The Ugandan Press Photo Award is a photography competition open to Ugandan photojournalists and photographers. It is also a platform for exchanging thoughts and ideas about photography as a medium, through a series of workshops, exhibitions, talks, discussions, portfolio reviews and film screenings.
The award aims to inspire, educate, promote and support visual journalism in Uganda and in doing so, raising the bar for professional photojournalism in Uganda. In addition, it aims to make photography more visible to the wider Ugandan public. In 2012 the competition was held for the first time and every year it attracts bigger numbers of entries from Ugandan photographers from across and outside of the country. Since 2015 the exhibition of the winning images has been hosted by the Uganda Museum making it that much more accessible.
The competition is judged by a panel of international jurors including photographers, photo-editors and curators working in the region and internationally. Each year the panel selects winners in seven categories, namely: News, Daily Life, Portrait, Creative, Sport, Nature and Story and an overall winner of the competition – the photo of the year. The competition in 2016 was judged by:
Frédéric Noy, Photographer, Cosmos Agency (FR/UG), Annette Sebba, Photography Lecturer, Makerere University, Kampala (UG), Katrin Peters-Klaphake, Curator (DE/ET), Jide Adeniyi-Jones, Documentary Photographer working since 1973 (NG/KE), Neo Ntsoma, Photographer, first female recipient of the CNN African Journalist Award for photography (SA) and Carl de Souza, East Africa Chief Photographer, AFP Agency (UK/KE).
In 2016 the UPPA was invited to take part in the Survey of Photography Learning and Training Initiatives on the African Continent conducted by Photo: and the Goethe-Institute Johannesburg. The survey identified and contacted relevant institutions to assess the landscape of photography training on the continent, with the aim of creating a framework of support, exchange and building critical skills for trainers and institutions. We are honoured to have been selected as the only such institution in East Africa.
Since its inception, the UPPA has been working with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a German political foundation. For the last two year we are very honoured to be supported by Canon North and Central Africa.