Gulu, Kidepo & the North

The north was settled over several centuries by Nilotic and Central Sudanic peoples moving up from the Nile valley and the southern Sudan. The Acholi formed dozens of small chiefdoms, each under a rwot, around Gulu and Kitgum; the Langi settled south of them towards Lake Kyoga; the Lugbara, Madi, Alur and Kakwa occupied West Nile; and the pastoral Karimojong, Jie and Dodoth took the dry north-east. In the 19th century Arab-Sudanese slave and ivory traders operated here, and Samuel Baker's expedition of the 1870s, in the service of Egypt, built Fort Patiko near Gulu to suppress them. West Nile was part of the Belgian Lado Enclave until 1910 and passed to Uganda in 1912.

The British treated the north as a labour and recruitment reserve, and Acholi and Langi men filled the colonial army and police. That legacy ran through independent Uganda's politics. Milton Obote was a Langi, and Idi Amin, from the Kakwa of the Koboko area in West Nile, purged Acholi and Langi soldiers from the army after his 1971 coup; after his fall in 1979 West Nile suffered reprisals and many of its people fled abroad. In 1985 the Acholi general Tito Okello briefly seized power before Museveni's forces took Kampala.

From the late 1980s, first Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit Movement and then Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army fought the new government. The LRA abducted tens of thousands of children as fighters and servants, and massacres such as those at Atiak and Barlonyo killed hundreds; by the early 2000s most of the rural population of Acholi lived in camps. The LRA withdrew from Uganda after 2006 and the camps closed around 2008–09. In 2021 the International Criminal Court convicted the former LRA commander Dominic Ongwen; Kony remains at large.

The north speaks mainly Nilotic and Central Sudanic languages, not the Bantu languages of the south. Acholi and Lango (Leb Lango) are closely related Luo languages, Alur is spoken around Nebbi, Lugbara around Arua, and Ngakarimojong across Karamoja. Acholi identity is strong and carries both pride and grief: the war shaped a whole generation, and post-war justice has leaned partly on traditional reconciliation rites such as mato oput, which both sides accepted at the Juba peace talks.

Acholi music and dance are admired across Uganda: bwola, a royal dance performed with drums and ostrich-feather head-dresses, and larakaraka, a courtship dance, along with the adungu harp. In Karamoja life turns on cattle, which carry wealth, bride price and social standing; young men have long raided cattle as a rite of passage and a way to build a herd. The raids have grown far deadlier as automatic rifles spread.

West Nile is home to a large Muslim minority, especially among the Aringa of Yumbe and the Kakwa, and Arua's culture looks as much towards South Sudan and Congo as towards Kampala.

Gulu, Lira and Arua are the three largest towns, all granted city status in 2020; Kitgum, Moroto, Koboko, Adjumani and Nebbi are smaller district centres. The north is poorer than the rest of the country, and Karamoja is Uganda's poorest sub-region, with chronic food insecurity after repeated droughts.

Most families farm sorghum, millet, simsim (sesame), sunflower, cassava and groundnuts. West Nile grows tobacco and trades across the borders with South Sudan and Congo. In Karamoja herding dominates, although government programmes have pushed settled farming and mining for gold and other minerals has spread around Moroto.

The region hosts much of Uganda's refugee population. Settlements such as Bidi Bidi in Yumbe, one of the largest in the world after the 2016 South Sudanese exodus, Rhino Camp and those around Adjumani give refugees land to farm among host communities. Gulu itself has become a university and aid town, with Gulu University, hospitals, radio stations and returning traders. Land disputes from the camp years, the long-term effects of war trauma, and youth unemployment are the pressing issues.

Northern cooking is built on millet, sorghum, sesame and groundnut paste rather than matooke. Kwon kal, a stiff bread of millet flour, is the Acholi staple, eaten with a thick sauce of groundnut or simsim paste. Malakwang, the sour-leaved sorrel of the hibiscus family cooked with groundnut paste and often sweet potato, is the best-known Acholi dish; the Alur of West Nile also cook it with fish and beans, and it is dried to keep through the dry months. Smoked fish from the Nile is common across the region.

The shea tree grows wild across the north, and its butter is used for cooking as well as skin care; in West Nile, cassava and fish from Lake Albert and the Albert Nile take a larger place. In Karamoja herding comes first and crops are grown only where the rains allow, so milk and grain from the markets carry families through the lean months.

Beer is part of social life. Kwete, brewed by the Lugbara from fermented sorghum, millet or maize, is sold in calabashes in West Nile markets, and home brews of millet beer are shared at gatherings across the north.

Kidepo Valley National Park, in the far north-east, is remote, and its landscape of long-grass savanna, fan palms and hills at the foot of Mount Morungole has few visitors. The wetter Narus valley draws elephants, giraffes and other game, and the park has recorded more than 77 mammal and 470 bird species. Visits to the Ik villages on Mount Morungole and to Karimojong homesteads can be arranged from the park.

Murchison Falls National Park straddles the Victoria Nile, and its savanna north of the river lies in this region: game-drive tracks lead towards Lake Albert, while launches from Paraa run upstream to the foot of Murchison Falls, where the whole river is forced through a gap in the rock; the southern bank belongs to the Western Region.

Gulu makes a base for Fort Patiko and for memorial sites of the war. Karamoja's plains can be crossed towards Mount Moroto and the Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve, and West Nile has Ajai Wildlife Reserve and the Albert Nile near Pakwach.