Uganda

Uganda: capital Kampala, population 51.4M, area 241,550 km². The 31st most populous country, in Africa. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Uganda is landlocked in the African Great Lakes region, holding 45 per cent of Lake Victoria and lying wholly inside the Nile basin. The kingdom of Buganda gave the country its name through Swahili, and the outflow at Ripon Falls near Jinja was long taken for the source of the Nile. The Rwenzori range carries permanent ice within sight of the equator, Bwindi shelters about half the world's mountain gorillas, and the Kasubi Tombs are built entirely from plant materials.

• Buganda was unified around the thirteenth century by Kato Kintu, founder of its Kintu dynasty, and had grown into one of the largest states in East Africa by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
• The outflow at Ripon Falls on the northern shore of Lake Victoria was long treated as the source of the Nile, until the building of the Nalubaale Dam submerged the falls in the mid-twentieth century.
• The Buganda monarchy was abolished in 1967 and officially restored in 1993 with a largely ceremonial role; Muwenda Mutebi II is counted the 36th Kabaka of Buganda.
• Buganda became a major cotton and coffee producer under British rule and is still Uganda's biggest coffee region, turning out more than 3,170,000 bags of Robusta in 2023 and 2024.

• John Akii-Bua was the first Olympic champion Uganda ever had, winning the 400 metres hurdles, and he received the Silver Olympic Order in 1986.
• Joshua Cheptegei holds the world records at both 5,000 and 10,000 metres, set in 2020, and is only the tenth man in history to hold the two at the same time.
• Stephen Kiprotich won the Olympic marathon in 2012 in 2:08:01 and took the world title the next year, the second man ever to pair those two golds.
• Okot p'Bitek wrote Song of Lawino in the Acholi dialect of Southern Luo, translated it himself and published it in 1966, founding what is now called the Okot School of poetry.

• The Rwenzori range reaches 5,109 metres and keeps permanent snow and glaciers on the equator; European explorers tied it to the Mountains of the Moon that Ptolemy named as the Nile's source.
• Bwindi Impenetrable National Park covers 321 square kilometres reachable only on foot and holds about 400 mountain gorillas, roughly half the world's population of the species.
• At the top of Murchison Falls the Nile is forced through a gap only 7 metres wide and drops 43 metres, carrying some 300 cubic metres of water a second.
• The Kasubi Tombs hold four kabakas of Buganda and were called by UNESCO in 2001 one of the most remarkable buildings in sub-Saharan Africa made purely from plant materials.

• The name Uganda is simply the Swahili form of Buganda; English is the official language, Swahili the second, and Luganda is widely spoken in the centre of the country.
• A Ugandan rolex is an omelette and vegetables rolled inside a chapati; two chapatis make a Titanic, and a chapati sliced and mixed with beans is a Kikomando.
• Matoke is a group of green East African Highland bananas that are peeled, steamed and mashed, and the dish counts as a national dish of Uganda.
• Uganda's flag was adopted on 9 October 1962, the day of independence, and carries a crested crane, the national bird, on a white disc across six black, yellow and red bands.

What is the capital of Uganda?

The capital of Uganda is Kampala.

What is the population of Uganda?

Uganda has about 51.4M people — the 31st most populous country in the world.

How big is Uganda?

Uganda covers 241,550 km², making it the 79th largest country by area.

Which region is Uganda in?

Uganda is in Eastern Africa, Africa.