This area of numerous hills and wetlands that later became known as Kampala was the site of the shifting capital of the Buganda Kingdom (each king, upon coronation, used to establish his capital on a different hill). Kampala originally referred to Mengo Hill, on whose the British had built a city over an old capital and hunting reserve of the Buganda Kingdom, from which several buildings still survive. In the Kiganda language spoken by the Buganda people, Kampala’s name was derived from the phrase kasozi k’ mpala, which translates to “hill of the impala”. Indeed, the area once had an immense impala population. Fort Lugard was built by the British East Africa Company as the initial headquarters of the Uganda Protectorate and developed as an important industrial and commercial center. Although the British had moved the capital to Entebbe, Kampala returned to be the capital when Uganda became an independent country in 1962. In 1922 Makerere Technical Institute was founded, being the first institution of higher education in East Africa.
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