Uganda
The pearl of Africa at the source of the Nile
Uganda is a green, fertile country straddling the equator in the African Great Lakes, a land so lush that Winston Churchill dubbed it the pearl of Africa. It shares the world's second-largest freshwater lake, Victoria, and claims the source of the White Nile, which begins its 6,000-kilometer journey to the Mediterranean at Jinja. From the snow and glaciers of the Rwenzori Mountains to the savannas where lions and elephants roam, and the misted slopes that shelter half the world's mountain gorillas, Uganda packs an astonishing range of landscapes and life into a compact, youthful nation.
The country is essentially a high plateau ringed by mountains and lakes, with Lake Victoria forming much of its southern edge. The fabled Rwenzori range, the Mountains of the Moon, rises on the western border to Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley at 5,109 meters, the third-highest point in Africa and one of the few places on the equator to carry permanent ice. The western branch of the Great Rift Valley cradles lakes Albert, Edward, and George, while the White Nile flows north out of Lake Victoria toward South Sudan. The climate is tropical but tempered by altitude, with generally reliable rainfall.
The powerful kingdom of Buganda gave the country its name and shaped its precolonial order before Britain made Uganda a protectorate. Independence in 1962 gave way to turbulent decades, including the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s and a long civil conflict, before relative stability returned under a long-serving government. Uganda has earned praise for hosting one of the world's largest refugee populations and criticism for its political restrictions. Agriculture anchors the economy, with coffee a leading export, and oil development is underway near Lake Albert, while English and Swahili are official across a society of many kingdoms and languages.