12 Gatekeeper Editors travel to Uganda
Health, environment, agriculture and economic development issues were the main focus of a 10-day visit to Uganda by 12 senior U.S. editors and producers who participated in the IRP Gatekeeper Editors trip in May 2008.
Uganda has long been a key country in global efforts to fight HIV/AIDS. During their visit, the Gatekeeper editors traveled to the Rakai Health Services Program in southwestern Uganda, a major overseas research facility of the National Institutes of Health, where researchers, including scientists from Johns Hopkins University, have been studying the HIV/AIDS virus for the past 20 years. They also witnessed firsthand how anti-retrovirals provided by the US-funded PEPFAR program have dramatically improved the lives of Ugandans infected with AIDS.
The editors also met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for a two and a half hour interview on a wide range of topics, including HIV/AIDS, population, agricultural development, African politics, press freedom, business, economic growth and climate change issues, and efforts to sign a peace agreement with northern rebels.
On the subject of HIV/AIDS, Museveni said he was not yet ready to endorse recent studies, in Uganda and elsewhere, that show that male circumcision helps reduce transmission of HIV/AIDS. During their visit, the Gatekeeper editors visited a circumcision clinic and talked to patients waiting to receive the procedure.
“I don’t think it’s a solution,” Museveni said of circumcision, which he said remains “taboo in some of our communities.” Recently the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health endorsed the effectiveness of the procedure in reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS. But Museveni said he wanted to see “evidence that when you are circumcised you are armored against [HIV/AIDS].”
The Gatekeepers also met with scientists and researchers on agricultural issues in Uganda, where efforts are underway to promote a “Green Revolution” for Africa similar to the one that brought transformative agricultural innovations to Asia decades earlier. Uganda is one of only nine countries of the 54 in Africa that grow enough food to feed their population. At a time of a growing global food crisis, Ugandan officials say the country has the potential to help feed the world’s hungry in poor countries.
But problems with infrastructure and agricultural policies are keeping Uganda from realizing its potential as an agricultural provider, as the Gatekeepers learned firsthand during days of traveling over some of the country’s poor roads. In his meeting with the editors, Museveni acknowledged the need to increase his government’s investment both in agricultural production and in infrastructure improvement.
In their meeting with Museveni, who has been president since 1986, the editors asked if he would seek a fourth term in 2011, when his current third term expires. Museveni declined to comment on the issue of a fourth term, and said he was not grooming any individual to succeed him: “I would rather groom a process that would facilitate the election of a successor.”
Editors also met with three civic leaders from Gulu in Uganda’s northern region, where a brutal 20-year conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army has left tens of thousands dead and wounded, and almost 2 million people displaced. The Ugandan government had hoped to sign a peace agreement with rebel leader Joseph Kony in April, but he has broken off talks and is currently hiding in neighboring countries. He continues to abduct children from Sudan, Congo, and the Central African Republic to replenish his depleted ranks.
The editors received an in-depth briefing on Kony and the peace talks from Col. Walter Ochora, an official of the Gulu district in northern Uganda who has met with Kony eight times. “I don’t see [Kony] putting down arms without pressure,” Ochora told the Gatekeepers at a special session on the conflict in the north that was arranged in Kampala by the International Reporting Project. Also speaking to the editors at that session were two women from Gulu who lead efforts to assist traumatized victims of the war, Norah Phoebe Okello, chair of Concerned Parents, and Aidah Lagony, a trauma counselor with World Vision who works with children scarred by the conflict and who was herself abducted by the LRA.
In addition to their meetings in Kampala and Rakai, the Gatekeepers also traveled to eastern Uganda to Jinja and Mukono and north to the Budongo tropical rain forest near Masindi, to meet with a wide range of leaders and citizens from all walks of life to discuss agriculture, business, media, health, environment, conservation and science.
The Gatekeeper editors and producers on the Uganda trip were:
Curtis Anderson, news editor, Rocky Mountain News
Michelle Burford, contributing features writer, Oprah Magazine
Andrew Chang, senior producer/editor, Yahoo!
Nancy Conway, editor, Salt Lake Tribune
Jennifer Goren, planning editor, BBC/PRI “The World”
Fred Guterl, assistant managing editor, Newsweek International
Paul Hendrie, department editor, Congressional Quarterly
Donald MacGillis, assistant editorial page editor, Boston Globe
Davan Maharaj, managing editor, Los Angeles Times
Nuala McGovern, executive producer, WNYC New York Public Radio
Barbara Paulsen, assistant executive editor, National Geographic
David Rocks, senior editor, BusinessWeek
More from this Reporter
- Foreign Reporting: It’s Not Like It Used to Be
- Turkey, a nation on the rise
- Indonesian President Asks for Patience in Transition to Democratic Rule
- IRP Gatekeeper Editors’ Firsthand Look at Brazil: AIDS, Aviation and Amazon
- IRP Gatekeeper Editors See South Africa’s Hope and Misery
