BackgroundArab traders moved
inland from the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa in the 1830s. They
were followed in the 1860s by British explorers searching for the
source of the Nile. Protestant missionaries entered the country in
1877, followed by Catholic missionaries in 1879. The United Kingdom
placed the area under the charter of the British East Africa Company
in 1888, and ruled it as a protectorate from 1894. As several other
territories and chiefdoms were integrated, the final protectorate
called Uganda took shape in 1914.
Uganda became an independent nation in 1962, with Edward Muteesa II,
the Kabaka (King) of Buganda as the President and Commander in Chief
of the armed forces and Milton Obote as Prime Minister. In 1966,
Obote overthrew the constitution and declared himself president,
ushering in an era of coups and counter-coups which would last until
the mid-1980s.
Idi Amin took power in 1971, ruling the country with the military
for the coming decade. Idi Amin's rule cost an estimated 300,000
Ugandans' lives. He forcibly removed the entrepreneurial Indian
minority from Uganda, decimating the economy. His reign was ended
after the Uganda-Tanzania War in 1979 in which Tanzanian forces
aided by Ugandan exiles invaded Uganda. This led to the return of
Obote, who was deposed once more in 1985 by General Tito Okello.
Okello ruled for six months until he was deposed after the so called
"bush war" by the National Resistance Army (NRM) operating under the
leadership of the current president, Yoweri Museveni.
Museveni has been in power since 1986. In the mid to late 1990s, he
was lauded by the West as part of a new generation of African
leaders. His presidency has been fouled, however, by involvement in
the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and other
conflicts in the Great Lakes region, as well as the civil war
against the Lord's Resistance Army.
Reime Kenya Ltd, as our East African hub, initiated the
incorporation of Reime Uganda during 2006. The initiative was based
on discussions with UTL as well as with Celtel giving reasonable
prospects of long term engagements in the Ugandan market. Contacts
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