On this week’s Lid Is On, Conor Lennon speaks to two experts on racism against people of African Descent, on the insidious nature of everyday racism, the importance of reparations, and why an acceptance that the wealth of developed countries is built on the back of oppressed, Black people, is liberating for people of all races.
Uganda’s status as a refuge has seen large numbers escaping conflict in neighbouring and nearby countries, in particular South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and living in relative safety.
Whilst many are living in refugee camps administered by the UN in the north of the country, such as the Bidi Bidi settlement, others have made their way to the capital, Kampala, and some are making an impact on Uganda’s alternative music scene.
Okubani Market is located in northern Uganda’s Yumbe District, within the Bidibidi refugee settlement which, during the South Sudan civil war, was the largest settlement of its kind in the world.
The market is a vital economic hub for refugees from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the host community, which suffered years of insecurity at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Hundreds of millions of people do not have access to electricity, seriously hampering their ability to improve their development prospects.
In Arua, northern Uganda, where employment rates are low and poverty is high, the UN is supporting a company that is providing pay-as-you-go solar energy services, putting the benefits of electricity in reach of villagers who would otherwise never be able to afford it.
In Lumonga village, situated in a remote part of the West Nile region of northern Uganda, smallholder farmers have traditionally been cut off from the banking system, and been forced to rely on small savings and loans from their community to survive hard times.
Northern Uganda has higher poverty and less employment that the south of the country, which is why the UN is backing projects aimed at boosting the regional economy.
In “Developing northern Uganda”, a special four-part mini-series, we go to Yumbe and Arua districts, to see how the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is helping to create sustainable employment prospects for local people.
In our third episode looking at ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, we turn to the issue of the coral reef. Barbados’s reef has been declining for decades, hit by decades of pollution and the climate crisis.
This is the second in a four-part mini-series, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, exploring some of the ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados. This episode focuses on the pollutants that, for decades, have poured into the coastal waters, a result of agriculture and the development of the island. In recent years, the government, with the support of the United Nations, has sought to use nature-based solutions to rectify the damage.
In a four-part mini-series, released in the run-up to the UN Oceans Conference, we explore some of the ocean-related issues facing the eastern Caribbean island nation of Barbados.
This episode concentrated on the worrying spread of sargassum seaweed, which arrived unannounced in 2011, and has been a regular fixture on much of the coastline ever since.
There’s no single answer to why the seaweed is clogging up the beaches and waters, but many scientists believe that the climate crisis is at least partly to blame.
