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Uganda.
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UGANDA ( officially the Republic of Uganda) is a landlocked country in East Africa. Area - 236 040 sq. km. Population - 4 758 809 Capital - Kampala It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the southwest by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. According to oral tradition, the Empire of Kitara covered an important part of the great lakes area, from the northern lakes Albert and Kyoga to the southern lakes Victoria and Tanganyika. Bunyoro-Kitara is claimed as the antecedent of the Buganda, Toro, Ankole, and Busoga kingdoms. Arab traders moved inland from the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa in the 1830s. They were followed in the 1860s by British explorers searching for the source of the Nile. British Anglican missionaries arrived in the kingdom of Buganda in 1877 and were followed by French Catholic missionaries in 1879. British commercial interests were ardent to protect the trade route of the Nile, which prompted the British government to annex Buganda and adjoining territories to create the Uganda Protectorate in 1894. Uganda gained independence from Britain in October 1962 as a Commonwealth realm with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. In October 1963, Uganda became a republic but maintained its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. The first post-independence election, held in 1962, was won by an alliance between the Uganda People's Congress (UPC) and Kabaka Yekka (KY). UPC and KY formed the first post-independence government with Milton Obote as executive prime minister, the Buganda Kabaka (King) Edward Muteesa II holding the largely ceremonial position of president. After a military coup on 25 January 1971, Obote was deposed from power and General Idi Amin seized control of the country. Amin ruled Uganda as dictator with the support of the military for the next eight years. He carried out mass killings within the country to maintain his rule. An estimated 300,000 Ugandans lost their lives during his regime, many of them in the north, which he associated with Obote's loyalists. Aside from his brutalities, he forcibly removed the entrepreneurial Indian minority from Uganda, which left the country's economy in ruins. Amin's atrocities were graphically accounted in the 1977 book, A State of Blood, written by one of his former ministers after he fled the country. Amin's reign was ended after the Uganda-Tanzania War in 1979, in which Tanzanian forces aided by Ugandan exiles invaded Uganda. 1979–1986 After Amin's removal, the Uganda National Liberation Front formed an interim government with Yusuf Lule as president. Lule was replaced by Godfrey Binaisa in June 1979. In May 1980, Binaisa was removed and the country was ruled by a military commission chaired by Paulo Muwanga. The December 1980 elections returned Obote to the presidency with Muwanga as vice-president. Obote was deposed again in 1985 by General Tito Okello, who ruled for six months until he was deposed. This occurred after the Ugandan Bush War instigated by the National Resistance Army under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni and by various rebel groups, including the Federal Democratic Movement of Andrew Kayiira and another group led by John Nkwaanga. During the bush war, the army carried out mass killings of non-combatants. Currency : Ugandian Shilling (UGX) .
