Home >> Africa East Africa Kenya-Uganda ‘Migingo Tussle’: a classic case of geopolitical farce
Ronald Elly Wanda - 7/27/2009
In the last few months in Eastern Africa, an island barely an acre in size, languishing somewhere in Lake Victoria has been at the centre of a regional row pitting Kenya against Uganda. Both Kenya and Uganda maintains that the small island belongs to it. The row, according to Joseph Nyagah, Kenya’s Cooperative Development Minister, “has adversely affected operations of fishermen’s cooperative societies in the region”. Similar sentiments have also been expressed by his Ugandan counterpart. Meanwhile, conflicts over fishing grounds continue to rage around the lake with regular incidents of Kenya... Is this the end of the capital error in East Africa?
Ronald Elly Wanda - 2/23/2009
At the beginning of last year, whilst at a send-off party in London for a Ugandan friend that worked for Citigroup Bank in New York, I remember a Morgan Stanley employee, so tipsy yet confident of his abilities and apparent access to capital, bragging that he would one day buy the Central Bank of Uganda. “This lot are mismanaging the tills in Uganda. I am going to sort these guys out!” proclaimed the chubby banker amidst some hilarity. At that time the conversations revolved almost entirely on how good the times were. The Writer and Development in East Africa
Ronald Elly Wanda - 1/8/2009
The history of contemporary political ideas of Africa is a neglected field in the continent and more so outside of it. As we commence 2009, and near the first decade of what the UN has ambitiously termed “Africa’s century”, it is important as Africans to re-examine and discuss our plight in relation to our development. My capitulation as a concerned reader and writer places emphasis on none other than the young African writer, for it is he or she that is likely to stimulate and catalogue development and historical discourses as per se. This is because, when it comes to Africa, where African th... Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda
Ronald Elly Wanda - 8/18/2008
The question “where were you during the millennium revelry?” has now become a historical. For me, save for the champagne I drunk on that eve, I will always remember it as the time I lost a dear aunt to the “plague”. Whilst our London residence was crowded of people celebrating the dawn of what the UN ambitiously termed “Africa’s century”, in Kakamega (west of Kenya) my kinfolks mourned for having lost their ‘daughter’ on the millennium. Burma: Hijacker's Flight For Freedom
Richard S. Ehrlich - 10/2/2007
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Burmese man who hijacked a Thai International Airways passenger plane, to publicize his country's struggle against its military regime, says other protestors in Burma should not seize aircraft but find "dramatic" and "creative ways" to gain world support. "I do not regret the 'hijacking'. I am proud of what I did -- this peaceful 'hijacking drama' in 1990 -- given the kind of situation at that time," Soe Myint said in an interview. "There was very little international attention on how the peoples of Burma were struggling under the military regime," he said, reflecting... East African Psyche
Ronald Elly Wanda - 5/17/2007
A soggy Saturday, my kitchen windows all fogged up with vapour, the Congolese genius Franco Luambo-Makiadi singing “Azda, azda, azda… Elly Wanda ni wetu…apewe, apewe, apewe…” while I chop and stir some roasted nyama (goat’s meat) that I’d bought earlier from expensive but expedient Kampala Foods ltd at West Green Road, in North London. Could an African cook’s life get any better? Well yes, the gory British weather could change from raining to a tropical sunshine and give me a deceptive conception (albeit temporal) of being in clement kakamega- west of Kenya or at congenial Mbale- east of Ugand... |
