Author: Robert Atuhairwe

As Uganda races to end over a decade’s wait to pump out its first oil by 2025, the country is facing the puzzle of extracting the resource from the complex and ecologically sensitive, Kingfisher Development Area (KFDA) whilst protecting the environment. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Uganda Limited operated KDFA is sandwiched between the winding ridges of the Western Rift valley and the calm blue waters of Lake Albert. It is the second biggest oil production project after Tilenga with an anticipated production capacity of 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) when production commences. On a normal sunny day, the expanse adjacent to KFDA…

In the course of the 1980s and 1990s the US philanthropy body: Carnegie Corporation of New York sustained a sociology Think Tank, “Carnegie Commission on adolescents development”. It is devoted to documenting the taxonomy of reality besetting the maturation and fruition of a juvenile through the dark tunnel of transition from child to a responsible and productive adult. Samuel Tumusiime and Hilda. C’s book, “The girl child; Growing to Become a Woman of Value” is an inadvertent regurgitation of the same endeavour from the unique angle of a community volunteer and social activist. A girl-child specifically is defined simply as…

Oil curse refers to a series of evils and contradictions which have tended to accompany any oil extraction and oil production venture, especially the less developed countries. These include mainly impoverishment and marginalisation of the local population in the production areas, the prevalence of high unemployment and crime rates, widespread and total environmental devastation and desertification features. The emergency of political tension and conflicts about the sharing of oil revenues, the worsening of income inequality and social injustice and a whole spectrum of features of accelerated social decay and social disintegration including broken homes, teenage pregnancy, school dropout, high crime…

The trial of a case in which a section of Non-Governmental Organisations are seeking to stop construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) shall start on Wednesday in France. In October 2019, six Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) tracking developments in Uganda’s oil and gas industry brought proceedings against TotalEnergies in France claiming that it had not sufficiently managed and identified social and environmental impacts of Tilenga and EACOP projects in Uganda and Tanzania. This follows collapse of mediation. In a statement published on October 12, TotalEnergies said NGOs snubbed mediation process which had been proposed by Paris civil court and…

Nigerian firm Oranto Petroleum Limited (OPL) has kicked-off open dialogues with stakeholders as it moves to start drilling its Ngassa Exploration block on Lake Albert in Hoima district. During a stakeholders engagement at HB Hotel in Hoima City on November 24, Abdu Byakagaba, the OPL General Manager, said engagements which are part of conditions in the license, helps them to understand community needs and adhere to them during the drilling and to ensure a win-win situation. He said the-engagements are also meant to identify opportunities, health and safety and environmental regulations and how fishing activities will be managed. Ngassa block…

Moses Semahunge, the project manager for Bulindi Chimpanzee and Community Project, says, naturally, chimpanzees will always try to avoid people if there is an option of hiding away. Semahunge, whose organisation deals in conservation of chimpanzees, is quick to add that but apes move for several reasons, including reproduction and in search for food. During reproduction, he explains, the alpha male takes the female out of the community and they only return when the male is sure that the female has conceived. Semahunge says when they grow up, chimpanzees always move out of their community to get married because the…

Hoima city council has ordered American Tower Corporation (ATC) to restore the degraded part at Hoima Public Primary School where it had started constructing a base station commonly known as a mast. This comes after the city council stopped the construction that had reached surface level of the mast foundation where concrete pillars with metals had been already affixed on Tuesday when The Albertine Journal visited the school. A makeshift iron sheet fence which substituted a wall is visible behind Perssey road that neighbours a school with an estimated enrolment of close to 2,000 learners. The construction of the mast…

Bunyoro’s sacred natural sites and indigenous food systems that are at the verge of extinction due to industrialisation, encroachment and modernity could be saved following a mooted partnership between Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom and African Institute for Culture and Ecology (AFRICE), a conservation organisation. This comes at a time the current generation has no or less value for culture which is causing the fast diminishing of the natural sacred sites and indigenous foods. Traditionalists insist that the said sites which have been in existence for centuries are not satanic. They say they could be developed as local tourism sites to earn the…

The process of opening the boundary of Mukihane central forest reserve in West Division, Hoima City is set to start before the end of this month.The revelations were made by Badru Mugabi, the Hoima Resident City Commissioner (RCC) in an interview with The Albertine Journal on Wednesday.Located on Butiaba road and Kihomboza northeast of Hoima City, the hill, which is commonly known as Wampanga forest, has had ownership disputes since 2010.The dispute is among Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom and residents who are alleged to have encroached on the land and National Forestry Authority (NFA).Many people know it as a forest for the…

Recent complaints by farmers over exclusion from oil and gas contracts has given the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU), the sector regulator a new task. The task is about biting if contractors in the oil industry continue to violate the country’s local content policy of 2018 that seeks to ensure the host community partake of opportunities in the sector. A virtual meeting was organised by PAU on November 2 over the same. It was attended by farmers, oil companies-CNOOC Uganda Limited, TotalEnergies and Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS). The catering firms subcontracted by the oil firms including Mineral Services…