News — uganda

Rozina Negusei, the wife of award-winning Senegalese-American musician and entrepreneur Akon, has announced she is going to invest $12 million in the Ugandan entertainment industry over the course of five years, local entertainment platform, Sqoop, reports.

Negusei, who is the President and CEO of Zanar Entertainment, Entreeg Records & Entreeg Entertainment Group, is reportedly in the East African nation to explore a host of business opportunities to invest in.

“We are here to explore new opportunities in Uganda, we are focused on investing in Agriculture, solar, and real estate. Our main focus is to see how we can bridge the gap between East Africa and West Africa in terms of business and trade,” she said.

Negusei was invited to the country by the Managing Director of the East African Partners (EAP), Isaac Kigozi. She also came with a contingent of Turkish investors, and they are set to visit some government departments, agencies, as well as some private sector establishments.

“We wanted to bring entertainment in Africa, we are looking for a hub, a home to be the Africa Hollywood; America became America not because of Agriculture but because of the entertainment industry. If we bring entertainment whether movie, music award, every year, Uganda can become the home of the entertainment industry,” she added.

“It’s our job to bring the African movies, music, take it to the next level by recognizing ourself, we don’t have to wait for other cultures to recognize us, we are good enough to recognize ourselves.”

As part of her visit, Negusei also met with President Yoweri Museveni, and was full of praises for the 76-year-old, Blizz Uganda reported.

“I was pleased to meet such an honourable, genius leader and a walking library. He called me a daughter and gave me a name, Estella Ihangwe. It was amazing to be in the presence of such a knowledgeable leader. I have met several leaders, but President Museveni is exceptionally knowledgeable. You guys are lucky to have such a leader. Seriously, you won’t realize it until he is no longer here,” she reportedly said.

“The West told Libya that Gadaffi was a dictator. The Libyans believed them and destroyed their own country. Open your eyes, do not believe everything the west tells you.”

Akon is also expected to later join Negusei in Uganda.

Not earlier than 2019, there were some within and outside that country who held doubts about the potential for a former musician to cause trouble to Yoweri Kaguta Museveni‘s seemingly eternal reign as president of Uganda.

The skepticism was founded not so much in the readiness and efficiency of the iron-strong antagonism Museveni has reserved for his critics and opposition challengers. Rather, they doubted Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu – his understanding of the political climate, his ideology, his discipline and his ability to remain steadfast.

We may not yet say those people have been proven wrong. When Uganda’s election authority announces the final results, Museveni does look like the man who will carry the January 14 poll with a strong majority of votes. Kyagulanyi, or Bobi Wine as he has been known throughout much of his public life, will allege irregularities bordering on criminality. He may even declare that he won the vote.

But somehow, the finality of this process is not the most important aspect. I aim to convince that the lesson to pick up here is the way Museveni has undeniably been rattled by a man who shouldn’t have come this far, per his obstacles of public relations in addition to the deathly hostility with which he has been met.

Bobi Wine had no business leading this movement against Museveni. In his own words, Wine comes “from the ghetto”, where the poor have carried the brunt of Museveni’s failures. He grew up in a slum in northwestern Kampala, counting on his love of music as the ticket to sail out of where nothing good really comes.

What has become of the man who escaped on the ticket of music is that he stands toe-to-toe, fearlessly against one of Africa’s more determined strongmen. To say he had no right to come this far is to put Bobi Wine in comparison with Museveni’s last two competitors: Dr. Kizza Besigye, Museveni’s friend-turned-foe who was once his personal doctor, and Dr. Paul Ssemogerere, an astute academic. Either man, but particularly Dr. Besigye, offered the promise of rebirth that Museveni had began to renege on circa 2006.

Dr. Besigye, in his own right, was a courageous politician. Anyone who comes up against a strongman is. His unpopular support for gay rights in Uganda, something we cannot say for Bobi Wine, would continue to be a feather in his cap in the eyes of a considerable lot of his compatriots. Consequently, he laid the grounds for future opposition to Museveni but he was surprisingly not quite an embodiment of the protest against the authoritarian tendencies of Museveni.

One would have to remember that Museveni vs Besigye was one of the longest presidential election battles in postcolonial Africa. In 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016, the physician unsuccessfully tried to wrestle power from the former guerilla leader. That antagonism was symptomatic of Ugandan politics. For Bobi Wine to overtake Dr. Besigye in under four years, begs a lot of explanations, one of which is the fact that we witness the pulling ahead of a comet with the momentum.

The average age in Uganda is under 20 in a country of more than 44 million people. According to a piece published by The Guardian, about 80% of Ugandans were born around or after Museveni first came into power in 1986. Bobi Wine himself was only just 4 when Museveni claimed his coming marked a “fundamental change” in Uganda’s history and sets the country toward the path of “democratic government”. He was believed then as Wine is now.

It was evident for about two years that Wine commanded massive support among Uganda’s young. He had remade himself in the image of the aspirational revolutionary, a far cry from the reggae and pop musician who threw shots at politicians and volunteered political suggestions in hit tunes. And you would like to see that, would you not? That your aspiring politician transcends the hedonism and debauchery popstars are known for. You could tell Wine had grown into this new skin when he questioned Museveni’s education credentials.

All this has been done by Wine with a fair bit of grip on the everydayness of Ugandan life, touting the life of the ordinary people as his inspiration for politics. He is the man of all the people, yesterday’s Museveni in action today. That is remarkably unlike Dr. Besigye or Dr. Ssemogerere. And maybe, more than anyone on the face of this earth, Museveni sees this – that this one is different.

The good doctor did not have young people adopting fashion styles to make anti-establishment political statements. Before you underestimate the relevance of this, you have to know that Museveni’s government did not; they tried to ban the signature red berets members of the National Unity Platform (NUP) wore. It is fair to understand that adopting a fashion style to signify your politics and annoy power plays out on a critical plane of human self-expression.

Wine’s fiery speeches against Museveni were a mark of his campaign in 2017 when he vied for the Kyandodo East parliamentary seat in a by-election. They have continued and indeed, turned up a few notches with every bullet fired at him and his supporters and with every life lost in his campaign. In November after he filed forms to contest in the presidential election, 54 people were killed in clashes between his supporters and the police. That is more lives lost than in the entirety of the 2016 electioneering process.

Museveni is anything but an idiot. In the last few years, observers of the African political scene like myself have had to concede that the 76-year-old makes the closest to a formidable argument for serial power-wielders. They are not to be booted out simply because one thinks their time is up or that they are old. The fragility of the African democratic process and its evolution means that life and living shall not easily be trusted to the devices of teething institutions. Strong fixtures, i.e. benevolent strongmen, are necessary while democracy is young.

I understand it is aberrant to argue that while democracy crawls, benevolent strongmen are useful. In fact, in his case, Museveni has spent 34 years not creating and empowering the institutions that can guarantee Uganda’s democracy. He is rather devolved into a paternalistic and condescending bully unrecognizable from the revolutionary of the 80s and 90s.

Far be it from me to hold the citations of honor given by America as a sort of scale but in 1997, Magdalene Albright called Museveni a “beacon of hope” in a “uni-party democracy” in Africa. The solution to the Ugandan AIDS crisis and the relative stability enjoyed by the country is chiefly due to Museveni’s governance. But somewhere along the line, the plot was lost and the light gave way to soul-shattering bleakness.

“Why did such a prized revolutionary decide to become one of the world’s most despised dictators?,” Bobi Wine asked himself in an interview with the BBC in 2019. “Only the idea of building strong institutions that can save us from ourselves.”

Before these institutions will be built, from scratch or in continuance, the old has to give way to the new spirit. Museveni will survive today’s battle but the future has been previewed and he knows it. It is incumbent upon him, and only him – as the most important politician in that country – to begin to make plans for his exit. Having seen what the young think of him, it would be most irresponsible if he plans to sink his claws in further like his late friend Robert Mugabe did.

The Nigerian Nobel laureate, playwright, novelist, and democracy advocate, Wole Soyinka, has reiterated his support for the 38-year-old Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, or Bobi Wine, who is looking to end Uganda President Yoweri Museveni‘s 34-year reign come January 14.

In an interview with Quartz, the Nigerian writer said the musician-turned-politician “for me right now, represents the face of democracy for Uganda”. Soyinka added that in Wine, Uganda’s possess the best possible visionary to take over the reins of government.

“Even before [we met], I’d taken an interest in his movement, his candidature, and his passion. And I share it; I share every bit of it,” said Woyinka who spent a while with the Ugandan presidential candidate in 2019 in Lagos during #FelaDebate, a symposium in memory of legendary Afrobeats founder Fela Kuti.

In 2018, along with a group of celebrities, media personalities and authors including Angelique Kidjo, and Femi Kuti, Soyinka signed a statement condemning the arrest, imprisonment and attack on Bobi Wine.

Much like Wine, Soyinka has made his own history with fighting brutal and dictatorial governments in Nigeria. He was arrested for illegally visiting the secessionist territory Biafra in 1967.  He had met with the secessionist leader, military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in Enugu in 1966, and was forced to go into hiding as he was labelled a spy during the civil strife between the Nigerian government and Biafra.

Soyinka was also an outspoken critic of Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s military ruler between 1993 and 1998. It was in opposition to Abacha that Soyinka first met Museveni.

He said in the interview: “I met Museveni during the fight against Sani Abacha. At the time we met it was still possible to consider him a democratic leader. Today he’s joined the gang—the enemies of society”.

The African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 believes the times of Museveni, as well as many others like him, have come to an end. It is his fervent hope that Ugandans share his faith in Wine.

Ugandan opposition figure Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, said one of his bodyguards was on Sunday run over and killed by a military police truck. The victim, Francis Senteza, was allegedly killed while helping to transport a journalist injured during a confrontation between the police and followers of Bobi Wine.

“I regret to announce the murder of my security team member Francis Senteza Kalibala aka Frank. He was deliberately ran over by military-police truck,” Bobi Wine wrote on Twitter.

The pop musician turned politician was campaigning on Sunday in parts of central Uganda when violent confrontations between security forces and his followers occurred. In the process, the police fired tear gas into the crowd, injuring two journalists, Aljazeera reported. Bobi Wine said his team was taking one of the injured journalists to seek medical help when his bodyguard was run over and killed.

A spokesperson for the Ugandan military however said the bodyguard fell off a speeding car amid the confrontation. “UPDF (Ugandan People’s Defence Force) would like to clarify that the late Senteza … was not knocked by a Military Police Vehicle as purported, but rather fell off a speeding car … he tried to jump to (sic) but fell off,” Brig. Gen. Flavia Byekwaso, the spokesperson, wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Protests hit Uganda’s capital Kampala and some major towns last month after news broke that Bobi Wine had been arrested. Bobi Wine was picked up by the police at an election rally in Eastern Uganda after being accused of violating coronavirus prevention guidelines. Authorities said the anti-coronavirus measures are to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, however, critics say the move is only aimed at halting campaigns by the opposition ahead of the January 2021 election. After two days in police custody, Bobi Wine was arraigned in court and was later granted bail.

Bobi Wine was a musician but as he would later admit, he could not just get on with music while the country wasted under a president he has no belief in. Bobi Wine is an independent member of the Ugandan legislature. When he won his seat in 2017, it made national news but many would have written off the fervor for him.

Things changed in 2018 when he campaigned for a number of candidates in by-elections and they won. He also began making himself a nuisance to Museveni’s government. Today, his signature red beret that forms part of his fashion has become a favorite of young people.

It was back in 2017 when Tolu Olowofoyeku, Hamid Ibrahim, and Fikayo Adeola, friends from Nigeria and Uganda, established Kugali as pan-African creative company. The comic book collection they came up with was born out of a desire to tell modern African stories—now it’s set to reach a much wider global audience than they could have hoped with a comic book.

Now Disney has announced Kugali’s science fiction series Iwájú will debut globally in 2022 on Disney+ fast-growing streaming service.

Disney Animation studios described the move as the

Iwájú, a name that loosely translates to “the future” in Yoruba, a language spoken in West Africa, is set in Lagos and will explore a number of thematic concerns from class and innocence to challenging the status quo. The creators see it as an opportunity for Disney to tell a modern and authentic African story to the world using the entertainment behemoth’s animation and distribution prowess.

“Their talents blew us away. I’m proud to announce the first of its kind collaboration to bring original long for series to Disney+,” Disney Animation studios’ chief creative officer, Jennifer Lee, said of Kugali while speaking at Disney’s investor day this week.

Disney used the investor day to unveil several major announcements extensions to its storied franchises including Star Wars and for its Marvel characters. The world’s largest entertainment company has been under pressure to expand and boost its range of content as it doubles down with its Disney + platform to compete in the so-called streaming wars with Netflix and more recently HBO in the US and globally.

Disney+ has grown rapidly since debuting in November 2019 and now has 86 million subscribers globally, compared with Netflix’s  near 200 million subscribers as of the third quarter, built over 13 years.  Disney projects it will have 230 million to 260 million subscribers by the end of its fiscal year 2024 which is a huge jump from its initial projections in 2019 of 60 million to 90 million subscribers.

While Disney has had huge success with Africa-influenced tentpoles including Marvel’s Black Panther and Lion King it has no established track record of working with African creatives but it has started to move in that direction. In September, Disney Studios collaborated with Nigeria’s cinema chain FilmOne Entertainment to distribute Disney-owned films in English-speaking West Africa.

Netflix, which is much further along in working with African creatives in Nigeria’s Nollywood and South Africa’s TV and film industry, has become increasingly influential on the continent as it rolls out original shows produced by local talent, producers and executives including Queen Sono and Blood and Water and movies including Lionheart.

Africa’s animation film sector is growing rapidly with young talented animators and local collaborators create new, mostly short, features. This month saw the unveiling of Nigeria’s first animated full-lenght feature film titled Lady Buckit and the Motley Mopsters.

Last year, Netflix revealed it had partnered with Cape Town-based animation studios Triggerfish for a new series called Mama K’s Team 4, the story of an all girl-team of African spies, who also happen to be four normal Zambian teens by day.

Exactly five weeks until Ugandans are given the choice to elongate or curtail President Yoweri Museveni‘s 34-year reign, the only female presidential candidate among the 10 looking to unseat the 76-year-old granted a TV interview in which she revealed that her campaign was broke.

On Thursday night, Nancy Kalembe told Ugandans that her campaign had been hit by financial challenges which would mean that she would have to re-strategize but not necessarily pull out of the race. Earlier in the day, she had posted a thread of tweets asking her supporters to chip in through official mobile wallet accounts.

This would not be the first time Kalembe’s presidential hopes have hit a snag due to a lack of funds. In November, the country’s elections regulatory board had to turn her away from a national event after she failed to show evidence of paying the non-refundable 20 million Ugandan shillings, about $5,400, as election filing fee.

But Kalembe seems to have put the embarrassment behind her and wishes to forge on. In a recent interview with Monitor, one of Uganda’s biggest news outlets, the 40-year-old mother of two expressed the desire to see the national conversation focus on the issues that matter to Ugandans although she did not hide her frustrations with how expensive it is to run for the top job.

“Someone recently asked me a question: “You mean you went into elections and do not have money? I believe in order to run for the highest office, one does not need a lot of money, so, if you can help me, please go right ahead. If you cannot, then, please pray for me,” Kalembe told the newspaper.

Kalembe is a deeply religious woman who, on one hand, may appear simply as a product of her religiously conservative East African country. On the other, we are also speaking of a politician who lists faith as one of her seven cardinal points of attention if she should become president.

“My manifesto is hinged on 7 aspects: Faith, family, education, economy, media & communication, arts & entertainment and leadership,” she said in a recent TV interview.

She does not hide the fact that her Christian principles guide her politics. Nonetheless, Kalembe believes the task of putting Uganda to work is a very physicalist exercise of confronting the national debt, unemployment as well as fighting what she has called “artificial poverty”, the state of income and wealth disparities she believes is intentioned by Museveni’s government.

Her philosophical inspiration for politics is José Mujica, Uruguay’s farmer-turned president who became famous for donating the lion’s share of his salaries and instituting pro-poor policies. For most African citizens, Mujica sounds like that which would never happen in their countries, and Kalembe understands the reasons for this severe lack of hope and the pungence of cynicism.

Politics may not have been a turn we are used to for a woman who was once a contestant on Miss Uganda, a one-time actress, and also a former news anchor on Ugandan TV. But stereotypes cannot hold back the ideas she wishes to actualize for the sake of her country. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Population Studies and is capable of espousing her agenda quite clearly.

Running for a job in an African country with 10 other men is its own race but Kalembe promises that does not worry her. She is not one of people’s favorite, frankly. Those berths belong to the incumbent president and Robert Ssentamu, – also known as Bobi Wine – a man who has himself incurred the wrath of power by daring to run for the presidency.

The election is a tall order for Kalembe. But whatever the polls say after January 14, 2021, she would hope she has pushed the boundaries of the imaginable for her nearly 43 million compatriots.

In September when technology giant Apple released the new Apple Watch Series 6, it came with a special feature — a blood oxygen saturation monitor. The blood oxygen app that differentiates the new watch from the rest enables one to measure the oxygen level of their blood on-demand directly from their wrist, providing them with insights into their overall wellness, according to Apple.

And this life-saving feature is all thanks to a team of software engineers at Apple Computers that was led by Ugandan-American Dr. Jeofrey Kibuule. 31-year-old Kibuule, who is one of the best software engineers in the diaspora, grabbed headlines, especially in the tech world, immediately after the launch of the Apple Watch Series 6.

For many, the in-built unique blood oxygen saturation sensors came at the right time, as many patients in critical condition with COVID-19 have had low blood oxygen levels.

“During a blood oxygen measurement, the back crystal [under the wrist watch] shines red and green LEDs and infrared light onto your wrist. Photodiodes then measure the amount of light reflected back. Advanced algorithms use this data to calculate the colour of your blood. The colour determines your blood oxygen level — bright red blood has more oxygen, while dark red blood has less,” a statement on the Apple website states.

Apple has, however, said that measurements taken with the blood oxygen app are only “for general fitness and wellness purposes.”

Kibuule, who is among the brains behind the blood oxygen app, has been working in Silicon Valley for the last five years. Passionate about technology and medicine, Kibuule, while in medical school at the age of just 23, developed a lab reference app. Known as Pocket Lab Values, the app helps to increase the chances of the accuracy of diagnoses, the Daily Monitor reported.

The groundbreaking app, according to a report, “catapulted him [Kibuule] on a global stage to collaborate with medical professionals in Laboratory investigations for health solutions.”

The second-born son of Dr. and Mrs. Mawanda Kibuule, of Desoto, Texas, the software engineer comes from a brilliant family. Out of the five members of the family, four are with doctorates. Kibuule’s father, retired Dr. Pascal Mawanda Kibuule (PhD), is a physicist. His brother, Dr. Leonard Kibuule, is an orthopedic spine surgeon and one of the top 20 spine surgeons in the United States. His younger sister, Dr. Grace N. Kibuule, is pursuing a residency in anesthesiology at the University of San Francisco, California. Their mother, Jane Kibuule, is a CPA.

It is therefore not surprising to many that Kibuule, at just 18, became the first known Ugandan-American to graduate with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Kibuule, before joining the University of Texas and Baylor College of Medicine, graduated from the Honors College of Science, Technology, and Mathematics (STEM) of Texas at the University of North Texas. He would then study medicine and graduate from Baylor College of Medicine with an M.D. in 2014.

The soft-spoken young man is now earning praise in the tech world with his innovative solutions that are saving and improving lives.

Kampala, Uganda is serving a healthy dose of Girl Power amid a covid-19 pandemic that sees several women — who found themselves in months-long lockdown and unemployed, take on both new careers and self-defence training by way of Diva Taxi, a new female taxi driver service in the city..

Company founder, Gillian Kobusingye, is proud of her employees, "Our ladies are extremely hard working, very motivated and I like their sense of pride when they are doing this work they are doing it with one heart compared to other people. And that's the difference we have to the competitors."

Diva Taxi now boasts over 70 drivers and claims an industry-low fare commission rate of 25% in order to see the women thrive.

Donna Ochen, a Diva Taxi driver, is happy with the means the professional opportunity financially affords her, "When I saw the Diva Taxi company reaching out to all females who could be interested I decided to take it up because it would be an opportunity for me to serve and earn and support my family with the earnings that I'd get from driving."

Diva Taxi has a fleet of around 100 cars that serve as taxis, special school pick-ups and drop-offs and even functions like weddings. An unexpected and resounding successful start for the company that almost wasn't.

Rebecca Makyeli, the manager and self-defence trainer at Diva Taxi, shares the very early days of the company's journey, "They thought of the idea of why would we have our cars just parked in a compound and yet we can transport people and services from one place to another. So, coming up with this idea it started off as a joke, supported by friends, close friends and family, but eventually, the idea picked up and in June 2020 the company was registered and officially came into being."

With its 72 drivers averaging 30 rides a week, Diva Taxi expects its service app — downloaded around 500 times to reach 2000 active users this year in the city of three million inhabitants.