Robert Barozi the complainant says Rwagweri had a debt of 33 million shillings which he failed to clear after signing a contract with Barozi Printers and Stationary to print books about the Tooro culture.

Stephen Rwagweri was on Sunday morning arrested from Kijaguzo hotel Kabundaire in Fort portal municipality and then transferred to Old Kampala police station.

It was not possible to get a comment from Rwagweri or Engabu Za Tooro over the matter.

By Sunday Rogers

The post Engabu Za Tooro Director Stephen Rwagweri arrested first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

While the larger part of the world continues to maintain that African cultures are responsible for women’s subordination and inferior position in society today, women in the western Uganda kingdom of Tooro last week agreed to look to their culture for inspiration as they strive to empower themselves and develop their families.

This is as a group of over 500 Batooro women ended a women’s conference on culture/ indigenous knowledge and women’s empowerment.

Participants in the conference agreed to fight for the restoration of some of their fading but cherished cultural values especially those on dressing, proper behavior in society, pride and self-expression. Quite surprising from modern day women, but that is what the Batooro women did during their conference in Fort Portal, Kabarole district.

Nakadama at the Engabu Za Tooro event Serena Hotel

The conference convened by Engabu Za Tooro, a Fort-Portal based Youths platform for Action NGO attracted women from all levels of academia and social status to find ways of learning from their culture in order to better develop themselves.

The 70-year-old Tooro kingdom adviser on cultural affairs, Dorothy Nyakato led the call for a return to their cultures that are positive. But it is the great enthusiasm and seeming hunger by women to learn from each other that made the conference uniquely historical.

Sr. Dr. Maria Gorretti Kaahwa, a senior lecturer at Kyambogo University who gave a keynote address spoke passionately on how values (like public speaking), which children used to learn in homes have now vanished and are only accessed in specialized schools at high costs which most women and girls can not afford.

“Today, entrepreneurs pay a lot of money to have their employees learn communication skills and how to speak in public as a marketing strategy. For us Batooro, this has been a cultural skill taught across generations in homes from childhood and it used to give us a competitive edge,” laments Kaahwa.

Kaahwa says that being soft-spoken came naturally in Tooro culture, but she hastens to add that this did not mean lack of assertiveness.

She argues that the best way to understand development is through one’s culture as a mirror to reflect on the practical challenges and contradictions one faces.

“Promote that value that is good, helpful, relevant and sustainable,” counsels Kaahwa who attacked modern fashion shows for using women as “marketing toys”.

Nyakato agrees with Kaahwa. “The beauty of dressing decently, walking and sitting in public by female children was well emphasised in Tooro,” says Nyakato who was donned in traditional Tooro attire called Esuuka.

Kaahwa contends that traditionally, women in Tooro are the custodians of culture entrusted with promoting good manners as a conduit for society’s togetherness and progress. But not any more.

“For long time women in Tooro have been objects of fascination, wonder and admiration due to their virtuous excellence in language and dressing style,” Kaahwa says.

At the end of the conference that attracted Batooro women of all ages across the country, the women resolved among other things to revive their kitooro dressing code that has been overshadowed by “the foreign dresses of mini and slit skirts”.

For the promoters of Tooro traditional culture like Doris Kaija, not all cultures are good.

She says women should talk about and fight against cultures that negatively affect them most like those that favor boys who impregnate girls and yet condemn pregnant girls, but also pick and promote the good cultural attributes like honesty and hard work.

Kaija says societies have stereotyped women as a weak and that woman don’t even think and struggle to overcome societal habits that marginalise them. This, she says is not true since through playing their cultural role of advocating and working for a better society, Batooro women have been agents of necessary social change.

Kaija says women should start projects like saving and credit projects in order to boost their economic status, as women did in the “glorious past”.

Kaahwa however cautions that gender balance should not be seen as a war between men and women in society because it might lead to family breakups. For Nyakato, the women should still take on baby caring as a culture through which women nurture children.

The conference called for the publishing of progressive cultural values after careful research is conducted across Tooro.

The two-day conference was held under the theme: “How the Batooro culture can teach and inspire the modern woman to excel economically, politically and socially”.

Alice Basemera, the reigning Koogere (a competitive title that women compete for, named after Koogere, a legendary queen in Tooro culture who outperformed men in leadership and wealth) told her fellow women to work hard and over come gender challenges like poverty.

She advised women to fight economic dependence if they are to end gender imbalances in societies. “Women in developed nations have tagged their cultures well with economic independence to overcome gender prejudice and imbalance,” Basemera says. more on page 2 below

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Rwagweri (Right) with other dignitaries at a cultural function organised by Engabu Za Tooro

The Executive Director of Engabu Za Tooro, Stephen Rwagweri says the accreditation will help his organisation receive support to identify characteristics of cultural heritage of Rwenzori region for international recognition and support.

Engabu Za Tooro or Toor Youth Platform for Action is a cultural Non Governmental Organisations based in Fort Portal and operating in the Rwenzori region.

Rwagweri says Engabu Za Tooro will also be supported to identify funding for the protection of the Rwenzori region people cultural heritage.

Rwagweri says the recognition has also taken Rwenzori region at the international level because Engabu Za Tooro is the only institution in East African and one of the four institutions on the African continent to be accredited by UNESCO.

The organization has also been invited to the convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage organised by UNESCO in Nairobi Kenya from 15^th to 19^th November, 2010. The convention will help allocate funding to governments and set and strengthen international cultural policies for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.

Engabu Za Tooro was also last year (2009) accredited by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on its Intergovernmental committee on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore to act as an observer. WIPO is also an arm of the United Nations.

Also see Rwagweri starts Tooro Cultural center in western Uganda

The post UNESCO to support Engabu Za Tooro to develop Intangible culture in Uganda first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Title: Protection of traditional knowledge in Uganda

Author: Stephen Rwagweri Atwooki

Affiliation: Engabu Za TooroP.O Box 886, Fort Portal, UgandaTel: +256-772-469751Email:engabuzatooro@gmail.com, engabuzatooro@infocom.co.ugFacebook: Engabu Za TooroBlog: www.engabuzatooro.blogspot.comWebsite: www.engabuzatooro.or.ug

Abstract

Uganda has diverse and rich traditional knowledge, covering socio-economic aspects of life like music, folklore, apprenticeship, handcraft, production, medicine, etc.The modern civilization had threefold effects on the traditional knowledge; Some forms of traditional knowledge steadily disappearing, some remaining static and some prevailing through adaptation and integration in modern knowledge.The Copyright and Intellectual Property rights laws in Uganda stem from the British Copyrights laws and Intellectual Property regimes. As a result, these laws are based on western modes of authorship and ownership and could not recognize Ugandan traditional forms of knowledge like oral traditions and folklore.

Traditional knowledge and Folklore in Uganda is not protected. The technical explanation is that traditional knowledge and folklore doesn’t meet the established international standards and criteria of copyright protection which define what, how and who can be protected and for how long. This has been just an intellectual debate among the lawyers and scholars of copyright law. The traditional knowledge sector itself is not developed to generate organized and sensitized practitioners to participate in the debate and generate demand for protection.The production, presentation and distribution of different forms of traditional knowledge is not organized and developed to secure themselves for protection. Actors in traditional knowledge sector like cultural and traditional institutions and civic groups are not sensitized, organized and coordinated enough to pursue a common mission of organizing the sector and securing protection.Some forms of traditional knowledge increasingly get threats of extinction due to failure to be relevant in the contemporary life, failure to cope with effects of high-tech modern communication, emerging hostile beliefs and value systems and imported forms of entertainment.As traditional knowledge sector attempt to pursue protection, challenging questions emerge. Such questions include the definition of public domain, how rights are shared between original author and the one who re-invests and makes folklore relevant today? How to reconcile need for originality and need for adaptation?

It is recommended that Uganda first focus on programmes to re-invent and organize traditional knowledge so that it can meet some standards for protection and a study be undertaken of possibility of evolving a unique regime for protecting traditional knowledge.Programmes of research, documentation and digital data systems for Uganda’s traditional knowledge should be developed like it has been done in India andSouth Africa.

IntroductionUganda

Uganda is a landlocked East African country with a land area of 241,039 square kilometers and a population of 30 million people. The country’s GDP per capita stands at US $ 470.

Engabu Za Tooro

Rwagweri (Right) with other dignitaries at a cultural function organised by Engabu Za Tooro

Engabu Za Tooro is a Ugandan non governmental organization promoting research and documentation of traditional knowledge and folklore. It is also accredited to WIPO’s Intergovernmental committee on intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore.The organization is currently establishing a cultural centre to be an epicenter of traditional knowledge research and documentation and digital database development.

Why concern with Traditional Knowledge

Majority of indigenous and grassroots population in Uganda still rely on traditional knowledge for information and livelihood. Traditional knowledge inform scientific innovation. Therefore, there is need to give traditional knowledge its appropriate recognition.
The state of traditional knowledge in Uganda

Like any African society, Uganda has a rich and diverse stock of traditional knowledge in all human sectors like medicine, music, production, folklore, dance, apprenticeship and craftsmanship.Uganda also has traditional and cultural institutions mandated to safeguard and perpetuate the traditional knowledge. Historically, Uganda had five major Kingdoms that included Bunyoro, Buganda, Ankole, Tooro and Busoga and chiefdoms in several parts of the country. These institutions traditionally had political and administrative powers which led to collision with colonial and post colonial central governments leading to their abolition in 1967. see page two below

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