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11 December 2014
By Sam Mutabazi The author is Executive Director of Uganda Road Sector Support Initiative (URSSI). This is a chapter from a recently issued State of Right to Information in Africa Report 2014 and is reprinted with permission. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.) Information exchange is vital in setting the development agenda of a country. Governments that are liberal in sharing […]
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5 April 2013
Implementation of Uganda’s law on access to information suffers because of weaknesses in the judicial system and a culture of secrecy, among many other factors, according to a detailed World Bank report. The report was written by Anupama Dokeniya, a World Bank staff member who also wrote a recent World Bank report on the implementation […]
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7 March 2013
Right to information laws “will accomplish little” in poor countries, according to the author of new World Bank study, “unless concerted efforts are made to address the broader enabling environment, and appropriate capacity building strategies are devised.” The report by Anupama Dokeniya is based on individual research studies of implementation in eight countries: Albania, […]
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23 August 2012
Uganda’s Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development has published a Manual of Functions and Index of Records for 2012/2013. “The Manual contains very useful information on information available and how it can be accessed,” according to Gilbert Sendugwa, the Coordinator/Head of Secretariat of the Africa Freedom of Information Centre. Publication of a manual was […]
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1 July 2011
The new regulations to implement the Uganda Access to Information Act of 2005 contain “burdensome provisions that make access unnecessarily costly and difficult,” according to a new analysis. The assessment comes from the World Resources Institute in a report entitled “Access to Information Regulations: Another Bump in the Road to Transparency,” by Gaia Larsen, Carole […]
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17 June 2011
Uganda has issued long-awaited regulations to govern the 2005 Access to Information Act. The regulations had been approved in May, but publication was delayed. (See previous Freedominfo.org report.) The absence of regulations constrained implementation of the law and their issuance was a key demand of groups including the Africa Freedom of Information Centre. The AFIC is a pan-African […]
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19 May 2011
After years of delay, the Ugandan government has decided to issue rules to operationalize the 2005 Access to Information Act. The regulations have not yet been made public, but the promise that they will be “gazetted” has been made by a key minister. A $500 dispute with the printing company is delaying publication. The Africa Freedom […]
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8 April 2011
A U.S. environmental group and partners in Africa have begun an effort to request environmental-related information from the governments of Ghana, Uganda and South Africa, and hope to find new strategies to promote freedom of information reform. The project was announced by the World Resources Institute in Washington, the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) in […]
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21 April 2009
In 2006, a case was brought to the Inspections Panel over the controversial West African Gas Pipeline Project. The list of disclosure-related allegations was extensive. According to the complainants, although West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) periodically consulted landowners, other stakeholders were wrongly excluded and the overwhelming majority of our people were not consulted during […]
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22 March 2006
By Toby McIntosh Riding a wave of transparency, the idea of encouraging Freedom of Information (FOI) laws as part of the development agenda is gaining currency, but slowly. With research and case studies increasingly identifying transparency as a key tool in fighting corruption and facilitating development, more attention is being paid to the development of […]
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31 January 2003
The World Bank has rejected requests to disclose several key documents concerning the controversial $1.1 billion Nam Theun 2 hydropower project in Laos. The documents — the "power purchase agreement" and the "concession agreement" — must stay private, the Bank said, because they contain proprietary commercial information that the Bank said it promised not to […]
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22 November 2002
Ugandan Judge Orders Release of Key Document on Bujagali Dam. Relying on the open government clause of the Ugandan constitution, a top Ugandan judge Nov. 12 ordered the release of a key document about a controversial dam project that the Ugandan government and the World Bank declined to disclose. More … Judge Rejects Government Claims. […]
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26 July 2002
The Ugandan High Court will listen to arguments Aug. 22 to decide whether a contract document for the proposed Bujagali Dam should be released to the public. Neither the Ugandan government, nor the dam project’s sponsor, AES Nile Power, a subsidiary of AES Corp. of Arlington, Va., have previously refused to release the Power Purchase […]
