The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Happy Independence Day, Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, But Who Handles Your Publicity?
COMMENT | SHIRLEY BIRUNGI | If you have your mobile phone or laptop, reach out to it and simply Google Uganda. Interesting images will pop up. Do now refresh and make another search for Rwanda and, lastly, South Africa, then compare the results. This all gets me to ask, who handles Uganda’s publicity, and who is shaping the narrative that we would want the rest of the world to know about Uganda?
Deemed the Pearl of Africa, Uganda can easily be showcased through its rich heritage, diverse culture, flora and fauna, and the achievements it has attained over the years. And when one does a simple Google search, these should be the things they interact with.
The search results are not what I expected and have been baffling my mind, as I kept getting questions with no answers. My thoughts continue to linger on what we are missing out on if only we paid attention to it.
As an ardent soccer fan, my club’s kits, both home and away, have ‘visit Rwanda’ wording on the sleeves, and this simply means an invitation to the millions of fans worldwide to visit Rwanda. By simply seeing ‘Visit Rwanda’ on a shirt sleeve, one’s curiosity would be raised about what Rwanda is, and hence a Google search would allay all their inquisitiveness about the wording on Arsenal Football Club’s shirt sleeve and why the invitation to visit this place.
Now let’s switch to South Africa. In 2024, the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) teamed with a renowned and celebrated South African-born international comedian, Trevor Noah, for a “Visit South Africa” campaign, and this was mainly aimed at enabling the country achieve a goal of attracting 21 million visitors by 2030 through tourism.
In such an age where everyone is a citizen journalist because of the digital and technological evolution, hence if you don’t tell your story, somebody else will tell it for you, and in most cases, they might miss out on some key facts because all they are running with is what they have landed on, but if there was a communications team and website where all this information was archived, maybe then we would tell a better story about our motherland.
Public Relations (PR) is beyond crisis management, but how well you shape your narrative and what you want your publics to perceive about you. And with this, I mean the internal publics, who in this case are we, the citizens, and the external, who are the neighbours and all other countries that we have relations with on a diplomatic front.
Though I don’t have a great liking for the rival Red Devils, a “Visit Uganda” wording on a Manchester United jersey would be a nice one. This is simply because Manchester United is one of the biggest football clubs in the world, and leveraging their large fanbase could do more than an advert on an international TV, for example.
Music has the power to unite people from different walks of life. You may not know the lyrics, but you will hum along to the sound because it is melodic and resonates with your musical taste buds.
Similarly, it is for football. Different races, countries, but those echoes when a team wins, regardless of the country or culture, you jubilate in unison and gooooooooaaalllllllllllllll, are notes that would go to the highest pitch of a musical note, because it’s just a feeling that one can’t contain but needs to express.
An article published on the My Africa Magazine website on 15th April 2025 highlighted that in the very first year of the Arsenal deal, Rwanda recouped its entire £30 million investment, thanks to the exposure it gained.
The article cited that before the partnership, 71% of Arsenal’s global fanbase did not even think of Rwanda as a travel destination, whereas by the end of the first year, half of those fans said they would consider visiting Rwanda. A group of people in London, many of whom had probably never thought about Rwanda much before, now eagerly discussed gorilla trekking and investment opportunities in Kigali, all because a football club’s sleeve said “Visit Rwanda.”
Back to Code 256, Uganda, as we mark the 63rd Independence, I would like to see more stories about who we are and what makes us the Pearl of Africa. Our third stanza in our national anthem gives a clear description of Uganda.
“Oh Uganda! the land that feeds us
By sun and fertile soil grown.
For our own dear land,
We’ll always stand:
The Pearl of Africa’s Crown”
This specific stanza speaks to our fertile land and the weather “sun” and ends by crowning it off with us being the Pearl of Africa.
The Uganda Tourism Board is doing an incredible job marketing Uganda to the world, and we salute them, but their efforts need to be complemented, especially by gaining access to more resources to aid them in doing all the incredible things that will boost our tourism numbers.
A team needs to be tasked with shaping the narrative, and the first place would be the online presence; in this case, enhancing the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so that when one Googles Uganda, it’s the amazing things and achievements we have attained over the years that pop up. Beyond the SEO, publicity related to our motherland needs to be harnessed. She is a gem, and someone needs to showcase this to the rest of the world.
PR continues to be a powerful asset in shaping narratives; hence, let’s not wait for a crisis to erupt and start thinking about what would be done. Let’s start now with telling the Ugandan story, beginning with the year 63 and beyond.
Happy Independence Day, Uganda, the Pearl of Africa. We lay our future in your hands because we were born and bred here.
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Shirley Birungi, Director PR at the Public Relations Association of Uganda (PRAU)
