Mass Media in Uganda INTRODUCTION: ISSUE STATEMENT AND RE

INTRODUCTION: ISSUE STATEMENT AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGYProblem Statement

To say that mass media development in Uganda has been retarded may overstate the positive aspects of the issue. In the early1990s, there is in Uganda, a country with a population approximating 18 million, (1) one television set for every 178 persons, (2) one radio for each 46 persons, and (3) the daily newspaper circulation in the country is two for each onethousand persons.1

Private control of mass media did not survive Ugandan political independence from Britain. The electronic mass media are state monopolies in Uganda by constitutional provision.2 While contesting power groups in Uganda have demonstrated a consistent willingness to ignore the country's constitution in efforts to gain political control, they have all proven to be equally consistent, once in power, in upholding that provision of the law making the electronic mass media state monopolies. The private ownership of newspapers is permitted under the Ugandan constitution. Without foreign capital or political party or governmental sponsorship, however, newspapers have been unable to remain viable in Uganda.

1John A. Lent, (Ed.), Global Guide to Media and Communications (London: George Kinnar Reference Books, 1990), 791; John Paxton, (Ed.), The Statesman's YearBook 19911992, 128th ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 842.

2Graham Mytton, Mass Communication in Africa (London: Edward Arnold Publishers, 1983), 78.

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is from 1920 (just after the end of the First World War) to the early1960s, when most East 19Sorrenson, Land, 1623. 20Ibid., 2728. 21Ibid., 2829. 22P. Mosley, The Settler Economies (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 22. 23Jrgensen, 191. African countries were gaining political independence. In the period from 1920 to 1930, a modified system of tenant farming was introduced into East African agriculture. Indigenous households were permitted to enter into a relationship with white settler farmers, by which the indigenous household was granted total rights of occupancy for whatever land it could effectively cultivate or graze, in exchange for transfers of livestock or crops.24 This system eventually became unsatisfactory for a growing number of white settler farmers, however, as available cultivatable land became more scarce.25 Pressures were then exerted on the indigenous households to abrogate their rights of occupancy.26 The economic depression in the developed countries in the 1930s, however, brought bankruptcy to many white settler farmers. One result was an increase in the agricultural autonomy of indigenous farmers. As the export markets were in shambles, however, little w

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