Portal:Uganda

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Uganda WikiPortal

The Republic of Uganda, a country in East Africa, bordered in the east by Kenya, in the north by Sudan, by the Democratic Republic of Congo in the west, Rwanda in the southwest and Tanzania in the south.

The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, within which it shares borders with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda takes its name from the historical Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a portion of the south of the country, including the capital Kampala.

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Languages of Uganda
Uganda is ethnologically diverse, with at least forty languages in usage. Luganda is the most common language. English is the official language, even though only a relatively small proportion of the population speaks it. Access to economic and political power is almost impossible without having mastered that English. Luganda, a language widespread in central Uganda, is the official vernacular language in education for central Uganda. The East African lingua franca Swahili is relatively widespread as a trade language and became an official national language in September 2005.

A main division between the languages of Uganda can be made according to their linguistic affiliation. About half of Uganda's languages, all spoken in the southern part, are members of the Bantu language family whereas the other half, in northern Uganda, are Nilo-Saharan languages.

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Vegetation on the flanks of the Ruwenzori Range

The Ruwenzori Range is a small but spectacular mountain range along the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the base of the range is in tropical rainforest the summits are permanently snow-capped.

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Janan Luwum was the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda. He was a leading voice in criticizing the brutal regime Idi Amin in the 1970s. Luwum was murdered on 17 February 1977 – either by Idi Amin himself, or by his lackeys.

Luwum is recognised as a martyr by the Church of England, and his statue is among the "20th Century Martyrs" on the front of Westminster Abbey in London.

Did you know

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...that the Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth National Park has one of the world's largest concentration of hippos?
...that the British Uganda Program was a plan to give a portion British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland in 1902?
...that Ripon Falls at the northern end of Lake Victoria is often considered the source of the river Nile, and that it was submerged after the construction of Owen Falls Dam?