Tanzania–Uganda border

One degree south

Britain and Germany first split East Africa in 1886 along a line to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria at 1° S. In 1890 they carried it straight across the lake along that parallel and on to the Congo Free State; before then Britain had claimed land south of the lake, while Germany had wanted a line that would have cut through the kingdom of Buganda. An agreement of 1910 moved the western end onto the Kagera River.^[1]

From the Rwanda tripoint the border follows the Kagera for 28 miles, then the parallel for 232 miles: a 69-mile land stretch marked by pillars, then 163 miles across Lake Victoria, the world’s second-largest freshwater lake after Lake Superior.^[1]

The Kagera war

The two countries had been hostile since 1971. On 10 October 1978, according to a former Ugandan tank commander, a Ugandan soldier roughed up across the border shot at a Tanzanian post, and a local commander ordered an attack without telling Amin. Yoweri Museveni later wrote that Amin’s troops invaded the Kagera salient on 30 October 1978, and put it down to Amin’s ignorance.^[2]

Tanzania’s army, equipped with Soviet missiles and aircraft, shot down Ugandan jets, and by January 1979 Uganda’s air force could no longer strike Tanzania. Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles advanced through Mutukula despite Libyan and Palestinian help for Amin. Kampala fell on 10 April 1979.^[2]

“He appears to have thought that by invading Tanzania, he was ‘teaching president [Julius] Nyerere a lesson.’”^[2]