Uganda Emoji

🇺🇬 the Uganda flag emoji shows six horizontal stripes, black, yellow, red, black, yellow, red, with a white disc in the middle holding a grey crowned crane, the national bird, which faces the flagpole with one leg raised. Like other country flag emoji, it is encoded as two regional indicator symbols, 🇺 and 🇬, for UG, which compatible apps commonly draw as a flag. Windows commonly displays the letters UG instead; on other devices, display depends on the app and font.

The flag was raised at independence on 9 October 1962. The usual reading of the Uganda flag colours: black for the people of Africa, yellow for the sunshine, red for brotherhood, the blood that joins all Africans. The crane was already the badge of Uganda under British rule, and its raised leg is read as the country stepping forward. Unicode has no crane emoji, so people write the flag itself, or 🐦 and 🪶, and put the colours as hearts, 🖤💛❤️, in bios, usernames and every Independence Day post.

The coat of arms puts a shield and two crossed spears 🛡️ between the Uganda kob, which represents abundant wildlife, and the crested crane, Uganda's national bird. On the shield are the waters of Lake Victoria, the sun ☀️ and a traditional drum 🥁; below it run the Nile, coffee and cotton, and the motto For God and My Country. And the nickname every tourism post uses, the Pearl of Africa, goes back to Winston Churchill's 1908 book My African Journey.

Uganda currency symbol: the shilling, USh, UGX and mobile money

The Ugandan shilling (ISO code UGX) has no Unicode sign of its own. Prices are written with letters, USh 5,000, Shs 5,000 or UGX 5,000, and on receipts, menus and handwritten signs you will see the East African shorthand 5,000/=, where the slash and equals sign mean "shillings, nothing after". The shilling has no current minor unit (ISO 4217 lists UGX with minor unit 0), so amounts are whole numbers and quickly run into thousands. So the Uganda shilling symbol you can copy is simply USh or UGX; in chats people add 🪙, 💵 or 💰.

Much of everyday money moves by phone: MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) and Airtel Money let anyone send shillings from a basic handset, and paying a boda fare, school fees or a market trader on mobile money is ordinary. 📱💸 means "I've sent it", 📲 "check your phone".

Ugandan letters: Luganda ŋ, Uganda's languages and how to type them

Uganda's official languages are English and, since a 2005 amendment to the constitution, Swahili; neither needs any letter beyond A to Z. Around them, dozens of languages are spoken at home. By CLDR estimates, for a country of about 49 million, Luganda (Ganda), the language of Buganda and of Kampala's streets, has about 6.4 million speakers, followed by Runyankole (Nyankole, about 3.1 million), Rukiga (Chiga, about 2.7 million), Lusoga (Soga, about 2.6 million), Ateso (Teso), Lango and Acholi (each about 2 million), Lumasaaba, Kinyarwanda and Rutooro. Each has its own collection, as do Swahili and English.

The one special letter you need to copy is Luganda's ŋ (capital Ŋ), called eng. It stands for the ng sound of English singer, on its own, while Luganda's plain ng is the ng of finger, with a g after it, so the two spell different words. Where ŋ is missing from a keyboard people write ng' with an apostrophe, the same way Swahili writes ng'ombe (cow). The other letters of the Luganda alphabet are plain Latin ones; ny is written as two letters, and doubled consonants and long vowels are spelled double, as in Webale nnyo (thank you very much). The Luo languages of the north, Acholi and Lango, have the same sound.

To type ŋ on Windows, type 014B (or 014A for Ŋ) in Word and press Alt+X, or copy it from this page; there is no Alt+0 code for it. On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with Control+Command+Space and search for "eng". On a phone, copy it from here or add a Luganda keyboard if yours offers one. In HTML it is ŋ or ŋ, and Ŋ is Ŋ or Ŋ.

Uganda wildlife emoji: gorillas, tree-climbing lions and the Nile

🦍 is Uganda's best-known emoji abroad: Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Mgahinga in the far south-west are home to about half of the world's mountain gorillas, and a gorilla trek, hours of climbing through the forest for one hour with a habituated family, is the trip of a lifetime 🦍🌳. Kibale Forest is the place for chimpanzees, so 🐒 stands in for them. In the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park lions lie up in the branches of fig trees, the famous tree-climbing lions 🦁🌳, and boats on the Kazinga Channel pass hippos 🦛, buffalo 🐃 and elephants 🐘 at the water's edge.

The Nile 🌊 leaves Lake Victoria at Jinja, where the white-water rafting 🚣 starts, and further north at Murchison Falls the whole river forces itself through a gap of about seven metres, with crocodiles 🐊 below and the African fish eagle 🦅 calling above. Kidepo Valley in the north-east has the giraffes 🦒, zebras 🦓 and leopards 🐆 of open savanna, Lake Mburo the zebras of the south-west, and the Ziwa sanctuary breeds rhinos 🦏 to bring them back to the wild. Birders come for more than a thousand bird species, the shoebill above all, and 🦋 for the butterflies of the forests.

On the western border the Rwenzori Mountains 🏔️, the "Mountains of the Moon", carry glaciers almost on the equator; Margherita Peak, 5,109 m, is the third highest summit in Africa. Mount Elgon ⛰️ rises on the Kenyan border, the terraced hills of Kigezi lead down to the dugout canoes 🛶 of Lake Bunyonyi, and on the Kampala–Masaka road travellers stop to stand with one foot in each hemisphere at the equator 🌍. Fishermen 🎣 bring tilapia and Nile perch 🐟 from Lake Victoria, and the long-horned Ankole cattle 🐄🐂 of the south-west are a sight in themselves.

Ugandan food emoji: matooke, the rolex and luwombo

🍌 in Uganda is first of all matooke, green cooking bananas steamed in their leaves and mashed, the staple of Buganda and the west; bicycles stacked high with bunches of them are a classic road sight. Around it come posho (maize meal) 🌽, cassava 🫜, sweet potatoes 🍠, beans 🫘 and groundnut sauce 🥜. Luwombo is the festive dish: chicken, beef or groundnuts stewed in a parcel of banana leaves 🍃🍲, and for katogo, the hearty breakfast, matooke is cooked together with beans or offal.

The street-food star is the rolex, a chapati 🫓 rolled around an omelette 🥚 with tomato, onion and cabbage, named after "rolled eggs"; 🌯🥚 is how people order or post one. Roadside grills sell skewers of meat 🍖 and roast chicken 🍗, and in the rainy seasons, around May and November, swarms of nsenene, edible bush crickets, are caught and fried as a delicacy, so 🦗 in a Kampala chat is a snack, not a pest. Pineapples 🍍, mangoes 🥭 and avocados 🥑 are everywhere.

Uganda is one of Africa's biggest coffee exporters ☕, mostly robusta, and tea 🍵 grows on the green estates of the west. 🍺 is most likely a Nile Special, the lager brewed at Jinja, and 🥃 the local gin, Uganda Waragi.

Uganda emoji combos: holidays, sport, kingdoms and boda bodas

Independence Day on 9 October is 🇺🇬🎉🎆, with the flag colours as hearts. On 3 June, Uganda Martyrs Day, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, some walking for days 🚶🙏, gather at the shrines of Namugongo near Kampala to remember the Christian converts killed in 1885–1887 under the kabaka Mwanga II; 9 June is Heroes Day. Most Ugandans are Christian ⛪ and a large minority Muslim 🕌, so Christmas 🎄 and both Eids 🌙 are public holidays.

In sport every national team is a Crane: the Uganda Cranes play football ⚽, the Rugby Cranes 🏉, and the Cricket Cranes 🏏 reached their first T20 World Cup in 2024. Running is where the gold is 🏃🥇: John Akii-Bua won the 400 m hurdles at the 1972 Olympics in a world record, Stephen Kiprotich the marathon in London 2012, Joshua Cheptegei the 5,000 m in Tokyo and the 10,000 m in Paris, and Peruth Chemutai the steeplechase in Tokyo. Boxing 🥊 has long been a national passion.

Uganda still has its traditional kingdoms 👑, Buganda with its kabaka above all, then Bunyoro-Kitara, Tooro and Busoga. The thatched Kasubi Tombs 🛖 of the kabakas are a World Heritage Site, barkcloth beaten from the bark of a fig tree 🌳 is on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage, and royal drums 🪘, the bow harp 🪉, music 🎶 and dance 💃🕺 go with every celebration. At weddings and introduction ceremonies women wear the gomesi 👗 with its high puffed shoulders and men the long white kanzu. On the road, 🏍️ is the boda boda, the motorcycle taxi, and 🚐 the minibus that Ugandans simply call a taxi.