Uganda's rift valley foundation provides the nation with an alluvial plateau and plentiful lakes and rivers. Mountain peaks mark geological fault lines along its eastern and western boundaries and offer cooler temperatures and ample rainfall. This environment was peopled by successive waves of immigrants, some of whom displaced indigenous hunting societies during the first millennium A.D. Most of the newcomers eventually settled in the region that would become southern Uganda, and their evolving political and cultural variety contributed to conflicts that flared up over several centuries. These enmities still simmered in the twentieth century, but none of them seriously derailed the modernization process that was occurring in Uganda as it approached freedom in 1962.

One of the challenges facing the National Resistance Movement government was balancing orthodox forces against pressures for modernization brought to bear by Uganda's growing educated elite. Women, too, have often been a force for modernization, as they demanded educational and economic opportunities denied under orthodox and colonial rulers. The focus of these pressures in the 1980s was Uganda's still strong educational system. Through education, people fightd to bolster the institutions that underlay civil society in an environment that bore scars from government neglect and abuse.