A critical analysis of the coverage of Uganda's 2000 referendum by The New Vision and The Monitor newspapers

On July 29 2000, Uganda held a referendum to decide whether to continue with the ruling Noparty Movement system or to revert to the Multi-party platform. This research entails a qualitative content analysis of the role the media played in driving debate and understanding of the referendum and its role in the country’s democratisation process. The research is informed by Jurgen Habermas’s public sphere paradigm as well as the sociological theory of news production. The research covers Uganda’s two English dailies – The New Vision and The Monitor, examining whether they provided a public sphere accessible to all citizens and devoid of ideological hegemony. It concludes that the newspapers were incapable of providing such a sphere because of the structural nature of Ugandan society and the papers’ own capitalistic backgrounds and ownership interests. The research concludes that such English language newspapers published in a country with a low literacy rate and low income levels, can only provide a public sphere to elite and privileged sections of society. A case is then made that multiple public spheres would be better suited to represent the views of diverse interest groups

Bureaucracy in Uganda since Colonial Period to the Present

This paper looks at the pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial bureaucracy of Uganda as a polity. It observes that there were many polities in the pre-colonial era which included kingdoms as in the case of Buganda, Bunyoro, Nkore and Tooro; and chiefdoms as in case of Acholi and other areas. The paper therefore analyzes the pre-colonial bureaucracy of Uganda taking into account the heterogeneity of different administration arrangements that existed at that time. The colonial and post-colonial Uganda was largely homogenous. The paper concludes that none of the three phases of administration (pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial) experienced a strict Weberian type of bureaucracy

Milking a cow you don't feed : is Uganda starving telecoms growth through high taxes?

Some argue that the country’s slow liberalization process, and clumsy privatization of the incumbent Uganda Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (now Uganda Telecom Limited, UTL), has had severe impact on universal access. In the case of the former, it is argued that the stop-start liberalization process was evidence of a government desperately in need of money, and wanting to milk the highest cash value for the incumbent, ready to put access targets on the backburner to do this. The article argues that the balance of imperatives in Uganda feels uneven, and when it comes to taxes its policies are contradicted by regulation

In Search of Local Knowledge on ICTs in Africa

By reviewing and comparing literature on the role of ICTs in statebuilding and peacebuilding in Africa, with a particular focus on neighboring Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, this paper examines whether the claims of the transformative power of ICTs are backed by evidence and whether local knowledge – e.g., traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution – is taken into consideration by ICT-based initiatives. Several key findings emerged, including: 1) empirical evidence on the successful use of ICTs to promote peacebuilding and statebuilding is thin; 2) few differences exist between scholarship emanating from the Global North and from Africa; and 3) the literature exhibits a simplistic assumption that ICTs will drive democratic development without sufficient consideration of how ICTs are actually used by the public

Correlates of Complete Childhood Vaccination in East African Countries.

Despite the benefits of childhood vaccinations, vaccination rates in low-income countries (LICs) vary widely. Increasing coverage of vaccines to 90% in the poorest countries over the next 10 years has been estimated to prevent 426 million cases of illness and avert nearly 6.4 million childhood deaths worldwide. Consequently, we sought to provide a comprehensive examination of contemporary vaccination patterns in East Africa and to identify common and country-specific barriers to complete childhood vaccination. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, we looked at the prevalence of complete vaccination for polio, measles, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and DTwPHibHep (DTP) as recommended by the WHO among children ages 12 to 23 months. We conducted multivariable logistic regression within each country to estimate associations between complete vaccination status and health care access and sociodemographic variables using backwards stepwise regression. Vaccination varied significantly by country. In all countries, the majority of children received at least one dose of a WHO recommended vaccine; however, in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda less than 50% of children received a complete schedule of recommended vaccines. Being delivered in a public or private institution compared with being delivered at home was associated with increased odds of complete vaccination status. Sociodemographic covariates were not consistently associated with complete vaccination status across countries. Although no consistent set of predictors accounted for complete vaccination status, we observed differences based on region and the location of delivery. These differences point to the need to examine the historical, political, and economic context of each country in order to maximize vaccination coverage. Vaccination against these childhood diseases is a critical step towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015 and thus should be a global priority

The Chilling Effects of Surveillance and Human Rights: Insights from Qualitative Research in Uganda and Zimbabwe

States are increasingly developing and deploying large scale surveillance and AI-enabled analytical capabilities. What is uncertain, however, is the impact this surveillance will have. Will it result in a chilling effect whereby individuals modify their behaviour due to the fear of the consequences that may follow? Understanding any such effect is essential: if surveillance activities interfere with the processes by which individuals develop their identity, or undermine democratic processes, the consequences may be almost imperceptible in the short term but profound over the long term. Currently, surveillance-related chilling effects are not well understood, meaning that insufficient weight is given to their potentially society-wide impacts. This article seeks to help redress this balance. Drawing on empirical research in Zimbabwe and Uganda it highlights how State surveillance has chilled behaviour, with significant implications for rights essential to individual development and democratic functioning, specifically the rights to freedom of expression and to freedom of assembly. Importantly, this qualitative research identifies a pattern of common themes or consequences associated with surveillance in general, allowing us to move beyond hypothetical or individual experiences, and providing a greater understanding of the nuances of surveillance-related effects that can help inform decision-making surrounding large scale digital surveillance

Expression differences by continent of origin point to the immortalization process

Analysis of recently available microarray expression data sets obtained from immortalized cell lines of the individuals represented in the HapMap project have led to inconclusive comparisons across cohorts with different ancestral continent of origin (ACOO). To address this apparent inconsistency, we applied a novel approach to accentuate population-specific gene expression signatures for the CEU [homogeneous US residents with northern and western European ancestry (HapMap samples)] and YRI [homogenous Yoruba people of Ibadan, Nigeria (HapMap samples)] trios. In this report, we describe how four independent data sets point to the differential expression across ACOO of gene networks implicated in transforming the normal lymphoblast into immortalized lymphoblastoid cells. In particular, Werner syndrome helicase and related genes are differentially expressed between the YRI and CEU cohorts. We further demonstrate that these differences correlate with viral titer and that both the titer and expression differences are associated with ACOO. We use the 14 genes most differentially expressed to construct an ACOO-specific ‘immortalization network’ comprised of 40 genes, one of which show significant correlation with genomic variation (eQTL). The extent to which these measured group differences are due to differences in the immortalization procedures used for each group or reflect ACOO-specific biological differences remains to be determined. That the ACOO group differences in gene expression patterns may depend strongly on the process of transforming cells to establish immortalized lines should be considered in such comparisons

The Security imaginary: Explaining military isomorphism

This article proposes the notion of a security imaginary as a heuristic tool for exploring military isomorphism (the phenomenon that weapons and military strategies begin to look the same across the world) at a time when the US model of defence transformation is being adopted by an increasing number of countries. Built on a critical constructivist foundation, the security-imaginary approach is contrasted with rationalist and neo-institutionalist ways of explaining military diffusion and emulation. Merging cultural and constructivist themes, the article offers a ‘strong cultural’ argument to explain why a country would emulate a foreign military model and how this model is constituted in and comes to constitute a society’s security imaginary.Web of Scienc

The microsporidian parasite Vavraia culicis as a potential late life–acting control agent of malaria

Microsporidian parasites are being considered as alternatives to conventional insecticides for malaria control. They should reduce malaria transmission by shortening the lifespan of female mosquitoes and thus killing them before they transmit malaria. As the parasite replicates throughout the mosquito's life, it should have little detrimental effects on young mosquitoes, thus putting less selection pressure on the hosts to evolve resistance. Here, we examined these expectations for the microsporidian Vavraia culicis on Anopheles gambiae Giles sensu stricto mosquitoes under varying environmental conditions. Infection by the microsporidian delayed pupation by 10%, decreased fecundity by 23% and reduced adult lifespan by 27%, with higher infectious doses causing greater effects. The decrease of lifespan was mostly because of an increase of the mortality rate with age. Similarly, the parasite's effect on mosquito fecundity increased with the mosquitoes’ age. Neither infection nor food availability affected juvenile survival. Thus, as V. culicis reduced the longevity of A. gambiae (s.s.), yet affected mortality and fecundity of the young mosquitoes only slightly, the microsporidian is a promising alternative to insecticides for effective malaria control that will impose little evolutionary pressure for resistance