeks that followed the fall of Idi Amin were characterised by the flourishing of political projects, ambitions and ideas, many of which were crafted, debated and made known through print. It is difficult to know how many newspaper appeared, or re-appeared, after April 1979.…
Uganda’s Past, Ugandan Futures
Rehabilitating Uganda
By Justin Willis, Durham University In the months after Amin’s fall, the word ‘rehabilitation’ was constantly in the air. ‘Rehabilitation’ and ‘reconstruction’ were identified as goals at the meeting of exiles which hastily agreed on the creation of a transitional Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) that would govern Uganda after Amin’s fall; the team of…