Overview

The Republic of Uganda is bordered by Sudan to the north, Kenya to the east, Lake Victoria, Tanzania, and Rwanda to the south, and Congo (formerly Zaire) to the west. The name Uganda is the Swahili term for Buganda, the homeland of the nation's largest ethnic group, the Baganda. British colonizers adopted the name when they established the Uganda Protectorate, centered in Buganda, in 1894. Uganda has great natural beauty, with an incredible variety of mammal species and birds. Winston Churchill called the country the "Pearl of Africa." Uganda's tropical forests, tea plantations, rolling savannahs, and arid plains are home to half of Africa's bird species.

Uganda's land area is 91,459 square miles (236,880 square kilometers), about the size of Oregon, and it lies across the equator. Its topography varies from the lush and fertile shores of Lake Victoria in the southeast to semidesert in the northeast. Uganda...