AU pays 70m/- per dead UPDF soldier:
Daily Monitor

THE African Union has paid out about US$200,000 (about Shs345 million) or an equivalent of Shs70 million in compensation to each of the families of the five Ugandan peacekeepers killed by insurgents in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

The soldiers killed between April and May this year were part of a 1,400 strong peacekeeping contingent deployed in Somalia in March 2007 as part of a planned 8,000-strong African Union force to support the interim government there.
The AU cheques however, haven’t been received by the families here.

Humanitarian Games Catalogue

• Against All Odds. The game that lets you experience what it is like to be a refugee from UNHCR.
• Stop Disasters. A disaster simulation game from the UN/ISDR.
• WFP Food Force (download). It’s up to you to save and rebuild the island of Sheylan with WFP.
• 3rd World Farmer. Puts you in the shoes of a family of farmers in one of the poorest areas of the world.
• Darfur is Dying. Players must keep their refugee camp functioning in the face of possible attack by Janjaweed militias.
• Ayiti: the Cost of Life. Your goal in this game is to help the Guinard family get an education and improve their lives.
• Disaster Watch.
• Prisoners of War. Among the Red Cross’s tasks are to visit prisoners of war (POWs) who are protected by the Geneva Conventions, and provide them with assistance.
• Peacemaker. Experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster.
• The Transaid Challenge. You are an African health worker, delivering services and supplies from health centres to villages that need them.

Climate Change Increases Early Marriages – Report
New Vision

CLIMATE change has been blamed for increasing social problems such as early marriages, a report has stated.

“In times of food crisis, some parents distressfully marry off their daughters to secure dowry for survival,” said the report launched by the environment state minister, Jessica Eriyo, at Fairway Hotel in Kampala yesterday.

“In some cases, women and men elope to avoid famine and poverty. Some rich men are often ready to take young women,” noted the report, funded by the UN environment agency, UNDP, Global Environment Facility and Environment Alert.

Mobile phones reach Uganda’s villages

BBC

In a village called Kkonkoma, on the roof of a small house there is an aerial. It is a mobile phone antenna for a home-based village telephone service run by 24-year-old entrepreneur Joseph Ssesanga and his family.

Neighbours make telephone calls from his house rather than walk down the dirt track to the nearest public telephone some five kilometres away.

New Move to Bring Electricity to Africa
Christian Science Monitor

The “Lighting Africa” initiative, including a $12 million competition to design the best business model for providing light for Africans, hopes to do for cheap low-energy lighting what entrepreneurs have already done for cellphones.

African Crucible: Cast as Witches, and then Cast Out
New York Times

UIGE, Angola — Domingos Pedro was only 12 years old when his father died. The passing was sudden; the cause was a mystery to doctors. But not to Domingos’s relatives.

They gathered that afternoon in Domingos’s mud-clay house, he said, seized him and bound his legs with rope. They tossed the rope over the house’s rafters and hoisted him up until he was suspended headfirst over the hard dirt floor. Then they told him they would cut the rope if he did not confess to murdering his father.

Are Ugandans Subsidizing the War in Iraq?
Citizen Uganda

So far, the military has been willing to outsource some aspects of the campaign to private security companies (Blackwater anyone?). Uganda seems to be one of the most reliable sources of manpower for these firms. At $1,000 a month, our citizens are cheaper than the highly trained western ex-military types who earn as much as $1,000 a day. But there is no indication that these firms are passing on the savings to the U.S. government.