Thomas Eric Duncan at a Party in Monrovia, Liberia, 2011 “Image Ownership: Public Domain” In the following article Dr. Clarence Spigner, Professor of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes the life of the first patient to die of Ebola on U.S. … Read MorePatient Zero: Thomas Eric Duncan and the Ebola Crisis in West Africa and the United States
“Image Ownership: Public Domain” Josef Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), was reportedly born in 1961 and raised in the northern Uganda village of Odek. Kony was deeply influenced as a youth by Christianity. Following the arrival of the first missionaries in … Read MoreJosef Kony (1961?- )/Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
David Kato was founding father of Uganda’s emergent gay rights movement, the first openly gay man in the country, and an international gay rights activist. He was brutally murdered in January 2011. Born around 1964, Kato joined his twin brother John Wassawa Mulamba and family … Read MoreDavid Kato (c1964-2011)
Image Ownership: Public Domain African novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan author, educator and playwright. With the publication of his first novel, he became a critically-acclaimed author at the age of 29. His work is also published under the pseudonym James T. Ngugi. Ngugi … Read MoreNgugi wa Thiong’o (AKA James T. Ngugi) (1938- )
Downtown Kampala Image Courtesy of the Office of Active Citizenship & Service, Vanderbilt University Kampala is the largest city and the capital of Uganda. In 2006 its population was approximately 1,189,000. The city was built over the old capital of the Buganda Kingdom located on … Read MoreKampala, Uganda (1890- )
Diane Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to the British Parliament, was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in 1953. Growing up in Paddington, London, she attended Harrow County grammar school before pursuing studies in History to Master’s level at Newnham College, Cambridge. Upon … Read MoreDiane Abbott (1953- )
Image Ownership: Public Domain In 1922 the British colonial government in Uganda founded a small vocational school, which would eventually become Uganda’s lone institution of higher education, Makerere University. The British Governor of Uganda, Robert Coryndon (1918-1922), proposed building a technical school for Africans. The … Read MoreMakerere University (1922– )
Kampala Newspaper Reporting the Israeli Raid Image Ownership: Public Domain The city of Entebbe, Uganda, is located on the shores of Lake Victoria about 22 miles south of Kampala, the nation’s capital. In addition to being the official residence of the president of Uganda, Entebbe … Read MoreEntebbe Raid (June 28, 1976)
Image Courtesy of Harvard University Akinwande Ouwole "Wole" Soyinka, the first African writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature (1986) was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria on July 13, 1934. His father, Canon S.A. Soyinka, was an Anglican minister and his mother, Grace Eniola, was … Read MoreWole Soyinka (1934- )
Mytela Kasanda, or Mirambo, was a Nyamwezi warlord who gained control of much of east central Africa. He was born into the royal family of the small chiefdom of Uyowa, and likely became chief after the death of his father around 1860. He became a … Read MoreMirambo (ca.1840–1884)