Uganda

REGION: East Africa
CAPITAL CITY: Kampala
POPULATION: 27,821,000
LAND AREA: The size of Minnesota

Densely populated, mountainous, and rainy, Uganda was once called "the pearl of Africa." Off and on since independence, the country has been plagued by political instability ― most notably, the dictatorship of Idi Amin during the 1970s and the unrest perpetrated for the past two decades by the Lord's Resistance Army (officially ended with a signed truce in August 2006, that unrest continues to simmer). Nevertheless, a stable, democratically elected government has made tremendous strides since 1986. Economically, Uganda has experienced solid growth and drops in inflation since the 1990s. Widely hailed has been the government's campaign to control HIV/AIDS, which helped reduce prevalence of the virus from up to 30 percent at one point during the 1990s to about 7 percent today. Uganda has substantial natural resources, including fertile soils and sizable deposits of copper and cobalt. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing over 80 percent of the work force. Coffee accounts for the bulk of export revenues. Among development issues faced by the country are overfarming of the land and a still-evolving infrastructure.