Reporting UDU progress
Introduction
United Democratic Ugandans (UDU) committed itself to reporting regularly its activities, achievements and challenges ahead. We believe in transparency, accountability and full participation of all Ugandans regardless of their political label. That is why we created a blog www.udugandans.org, as a channel of communication. We have also channeled our activities through Ugandans at Heart Forum; The Uganda Citizen, [email protected]; [email protected]; UCOCA COMMUNITY in California among others. We thank Dennis Nyondo of UNAA for the excellent work he has done in broadcasting UDU messages. Some of UDU work has been translated into Luganda and published by Kamunye. Because of these efforts, thanks to all of you, UDU has already become a household name in Uganda and abroad.
Background
At the start of 2011 to June, James Ssemakula, Charlie Lakony and Eric Kashambuzi co-hosted an English program on Radio Munansi for three hours every Saturday and Sunday. The discussions were interactive, constructive and fully participatory. We discussed a very wide range of issues including democracy and in particular 2011 elections; governance (transparency, accountability and popular participation in national decision making processes. We debated at length the issues of corruption, sectarianism, cronyism and mismanagement of public funds); economic (low economic growth, skewed income distribution, high levels of unemployment, under-employment, mass poverty and exclusion), social (education, healthcare and housing) and ecological issues as well as East African economic integration and political federation; immigrants and refugees. We covered the role of development partners and the impact of technical and financial assistance to Uganda’s economy and society.