Big, industrious, dirty and buzzing: Kampala, Uganda's capital, is the engine of growth in one of the continent's most promising countries.

As with many African cities, Kampala is a striking contradiction; the green-lined avenues with their foreign embassies sit just a few miles from the huge, sprawling market with its colourful vegetables and yelling women, and the crowded taxi park with its hundreds of matatus (bus-taxis).

Kampala has nothing much more to offer than any other developing city. It has bars, markets, restaurants and banks. But it is the recovery Kampala has made from the days of civil war, and the strides it is taking in Africa, that make it a vibrant, upbeat city.