Uganda

Uganda lies on a plateau astride the equator, where Lake Victoria pours out into the Nile at Jinja. Much of the country is well-watered farmland, swamp and lake, and the river crosses it northwards through Murchison Falls, forcing its way through a cleft only a few metres wide. Along the western border the Rwenzori range and the volcanic Virungas rise above Lakes Albert and Edward, and the Bwindi forest shelters mountain gorillas. Karamoja, in the far north-east, is dry cattle country.

The kingdom of Buganda, on the northern shore of Lake Victoria, along with Bunyoro, Toro and Ankole, had organised courts long before British explorers came looking for the Nile’s source. Britain declared a protectorate in 1894 and ruled largely through Buganda’s chiefs. Independence came in 1962. Idi Amin’s rule from 1971 to 1979, which expelled the country’s Asian community, and years of conflict lasting into the mid-1980s followed.

Bark cloth beaten from the mutuba tree by the Baganda is recognised by UNESCO, and royal drums still mark the old kingdoms’ ceremonies. Matooke, green cooking bananas steamed in their own leaves, is the national staple, and the rolex, a chapati rolled around an omelette, is the street snack of every town. Coffee from the Lake Victoria crescent is a leading export, alongside gold, tea, fish and flowers, and oil was found beneath the Albertine Rift in 2006.