This week there are national elections in Uganda. Many people I asked about the elections told me that democracy does not work in Uganda. "What we need is a new strong dictator", a woman told me. "The people just make the wrong decisions, they don´t know what is good for the country". I travelled to the countryside near the border to the Congo. Many people in Uganda live in small villages like the one you see in the video above. Many of them are disappointed – they don't have jobs. For the past two years there has also been an extreme drought. The crime rate is rising fast. The people that I asked in the villages hope for a law-and-order president. Many say that Som daid Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator from the 1970s was not so bad. Having the freedom and democracy movements in northern Africa in mind I was kind of shocked and surprised. Are the people expecting demonstrations and riots during the election week? 'Yes', many said. Because they are quite sure that the results of the elections are going to be rigged. I'm wondering: What do they want? Free and democratic elections and a new dictator? What are they going to demonstrate for?

GLOBAL IDEAS Reporter Manuel Özcerkes is filming in Uganda for his new report on climate education. Here he will meet the singer Angella Katatumba and a few more of the British Council Climate Champions.

In Uganda a lot of people are talking about climate change, there are campaigns to equip the people with knowledge. Even in school climate change is a major topic. But sometimes climate change is responsible for things I would never expect. The student in the clip explains that there is a flood in the UK and a man with his bicycle would eventually die in the water. And suddenly she shows the picture of a sad lady in Germany. She is not happy about the snow that is caused by the climate change. That lady with the sad face is the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 30 Minutes later I asked her if she knows who that sad lady was? She did not. She just did researches in the Internet. Well, sometimes the world wide web is not the right source for researches about the effect of the global warming or the reason why Angela Merkel seem to be so sad, I guess.

Last month GLOBAL IDEAS spent some time with the United Nations Volunteers in Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. Here the volunteers were celebrating the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10). Our reporter Marion Hütter had the chance to talk to some of the volunteering young people who are coming to Cambodia from all over the world to help and to learn a lot.

Here are some pictures Marion brought back from Phnom Penh:

 

Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awards scholarships to young people from emerging and developing nations. They spend time in Germany working with organizations or studying at universities, gaining expertise on how to improve climate protection in their home countries. GLOBAL IDEAS met up with one of these scholarship holders: Kristy Pena Munoz, an environmental engineer from Mexico. She's an expert on biogas extracted from sewage sludge.