Qualla: Bidibidi Refugee Settlement

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Katovic, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the summer of 2016, this was empty scrub near a small Ugandan border town, rolling hills of rocky soil that nobody farmed. Within months it held more people than many cities. They came across the border from South Sudan in a hurry no one chooses, families carrying what they could carry, fleeing a civil war that had turned their towns into killing grounds. By the end of 2016 the settlement of Bidibidi, in Uganda's Yumbe District, sheltered some 285,000 of them, and by 2017 it was described as the largest refugee settlement in the world. The numbers are staggering. But Bidibidi is not a number. It is roughly a quarter of a million individual decisions to live.

Image: Katovic | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: The People Who Arrived

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LikamboisaacK, CC BY-SA 4.0. They are not a faceless mass. Most are Bari speakers from Central Equatoria, including Bari, Mundari, Kuku, Kakwa, Pojulu, and Nyagwara families. Others come from Eastern Equatoria, the Ma'di and Otuho, the Didinga and Lopit and Acholi, and from further across South Sudan, Nuer a...

Image: LikamboisaacK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: Building a Town from Nothing

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ochan philip benson, CC BY-SA 4.0. Uganda made an unusual choice. Rather than fence people into a holding camp, the government and its partners set out to build a settlement, something closer to a town that might one day stand on its own. Bidibidi is organised into five zones, subdivided into clusters and villages...

Image: Ochan philip benson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: Making a Living on Hard Ground

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asikironalio, CC BY-SA 4.0. Survival here is daily work. Most families live on subsistence farming and rations from the UN refugee agency and the World Food Programme, and the land does not give easily, the soil thin and rocky, good seed scarce. Newcomers receive saucepans, jerry cans, solar lamps, and matt...

Image: Asikironalio | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: Voices and a Stage

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Moses Elly, CC BY-SA 4.0. What lifts Bidibidi above mere endurance is that people insisted on culture. Bidibidi FM, a community radio station set up with the UN refugee agency and partners, carries information and, just as importantly, the voices of residents telling their own stories on their own terms. ...

Image: Moses Elly | CC BY-SA 4.0