Timeline: Uganda

BBC News Online, Tuesday 20 March 2001, 17:08 GMT

A chronology of key events:

1500—Bito dynasties of Buganda, Bunyoro and Ankole founded by Nilotic-speaking immigrants from present-day southeastern Sudan.

1700—Buganda begins to expand at the expense of Bunyoro.

1800—Buganda controls territory bordering Lake Victoria from the Victoria Nile to the Kagera river.

1840s—Muslim traders from the Indian Ocean coast exchange firearms, cloth and beads for the ivory and slaves of Buganda.

British influence

1862—British explorer John Hanning Speke becomes the first European to visit Buganda.

1875—Bugandan King Mutesa I allows Christian missionaries to enter his realm.

1877—Members of the British Missionary Society arrive in Buganda.

1879—Members of the French Roman Catholic White Fathers arrive.

1890—Britain and Germany sign treaty giving Britain rights to what was to become Uganda.

1892—British East India Company agent Frederick Lugard extends the company's control to southern Uganda and helps the Protestant missionaries defeat their Catholic counterparts, who had been competing with them, in Buganda.

1894—Uganda becomes a British protectorate.

1900—Britain signs agreement with Buganda giving it autonomy and turning it into a constitutional monarchy controlled mainly by Protestant chiefs.

1902—The Eastern province of Uganda transferred to the Kenya.

1904—Commercial cultivation of cotton begins.

1921—Uganda given a legislative council, but its first African member not admitted till 1945.

1958—Uganda given internal self-government.

1962—Uganda becomes independent with Milton Obote as prime minister and with Buganda enjoying considerable autonomy.

1963—Uganda becomes a republic with Mutesa as president.

1966—Milton Obote ends Buganda's autonomy.

1967—New constitution vests considerable power in the president and divides Buganda into four districts.

Idi Amin years

1971—Milton Obote toppled in coup led by Idi Amin.

1972—Amin orders Asians who were not Ugandan citizens—around 60,000 people—to leave the country.

1972-73—Uganda engages in border clashes with Tanzania.

1976—Idi Amin declares himself president for life and claims parts of Kenya.

1978—Uganda invades Tanzania with a view to annexing Kagera region.

1979—Tanzania invades Uganda, unifying the various anti-Amin forces under the Uganda National Liberation Front and forcing Amin to flee the country; Yusufu Lule installed as president, but is quickly replaced by Godfrey Binaisa.

1980—Binaisa overthrown by the army and is succeeded by Milton Obote.

1985—Obote deposed in military coup and is replaced by Tito Okello.

Beginnings of recovery

1986—National Resistance Army rebels take Kampala and install Yoweri Museveni as president.

1993—Museveni restores the traditional kings, including the king of Buganda, but without giving them political power.

1995—New constitution legalises political parties but maintains the ban on political activity.

1996—Museveni returned to office in Uganda's first direct presidential election.

1997—Ugandan troops help depose Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, who is replaced by Laurent Kabila.

1998—Ugandan troops intervene in the Democratic republic of Congo on the side of rebels seeking to overthrow Kabila.

2000—Ugandans vote to reject multiparty politics in favour of continuing Museveni's no-party system.

2001 10 March—Uganda classifies Rwanda, its former ally in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as a hostile nation because of fighting the previous year between the two countries' armies in DRC.

2001 12 March—Museveni wins another term in office, beating his rival in the presidential election, Kizza Besigye, by 69% to 28%.