Uganda

WOUGNET is one of Kabissa's oldest and most innovative member organizations, and always helped keep Kabissa at the bleeding edge of ICT services for African civil society. Please help spread the word about this great opportunity - deadline to apply is 11 February.

Universal access to HIV treatment is one of the targets of Millennium Development Goal 6, the indicator for which is the proportion of the population with advanced HIV infection with access to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). Despite the fact that in the past decade there has been a considerable increase in access to HIV treatment in sub-Saharan African countries, rising from 2% in 2003 to an estimated 44% of adults and children by December 2008, important access gaps still remain. In the majority of the countries more than a half of those in need of HIV treatment are not receiving it.

Note: This blog is a re-post from the blog on Alive & Kicking's main site

There has been a spike in criticism of the ‘buy one, give one’ (BOGO) model that a number of Western NGOs use to encourage charitable giving. This has been prompted by an article from R Todd Johnson, in which he argues that philanthropy is killing Africa and that ‘BOGO should be no-go’. Alive & Kicking offers a BOGO option in our online shop, and we agree with the majority of Todd’s argument, but this need not be contradictory. This piece outlines the problems with traditional BOGO models, and explains how Alive & Kicking does it differently.

The problems with BOGO

‘Buy one give one’ schemes encourage individual donors to pay for an item to be donated in a developing country at the same time as buying an identical item to keep. As Shawn Forde points out, the appeal of this approach is that it is an effective tool to stimulate charitable giving, able to engage individuals who wouldn’t otherwise donate. But how beneficial are these gifts to the recipient and what do they do to the local economy?

Giving out products for free in developing nations can have a negative effect on local business. It harms local producers who make similar items, and local retailers who would have sold them. Furthermore, giving away something for nothing is also blamed for creating a dependency culture which is adverse for entrepreneurship and innovation.

The evening of Thursday, September 30 was a special one in Kampala, at least amongst the corporate circles. The inaugural ‘Meet the CEO’ forum was held at the Golf course Hotel. A good number of Uganda’s next generation leaders turned up for what will in all likelihood go down as a memorable evening for most of them.

Did you know that in Uganda, what should be a right of passage into womanhood is often a gateway to dropping out of school, sexual harassment and early marriages?

It never ceases to amaze when one pauses to ponder upon the heights that humans have been able to scale whenever they have set their sight on accomplishing something. Last month a colleague who works as the Africa marketing manager for a Microinsurance company shared her inspiring community initiative story with me. Julie and her professional colleagues are members of the Rotary Club of Kajjansi, which is based near Uganda's capital, Kampala.

Population Action Internation (PAI) is excited to provide a small grants program dedicated to supporting and empowering young people to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

For any of you who travel in the region and use the mobile phone as the primary mode of getting online, getting the settings for a data connection is seriously frustrating. More so since my phone (an android) doesn't for some reason allow me to save the settings from the phone company and I have to manually input them.

Thanks to Google (hat tip: ICTD chick) and some serious aggro, I was able to get the most updated (September, 2009) settings so here goes:-

MTN, Uganda:
Access point name: MTN

 In an attempt to increase its sugar production, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd., which produces Lugazi Sugar, sought government permission to clear and annex about 71,000 square km of the adjacent Mabira forest.  Mabira forest is one of Uganda’s largest natural tropical forests.

35 local community representatives (28 from NABUUR villages), 500 business cards, 1 entertainment group and a welcoming venue made up for a successful Meet2Connect event in Kampala, Uganda on 21 February 2009.

"I now have people to turn to directly, when I am facing challenges"
"Two heads know more than one"