When Theodore Roosevelt came to Buganda

What the report says

The Independent Uganda, in a special report by Ronald Musoke, revisits Theodore Roosevelt’s December 1909 visit to Buganda, framing it as a major but often under-emphasized moment in the history of U.S.-Uganda ties. Roosevelt, then 51 and recently out of office as the 26th U.S. president, was on an East African expedition that combined scientific collecting, travel and informal diplomacy when he climbed Mengo Hill to meet Kabaka Daudi Chwa II, the teenage ruler of Buganda.

The report says the encounter is being reassessed more than a century later. On June 30, diplomats, historians, scientists and Buganda Kingdom representatives met at the American Centre in Kampala to mark the 116th anniversary of the Smithsonian-Roosevelt Expedition and discuss its meaning for diplomacy, conservation and cultural exchange. Mikel Cleverly, Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Uganda, described the visit as an early act of American public diplomacy in East Africa.

The article also highlights the expedition’s scientific legacy, noting that Roosevelt travelled with Smithsonian naturalists and that more than 23,000 specimens collected during the wider expedition remain in Smithsonian collections. But it emphasizes that the Buganda meeting was not only a safari episode: Prince Nicholas Basammula, a descendant of Kabaka Daudi Chwa II, argued that Roosevelt encountered an established monarchy with its own institutions, not merely a young individual ruler.

The broader significance, as presented by The Independent, is that the visit offers a lens on colonial-era power, African statecraft and conservation history. It also challenges older accounts that centered Roosevelt alone, by placing Buganda’s diplomacy and political sophistication at the heart of the story.