This 13 April 2020 video says about itself:
Researcher in Uganda hopes to rediscover a frog that’s only been spotted twice.
A field survey by herpetologists has failed to find any signs of the Mt. Elgon torrent frog in its native Uganda, raising concerns about the degradation of wetland habitats. There are 80 to 100 amphibian species in Uganda, but their habitats are being drained to create farmland and livestock pasture, or to build residential areas and industrial parks.
Read more here.
This 25 February 2020 video from Uganda says about itself:
There is an island full of deadly venomous snakes in Africa. It is called Musambwa island and it is in Lake Victoria. Living Zoology went to film this very remote place for their upcoming documentary called The Most Venomous Snakes of Africa. How is the life of fishermen among hundreds of forest cobras? Watch this video to find out. The island is also home to huge bird colonies.
This 7 January 2020 video from Kenya says about itself:
WTF! 500 Ugandan GUARDS “Defending” US Embassy In Iraq CAUGHT in Running Battles During Attack!🤦🏾♀️
A Ugandan newspaper is alleging that at least 500 Ugandan guards were caught in running battles with the Iraqis
protesting there against Donald Trump’s air force killing scores of people in Iraq, Syria and Somalia
when the US Embassy in Baghdad was attacked last week. This is so crazy!!! What the HELL are Ugandans doing there!
Mercenary paramilitary corporations like Blackwater recruit cannon fodder for war zones like Iraq in many countries, including African countries. That is illegal in Namibia. It should become illegal everywhere.
This 2019 video says about itself:
In a new documentary by Living Zoology film studio, you will see fascinating footage of venomous snakes and know more about the export of snakes from Africa. Matej Dolinay and his wife Zuzana Dolinay visited Uganda in the quest to find some of the most beautiful venomous snakes in the world – Gaboon vipers, rhinoceros vipers, bush vipers (Atheris squamigera and Atheris hispida), Jameson’s mambas and forest cobras. They also found the hybrid between Gaboon and rhinoceros viper – gabino viper.
This 2014 video says about itself:
Jackson’s Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus jacksoni)
There are only two easily accessible places in Africa with opportunity to see this subspecies – Kidepo Valley and Murchison Falls in Uganda.
From the University of Wyoming in the USA:
Cattle ranching could help conserve rare African antelope, lions
May 3, 2019
Summary: Ranch managers’ placement of cattle corrals away from Jackson’s hartebeest likely would allow the antelope species to increase, with lions focused on the zebras that congregate at the resulting glades in central Kenya.
Endangered African antelope and the lions that prey on them may benefit from certain cattle ranching practices in Kenya, according to newly published research led by a 2017 University of Wyoming Ph.D. graduate.
Caroline Ng’weno, who conducted the research during her UW graduate studies, is one of the first — if not the first — Kenyan women to have earned a Ph.D. working as a field biologist in Kenya. Ng’weno now heads the Pride of Meru program for the Born Free Foundation, an organization dedicated to research and protection of lions in central Kenya. Her work has provided new insights into the interaction among Jackson’s hartebeest, a species of conservation concern; other wild ungulates; cattle; and lions in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which is managed for both wildlife conservation and cattle ranching.
As detailed in the scientific journals Ecology and Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, Jackson’s hartebeest — a large antelope that can weigh over 400 pounds — has been in significant decline in that part of Kenya since the reintroduction of lions in the late 1980s. That’s primarily because hartebeest share savanna habitat with zebras, the primary prey of the approximately 70 lions comprising five prides in the conservancy.
“Predation risk for hartebeest was elevated in association with zebra, implying that apparent competition with zebra may negatively impact hartebeest populations”, Ng’weno and fellow researchers wrote in Ecology. That’s in line with previous research that shows secondary prey such as hartebeest can suffer significant population declines when large carnivores are restored to an ecosystem after a long absence.
Restoration of lions to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy and elsewhere in central Kenya resulted from greater tolerance by ranch managers, following decades of shooting and poisoning of the top predators. That’s because ranch managers are increasingly recognizing that tourism resulting from abundant wildlife populations can help them sustain their livestock operations in drought years and other lean times. However, the decline of hartebeest numbers has led some ranch managers to considering reimplementing lethal control of lions.
According to Ng’weno’s research, the ranchers could hold the key to maintaining both the lion and hartebeest populations.
It turns out that abandoned cattle corrals create nutrient hotspots called glades that attract zebras, and therefore lions — but not hartebeest. And the researchers showed that survival of hartebeest in areas without glades was more than twice as high as in areas with glades.
So, ranch managers’ placement of cattle corrals away from hartebeest likely would allow the antelope species to increase, with lions focused on the zebras that congregate at the resulting glades.
“In our study system, spatial separation between zebra and hartebeest improved survival rates of hartebeest, probably by reducing encounters with lions hunting in areas with high zebra densities,” they wrote. “Strategic placement of glades, therefore, offers a promising approach to creating refuges for hartebeest and perhaps other species of secondary prey.”
While some might argue that eliminating glades through reduction of cattle production might be an option for hartebeest conservation, the researchers say that’s not practical. That’s because ranchers are unlikely to reduce cattle numbers voluntarily; and reducing cattle numbers would likely boost zebra numbers, along with lions, as cattle and zebra diets overlap. The researchers note that predation by lions on cattle is rare compared to predation on zebras.
“Alternative conservation interventions are required for the long-term persistence of lions and their prey not only on Ol Pejeta Conservancy, but more widely in (Kenya’s) Laikipia County and the whole of sub-Saharan Africa,” they wrote.
The research involved capturing and placing GPS collars on lions in five different prides representing 70 individuals; identification and tracking of 179 hartebeest; and analysis of 246 sites where lions killed animals. The scientists also studied lion predation on buffalo, zebras, impala and warthogs. Notably, they found that the proximity of buffalo to zebras reduced the risk of predation on buffalo, contrary to the relative risk for hartebeest.
This 12 May 2018 video from Uganda says about itself:
The plight of Somalia refugees in Kisenyi
Somali refugees living in Kisenyi, a Kampala suburb opens up about what they go through, especially the intimidation and individuals who term them as terrorists. Curthbert Kigozi tells this story.
Translated from Belgian (‘center right’) daily De Standaard, 9 March 2019, by Kasper Goethals:
The propaganda camps in Uganda
“This is hell. Here our dreams die”
An example of how successful ‘reception of refugees in the region‘ can be. That is the way the European Union likes to depict Uganda‘s policies.
Like they also depict the hellish situation for refugees in the camps in Greece in a very rose-coloured way. These are refugees from NATO-European Union wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. Refugees from Somalia in Uganda are also refugees from the Ugandan government; which uses its soldiers as cannon fodder to wage NATO’s war in Somalia.
In return, they [the European Union] look the other way concerning corruption and repression in the country. However, a tour through several camps leaves little to the imagination. “We want to get out of here. There is nothing here for us.”
This 14 March 2017 video from Uganda is called [medical anthropologist] Stella Nyanzi Talks About Her Pads Campaign Live on Morning Breeze.
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Academic held for Museveni insults
UGANDA: Academic Stella Nyanzi has been arrested for insulting the president and his wife on Facebook, police said yesterday.
Spokesman Asan Kasingye said Ms Nyanzi would be charged with cyber harassment and offensive communications for her posts attacking President Yoweri Museveni, whom she accused of “31 years of increasingly despotic family rule.”
She attacked his wife, the education minister, for claiming that the state could not afford to provide tampons for schoolgirls.
The Ugandan government had reneged on a campaign pledge to supply free sanitary pads to schoolgirls struggling to afford hygiene products: here.
Ugandan president declares his love for Donald Trump in spite of ‘s***hole countries‘ remarks: here.
By Elizabeth Tswana and Anna Cross in England:
Victims of rape treated with suspicion and scorn
Friday 17th February 2017
A Ugandan refugee and gang rape victim, Erioth Mwesigwa escaped to Britain. But the government locked her up in Yarl’s Wood. Elizabeth Tswana and Anna Cross tell her harrowing story
WE ARE the All African Women’s Group, a self-help group of women seeking asylum, based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in London.
Once a fortnight, 90 to 100 women from different countries come together to discuss our legal cases, share experiences and support each other.
One of our members, Erioth Mwesigwa, a 59-year-old woman who suffered multiple gang rape by soldiers in Uganda, has been detained at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre.
Erioth has helped other women with their legal cases, spoken at public events and regularly attends our fortnightly meetings. Last Friday, guards came to her room in detention to take her to the airport but Erioth bravely refused to go.
Now the High Court has refused her claim and told her she has to go back to Uganda to appeal.
We cannot allow this. Erioth won’t survive and we refuse to allow anyone to be sent back to their death.
Erioth was targeted by soldiers because her husband was suspected of opposing former Ugandan president Milton Obote.
A family member who hid her in his house after she escaped from prison was subsequently killed.
She spent years in hiding in Uganda before she finally managed to escape to Britain and meet with her (now ex-) husband and family, who had already been granted refugee status. However, when Erioth asked for the same, she was refused.
Many of us in the All African Women’s Group are victims of rape and other torture.
We too have been in detention and threatened with removal.
A few of our members have been sent back to their country of origin and have suffered further rape and abuse.
It is the actions of governments like the British that fuel wars in Africa that make us flee in the first place.
We are forced to be refugees. Yet when we come here to get safety we are treated like beggars and scroungers.
The Home Office has accepted that Erioth is a victim of rape but they still want to deport her because the rape happened a long time ago.
We hear on the news every day how victims of abuse in this country have come out after so many years and are still scarred and traumatised.
Who would dare say to them that they should just get over it?
Erioth is clearly still very badly affected by what happened to her and has never had the support she needed to recover until she met us.
We have been in touch with Erioth every day since she was detained.
She said to us: “When I was in Uganda I had to spend all those years in hiding and fear that one day I will be found by the soldiers again.
“After all that, I have finally found a place where I feel safe with people who care about me. It has given me hope for my life. I do not have anyone who I can return to in Uganda. Here I have my family and friends who look after me.”
Women Against Rape, which is also supporting Erioth, has shown that 88 per cent of victims of rape and sexual violence are disbelieved when they claim asylum.
Even though it is well known that in some countries rape is widespread and used as a way of waging war on the community, when we arrive in Britain and say we have been raped, we are treated with suspicion and forced to prove in every little detail what we have been through.
We believe that Erioth should be able to stay in here and remain a part of our group.
Please join our protest and write to the Home Secretary to demand that Erioth is released from detention and given the right to stay.
Elizabeth Tswana and Anna Cross are member of the campaigning All African Women’s Group. You can join the protest against Erioth’s detention and removal as part of the One Day Without Us event on Monday February 20 outside the Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, Westminster, SW1P 4DF, from 4.30pm to 5.30pm. For more information on the One Day Without Us visit 1daywithoutus.org.
This video from Uganda says about itself:
4 November 2016
The High Court in Kampala has ordered with immediate effect the closure of 63 primary schools run by Bridge International academy.
Lady Justice Patricia Basaza Wasswa made the ruling today following a petition by Bridge International academies on the directive by the education ministry to have the schools closed because of poor education standards.
Following the court ruling, the ministry of education has directed all parents to take their children to the nearby UPE schools on Monday to enable them to do exams.
By Solomon Hughes in Britain:
Bridge academies are falling down
Friday 9th December 2016
SOLOMON HUGHES spotlights Bridge International, which provided teacherless, IT-led ‘education’ for Ugandan kids in unsanitary schools – until the government closed them down
A BRITISH government-funded plan to run for-profit schools in Uganda, with “tablet technology” replacing skilled teachers, has ended in failure.
At the end of November the Ugandan High Court ordered the 63 profit-making schools, which charge Ugandan parents for their kids’ education, to close because the teaching was poor, and the conditions — ramshackle, unsanitary buildings that sometimes lacked toilets — were worse.
The US-based Bridge International Academies had a host of fashionable right-wing plans for the Ugandan schools, which appealed so much to privatisation-happy Tory — and Lib Dem — ministers that they spent some of our aid budget on the failed plan.
First, Bridge International is, as its website makes clear, a “profit-led education” model.
Bridge says its “for-profit academies” can make money educating kids in the developing world by charging “at a price point accessible to families living on $2 a day per person or less.”
It says it can make a profit from these very poor families by running schools cheaply because “we have re-engineered the entire lifecycle of basic education, leveraging data, technology, and scale.”
Behind that jargon lies another fashionable right-wing idea: expensive skilled teachers can be replaced by cheap unskilled tutors thanks to a “highly efficient delivery mechanism.”
That “delivery mechanism” is unskilled tutors using computer tablets to “display scripted lessons.” The tablets also “record attendance and assessment scores and track lesson pacing and pupil comprehension in real time, thanks to our proprietary software.”
The dream of replacing skilled teachers with IT-led “tablet teaching” is an international right-wing fantasy.
It is so powerful that Rupert Murdoch tried to launch a profit-making “tablet teaching” company called Amplify in the US.
Presidential wannabe Jeb Bush (and brother of former president George “Dubya” Bush) has been pushing the “electronic classroom of tomorrow,” a virtual digital school system.
Another Bush brother, Neil Bush, helps to run Ignite Learning, which wants to replace trained teachers with “curriculum on wheels” or “Cows.”
These are purple plastic computerised lesson-delivery trolleys intended to replace properly qualified teachers.
Many of these mad dreams to get rid of teachers have stalled or failed
— Murdoch had to sell his failing education firm Amplify as his dream that he could get rid of teachers in the US and Britain hit up against angry parents and crashing systems.
But Bridge International was allowed to try out this popular right-wing scheme in Africa.
Bridge was founded by Harvard-educated Jay Kimmelman, who previously worked in “educational technology.”
He got funds from techie millionaires Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems).
But Bridge International is also funded by our Department for International Development (DfID). Under then development secretary (now Education Secretary) Justine Greening, DfID started putting millions of our aid money into Bridge International.
It wasn’t just a Tory plan. Under the coalition, Lib Dem development minister Lynne Featherstone particularly supported DfID funding Bridge for its African operations.
The dream soon turned sour. First, Bridge charges parents about $100 a year (excluding lunch fees). That’s big money for Uganda.
But conditions in their “academy-in-a-box” schools were not good.
Education International — the global teaching union federation backed by Britain’s National Union of Teachers — put a great deal of effort looking into what was happening at the schools. It was bad.
The Ugandan government soon agreed with the Education International findings.
Uganda’s minister for education said Bridge International’s tablet teaching “could not promote teacher-pupil interaction.” Teachers were only “trained” by Bridge itself. The curriculum had not been approved by the government. In addition, the poor hygiene standards “put the life and safety of school children in danger.” Some Bridge “academy” sites had overflowing pit latrines. Others had no latrines.
In August the government ruled the 63 schools should close. After an appeal, the Ugandan High Court backed the closure — although the schools have been allowed to stay open until December to finish the pupils’ term.
Uganda’s state schools are not in a good condition. But that doesn’t mean the nation should be open to every crackpot market-driven solution.
The mad right-wing tech dream of replacing teachers with tablets has so far failed in the US and Britain.
It was a disgrace that Tory and Lib Dem ministers paid valuable development money to push the same for-profit schools model on Uganda.
There is one footnote to this story: Bridge International’s DfID-funded failure in Uganda has been quite fully reported by the right-wing Mail. But it has not been reported by the “liberal” press, like the Guardian or Independent, or the “centrist” [Rupert Murdoch owned] Times.
The Mail is reporting this story because it sees it as proof that the government should not fund overseas development at all. Really the Bridge International failure shows we shouldn’t be giving our aid money into dubious right-wing, snake oil salesmen, whatever they say from the back of their covered wagon about the beneficial effects of their patent profit-driven medicine.
“Kindy boot camp” enrolments proliferating in Australia: here.
This January 2016 video from Kenya is called Uproar Over Bridge International Schools.
Over 100 international organizations signed a statement critical of privatization of education in Kenya and Uganda. They specifically criticized the World Bank for endorsing a for-profit chain of schools called Bridge International Academies. According to the statement released today, “BIA is backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidiyar, and multinational publishing company Pearson, among others. It operates in Kenya and Uganda, with plans to invest in Nigeria, India and other countries. It now has close to 120,000 pupils enrolled in more than 400 schools.” The endorsers of the statement believe these countries need free public education with qualified teachers, not for-profit schools with untrained teachers: here.
With results like for-profit Trump University?
From Business Daily in Kenya:
Teachers unions, NGOs call for closure of Bridge schools
By OUMA WANZALA
Tuesday, January 26 2016 at 19:45
Teachers unions have joined hands with civil society groups in demanding the closure of Bridge International Academies for flouting quality standards, shining the spotlight on slum-based institutions as the government proposed strict rules for informal schools.
In a joint statement read by Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) secretary-general Wilson Sossion, sector players accused Bridge International, which operates 405 nursery and primary schools in slums, of failing to follow set guidelines.
“The expansion of Bridge schools is a manifestation of the growing commercialisation and privatisation of education in Kenya, which are the greatest threat to the achievement of the UN sustainable development goals,” said Mr Sossion. …
Teachers at Bridge earn a monthly pay of Sh12,000 which is lower than the average Sh16,000 paid to primary school tutors in public schools. …
Mr Sossion argued that despite the schools receiving support from top philanthropists like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg it still charges parents about Sh1,326 ($13) and was even advertising for more pupils to join.
Privatisation vultures pose serious threat to Liberia’s public education system: here.
Unfounded accusations by Bridge International Academies lead to the arrest of academic, raising serious concerns for transparency of the for-profit school chain: here.
From daily New Vision in Uganda:
The Ministry of Education has suspended the expansion of Bridge International schools in Uganda over poor infrastructure and academic standards.
In a letter dated April 6, 2016 signed by the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education, Rose Nassali Lukwago, the owners of the school have been ordered to halt their expansion with immediate effect.
“Following this rapid expansion, the Ministry is greatly concerned about several issues, but not limited to the legality according to the Education Act 2008, the quality of infrastructure, teachers’ issues, methodology and curriculum,” Nasali said in the letter.
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Unions attack failings of schools funded by Gates
Tuesday 27th September 2016
GLOBAL teaching union federation Education International (EI) urged the Ugandan government yesterday to ensure that private schools bankrolled by US billionaire Bill Gates were fit for purpose.
The Bridge International Academies (BIA) chain of tin-shack schools opened for the new term after the Kampala High Court granted an interim order before an October 3 appeal.
Education Minister Janet Museveni ordered the closure of BIA’s 63 low-cost private schools in August, citing “poor hygiene and sanitation which put the life and safety of schoolchildren in danger,” along with their use of unqualified teachers and failure to follow the national curriculum.
EI project director Angelo Gavrielatos told the Morning Star: “Bridge’s business plan is predicated on the employment of unqualified staff delivering a highly scripted standardised curriculum in cheaply constructed facilities.”
Dear Kitty. Some blog 