Monica Atto was abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a child but escaped and now lives in a suburb of Gulu, northern Uganda, with her five children, eking out a living making paper beads.

Stephen Mukasa, 23, a fisherman on East Africa’s Lake Victoria, is more terrified of drowning than he is of dying from an AIDS-related illness.

Eastern Uganda’s mountainous district of Kapchorwa has huge agricultural potential, but farmers perennially suffer crop losses due to vermin, poor or non-existent storage and drying facilities, and lack of transport, say officials.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has indicated he will not back a bill that would impose the death sentence for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” – when an HIV-positive person has sex with anyone who is disabled or under the age of 18.

There is a joke among Africans about how colonialism began. A Christian missionary came with a Bible in hand, told our ancestors to bow their heads for a prayer, and when they opened their eyes their land was gone.

The lack of adequate sanitation facilities in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has led to increased use of polythene bags – known as “flying toilets” – for human waste disposal, local officials said.

This place stinks’; a graffiti in a Kampala public toilet curtly tells its story. But nature’s call is defiant, and so people simply ignore the warning.

Ten months after being re-launched, a new brand of female condom has proven popular among a test group of Ugandan women, according to a study.

On December 1, 25 journalists were imprisoned in Sub-Saharan Africa because of their work. Nearly 90 percent of these journalists were detained without charges in secret detention facilities, according to an annual census of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) based in New York.

A Ugandan bill that proposes the death penalty for homosexuals has sparked international condemnation. Enraged opponents of the bill have been advocating that Uganda reject passing such a severe law.

A ray of hope finally shone on the parents of 11 juveniles suffering from heart diseases that needed heart surgery. Many of the parents had earlier on given up accessing treatment for their children, citing inadequate funds.

In a bid to reduce the rate of HIV transmission from mother to child, Uganda will now give all pregnant women highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).