UCF is relaunching its glossy, full-sized wildlife and conservation magazine, Uganda Matters.

This excellent publication has been dormant for a while now, as other more pressing demands in the field have taken priority. However, this magazine did not just exist to share with readers what we do in Uganda but to showcase the work of other entities and individuals, including the primary wildlife entity here Uganda Wildlife Authority, and to engage with other not-for-profits, academia and the private sector. So to fill a gap in the literary market we have decided to produce it once again. Much has changed in Uganda in our industry since the last issue was released and it’s time to share it with you all again. We have a number of exciting features planned, regular sections where we have one-on-one discussions with the main players in the industry, competitions, a letters and readers’ photos section and a kids’ section, as we try to encourage the new generations into conservation.

The first issue will be kept to 32 pages maximum, with this including advertisements as well as the above-mentioned features, photos and articles. To attempt to fill more than this in the first issue would be optimistic and we would rather under promise and over deliver in the early days. What happens thereafter is really up to you, the reader, and what you want to see and read.

If you have a pet subject you would like to write about, or even have a story and photos, sketches or other illustrations ready to go, then please contact us to see if it “fits” our model. It goes without saying that the vast majority of commercial magazines (and this one has to make a profit too) live on the life-blood of advertising. We hope to encourage our commercial advertising partners from both the past and of the present to re-engage with us and if you can bring some advertising for your subject area with you, or know of a business that wants to support its own written subject of choice with an ad, we will become firm friends! We can’t guarantee to publish any particular article of course and whilst some subject-matter may at times be hard hitting, we are totally apolitical in approach. That does not necessarily mean that we have to agree with everything individual politicians say or do of course…

As regards possible subject-matter, it’s almost limitless. Conservation and wildlife overlap an enormous sub-industry of general tourism, catering, hotels, aviation, roads and road-making, solar, comms, vehicles, fuel supply and the list goes on. Let’s just try and have some degree of commonality.

The first issue of course will be the tough one, as we re-learn all the ropes and re-engage with our partners, so a target date to press of 1st August is we hope reasonable and realistic. So, get your pen out, put your bush hat on, pour yourself a Hemingway-sized scotch on the rocks and let the literary juices start to flow. This magazine is as much about your experiences, feelings and views as anyone else’s.

All contact regarding the magazine should initially be sent to: ugandamatters@ugandacf.org

All our other routine UCF contacts remain the same.