The Future of Ugandan Media in the Digital Age

The Ugandan media landscape is changing fast and, as a result, traditional print and digital media are being forced to rethink the methods of work that have kept them relevant to their audiences and profitable for decades.

With the advent of digital media platforms, the leveling effect of social media and the multiplicity of online sources of news, many legacy media houses are finding themselves more and more alienated from the audiences they have come to depend on for views and sales.

The "new media" is creating newer modes of capturing, packaging and distributing news content that are more relevant and responsive to the needs of a new generation of news audiences.

These changes in the media landscape have forced many media houses in Uganda to begin thinking critically about how they can embrace the new technology and platforms in order to stay alive in a rapidly changing media market.

This has led to media houses getting involved in experimentation with different formats, content and distribution channels but as yet nobody seems to have a good idea of what works best.

Those that have made some headway in producing, and delivering, content that their audiences want are finding they have to figure out how to make money from these new formats and platforms.

The dilemma that many media houses are facing is that innovations in digital and mobile news gathering and distribution will ultimately mean very little if these innovations cannot be monetized.

At present, while the media houses are slowly getting to grips with digital media, the advertisers are still hesitant to spend their money on these new products and platforms. The advertisers are still more comfortable dealing with legacy media, probably because they understand it better.

All things considered, it will be a while until Ugandan media houses sort through the experimentation to find what works and inevitably some will not survive.

However, those that are thinking seriously about the future, and investing in keeping relevant in the digital age, will experience lots of birthing pains but they will inevitably be the first at the table when what is today's new digital/social media fad becomes tomorrow's mainstream platform for delivering news.

Its a brave new world out there but it is also full of untapped potential.

My Swahili journey and why Ugandans do not speak the language

I recently decided to start teaching myself Swahili, which is the most widely spoken language in East Africa.

I wanted to learn Swahili (or Kiswahili as it is called in Swahili) because I have been a keen supporter of the East African community initiatives and I am a firm believer in the idea of an East African federation.

However, over the years I have increasingly began to feel like a bit of a fraud because of my inability to speak any Swahili.

I have been finding my inability to speak Swahili at odds with my preaching the gospel of integration and getting East Africans to come together as one.

Because Swahili is the de facto langauage of the East African community, I felt I was not setting the right example myself by not speaking Swahili, which I believe is the easiest step an individual Ugandan can take towards being part of the bigger East African family.

It is now a few weeks into my "Learn Swahili" project and everything is going rather well. I wish I had embarked on this earlier.

However, as I have been studying Swahili, I have also been reflecting on why the language is not spoken as widely in Uganda as it is in other East African countries.

Everybody will tell you that Ugandans do not speak Swahili because it is a language that was long associated with brutal military dictatorships and their soldiers but this, while true, is only a small component of the whole story.

The reasons why Swahili never developed as a widespread lingua franca in Uganda have more to do with opposition to in from the kings of Buganda and the early Christian missionaries.

The British in Uganda had decided in the early 20th century to promote the Swahili language as a means of communication among lower levels of government and as a language of instruction in the early years of education.

However, the Christian missionaries at the time resisted, and worked against this, because they associated Swahili with Islam and they felt that teaching Swahili might somehow give Islam a foothold in Uganda.

This missionary opposition to Swahili might not have amounted to much if the Kabaka of Buganda, Daudi Chwa II, had supported the policy of teaching Swahili.

But Kabaka Chwa was not only opposed to Swahili, he was actually quite emphatic about how he would never allow the language to be taught in his kingdom.

Kabaka Chwa believed that teaching Swahili would lead to a situation where it became the lingua franca of the Uganda Protectorate and he was afraid this would then diminish the cultural influence Luganda, and by extension Buganda, was already beginning to have on the expansion and establishment of British rule in the protectorate.

The Baganda collaborated with the British from the beginning of their establishment of the Uganda Protectorate and they had been rewarded with lands from other kingdoms and communities and Baganda chiefs were being used to spread British rule to other parts of Uganda especially in the East and parts of the West.

This had led to a situation where Baganda had been elevated to a special status by the British and by default Luganda had started to gain an equally special status in local administration and education outside Buganda.

It is against this background that Kabaka Chwa felt that Swahili would diminish this new found status of Luganda and he thus opposed its teaching in Buganda and since the British depended on the goodwill of the Baganda at this time, they acquiesced to the Kabaka's demands.

Because British colonialism spread out from Buganda to the rest of Uganda, when the teaching of Swahili in Buganda was abandoned the Swahili project died for all practical purposes though efforts to teach it continued up to the late 1940s.

In the late 1960s President Milton Obote, through his "Move to the left" initiative had laid out plans to make Swahili a national language and a unifying force in Uganda.

Obote was a great admirer of President Nyerere of Tanzania and he wanted to emulate what the Tanzanian president was doing at the time to do away with tribal identities in Tanzania and create a Tanzanian identity through Swahili.

However, Obote was overthrown before his plans could take off.

Therefore by the time the military dictatorships of the 70s and 80s came around Swahili was already pretty much dead and it has been struggling since.

Anyway, I am committed to my pursuit of fluency in Swahili and I hope by the end of the year I will have attained a level of proficiency that will enable me hold general conversations on most common topics. By the end of next year, I want to be able to write, talk and debate on any topic of interest.

Why can't I call Kampala home?

Recently a colleague asked me what my hometown was and I said Kampala.

  

However, my colleague felt I had not quite understood her question because she chose to rephrase it along the lines of “ I mean where are you from”, to which I repeated “Kampala”.

 

At this point, the clearly perplexed lady said,

“ But you are not a Muganda” and I said  “Yes”.

She added, “ But how then can you be from Kampala?”

This exchange went on for a while but it ultimately ended the same way most such exchanges I have had over the years have ended, which is usually something along the lines of me being told I have no sense of roots or belonging or other things of that sort.

The confusion on my female colleague’s part arose because, for some reason, nobody seems to ever “come from” Kampala.

There is a pervasive mindset in Uganda that only the few thousand people who can trace their family roots to a pre-colonial Kampala are allowed to call it their Home.

I find this quite absurd.

For those that are a bit puzzled at this point, let me attempt to put the exchange with my colleague, and others of her ilk, in context.

Kampala, the city in which I was born and have lived for all but 2 of the 37 years I have been alive, is the capital of Uganda. 

Kampala also happens to be located in a region called Buganda, from which Uganda gets its name and, which is predominantly populated by the Baganda. Baganda make up around 18% of Uganda’s population, which makes them the largest single ethnic group in Uganda.

Also, my parents are from different parts of South-Western Uganda and they are Banyankore. 

Furthermore, Uganda is a largely rural country and people like myself, born and bred in cities and towns, are a relatively small (but rapidly growing) minority.

Finally, in most Ugandan cultures children "belong" to their father and hence take on his name, clan, and by extension, wherever it is he comes from.

You would think that that last point above would pretty much put my issues to bed. After all, if the dominant societal culture says I come from wherever my father comes from then why would I say I come from Kampala?

The thing is that Kampala seems to have its own standards when it comes to these matters.

Let me explain with an example.

If my dad had been born in Masaka, which is in Buganda, and had then moved to Mpigi, also found in Buganda, and I had been born in Mpigi, I am sure I nobody would say I was from Masaka. Most people would simply accept that I am from Mpigi.

However, when it comes to Kampala the same logic does not apply.

I remember spending an exasperating 15 minutes explaining to the fellow who was registering me for a national ID, why I insisted on filling in Kampala as my home district.
 
The man was adamant that the people who had put that section on the form had meant for me to fill in where my father came from, not necessarily where I was born or where I had lived all my life. I had more important things to do than argue with the man so I quickly picked new forms and filled in an answer that was more to his liking and only then was I entered into the system.

I also remember a friend of mine from secondary who had lived in Kyambogo all his life but he filled in Lira when it came to filling in university admission forms section on district of origin. He asked me why I had filled in Kampala and not Mbarara and I told him I had never lived in Mbarara. He said that that did not matter because, according to him, the guys at UNEB (or ministry of education) would be confused by the mismatch between my "home district" and my surname.

By the way, nobody should get the impression that I have no love or attachment to Rwampara County in Mbarara district, (which is where dad was from).  I do like the place. Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.

I like the fact there is extended family all around the area. I like the peace and quiet I enjoy when I am there. Most of the time I spend there is quite refreshing and I enjoy most of the visits I make there once or twice every year.  I might even spend my retirement years over there in the unlikely event that I get tired of living in Kampala

However, despite all the things I like about Mbarara, it just does not feel like home.  When there I somehow always feel like that guest who comes to your house so often that you no longer feel the need to to accord him any special treatment, but he still remains a guest. He is still has boundaries he cannot cross because he is simply not a member of the household. 

I essentially have no sense of history with Mbarara. I have no memories of growing up there. No childhood friends I got into mischief with, no romances and relationships or  special places with deeply held memories attached them. Nothing.

You can pass whatever judgements about what my parents should or should not have done but that is neither here nor there.

Mbarara is just not home in the sense in which I understand the word.

I do however recognize Mbarara as my ancestral home and I see no contradiction in ancestral home and hometown being two very different, and mutually exclusive, things. It seems in this I am something of a minority, at least when it comes to the people I deal with on a regular basis.

Kampala, unlike Mbarara is in my DNA, so to speak.

I have seen it grow in the same way it has been all around me and moulded me all my life.  With its countless street corners full of memories, numerous childhood friends (and some foes), favourite spots that have come and gone, neighbourhoods I lived in that are now barely recognisable from 30 years ago. The good, the bad, the lovely, the memorable and the not so memorable.  Its all there in Kampala.

This city, formerly of seven hills, is the only true home I know. 

So. Guys…why won’t you just let me call Kampala home?