Redefining Africa's Future

In the year 2000, I was in Bishop Angelo Negri College School, a catholic boys' boarding school in Gulu, Uganda. In October that year, pressure was building on us like a storm. We were in Senior Four, preparing for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examinations set by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB). UCE exams are considered very important because they define your future. So, students need to prepare the best, master 4 years' worth of knowledge in 8 to 10 subjects. This means extensive revisions to prepare for the exams. Yet, at Bishop Angelo Negri College, there was no slowing down on other co-curricular activities, even with UCE exams just two weeks away. We still had to say the rosary every evening. We still had to attend church every Sunday. And our Headmaster, a strict, serious man with a heavy Acholi accent, made sure every boy followed the rules. The Plan to Escape to Read One Sunday, at 6:30 AM, I quietly packed my books. So did Tabu, my dormmate. ...

When I landed in the Philippines in April 2014 to begin my assignment as an Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeper, I anticipated conflict resolution work, community dialogues, and security briefings. I had been assigned to Pikit Municipality in North Cotabato, Mindanao, a region known more for the Moro (Muslim) fight for autonomy and self-rule. But no one had prepared me for the cultural shock I was about to experience, not in the context of conflict, but in the context of identity.   Our office was right in the heart of Pikit, close to the main market and the municipal offices. We were living in the community, surrounded by friendly locals, small kiosks, and tagalog dialects. As a black man in a mostly Filipino community, I stood out like a billboard in a rice field. Children would wave, strangers would stare, others would ask for a photo, girls would ask if I had a girlfriend, and curiosity followed me everywhere.   One morning, I walked to a nearby kiosk to buy airtime for m...

Unarmed civilian peacekeeping plays a vital role in conflict zones. Most international peacekeepers engaged in this type of work are deployed in countries other than their own. That means they shed light on what’s happening locally. Their presence allows the world to see what’s happening in places affected by conflict through the eyes of someone who isn’t directly involved. This is what makes unarmed civilian peacekeeping so important. These peacekeepers are independent. They engage impartially with government, civil society, and armed groups. They monitor, listen, and report what they see in an honest and balanced manner. Because of that, all the parties know someone is watching. And that alone can act as a kind of deterrence, like a silent warning. No one wants to be seen as the one violating people’s rights or breaking peace agreements. So, even if it doesn’t completely stop the violence, it makes actors involved in conflict think twice. But for this work to succeed, both sides ...

  When I was a child growing up with my siblings and our mother in Gulu City, Uganda, I had a limited understanding of what leprosy was. If I saw someone with signs and symptoms of leprosy on the road, I didn't want to greet them. I would simply run. I thought that even saying hello might infect me. I recall saying prayers that my family members do not get the deadly disease. That is how deeply I feared it. Back then, in the 1990s, it was common to see people with leprosy disease where I lived. Little did I know that one day, leprosy would not just come near me but inside our house, and this experience never left my memory.   My mother was a teacher at a Primary School in the west of present-day Gulu City. We lived in the teachers' quarters, which was basically a compound of grass-thatched tukuls. My mom had the main tukul, which included a sitting area and a bedroom. My sisters shared the kitchen tukul as their bedroom, and I, being the only big boy, slept in another kitc...

I still remember the year 2000 as if it were just last week. That was the year I completed my Ordinary Level Education at Bishop Angelo Negri College in Gulu, a city in the North of Uganda. Back then, there was a belief in northern Uganda that if you wanted to truly make it academically, you had to attend school in the central region, especially in Wakiso and Kampala. Schools in the central region were seen as academic powerhouses – thanks to the legacy of colonialism. And like many students from the north, my cousin Ocen and I were swept up in that belief.   So, with our minds full of hope and bags packed with ambition, we set off to Kampala to look for admission to some of the "powerful" schools. The problem? We had no direct admission into any government school, which was our preference. And we didn't know Kampala well at all. I had last been there in the early '90s, and Ocen had only passed through once. To make matters worse, we had no relatives in the city, ...

I tasted alcohol and its most devastating effects on the very first day I tasted Pagee Wine from St. Mary’s Lacor in Gulu, Uganda, in 1998. Pagee Wine is a local wine made from pineapple. Even though that moment happened nearly 27 years ago, just the thought of walking back into that local drinking joint in Lacor and catching a sip of Pagee Wine still sends a wave of anxiety through me. Back then, secondary schools were a breeding ground for teenage experimentation with smoking and alcohol, a lot of it fueled by the pressure to fit in with the crowd.   How It All Began I joined Bishop Angelo Negri College in 1998, a prestigious boarding school I had long admired. However, looking back, it's clear that my time at Negri College could have easily been described as a jungle. The school was full of wild characters; some boys chased after girls, others escaped school to drink and dance, and a few were bookworms. We had a mix of wealthy students and those from humble backgrounds, an...