Uganda

The Ugandan National Section of IBBY was established in 2004. Since 1992 children’s librarian, Mrs Evangeline L. Barongo, had been an Individual Member of IBBY. Mrs Barongo formed and led as Chairperson, the Uganda Children's Writers and Illustrators Association. The UCWIA membership includes writers and illustrators of children’s books, librarians and teachers, as well as publishers and booksellers.

In August 2003, IBBY President Peter Schneck attended the Third Pan-African Reading For All Conference in Kampala. During his stay, he discussed with members of UCWIA the possibility of establishing an IBBY National Section.

Shortly after that UCWIA applied to become a full member of IBBY, the application was approved and Ugandan IBBY was established. In 2004 ten members of the Section participated in the 29th IBBY Congress in Cape Town.

The current activities of IBBY Uganda are:

• Writing and publishing children's books, mainly in English but also in African first languages;
• running children's Reading Tents in different regions of the country to give children access to books written by a variety of international authors;
• visiting schools and conduct reading clinics for children. The books exhibited are written by UCWIA members. This is one of the ways that UCWIA markets its publications.

Other activities are: organizing storytelling events, reading competitions, and debates that focus on books written from different cultural aspects of children literature; conducting research into the different interests of children, which helps to provide ideas for future UCWIA publications.