A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck Uganda on Sunday night, sending tremors across its epicentre in central with parts of western, eastern and sections of the northern corridor reeling from one of the most widely felt seismic events in recent months.
Preliminary data from international monitoring systems, including the United States Geological Survey, placed the quake at magnitude 4.5, with GeoTech reporting a closely matching magnitude of 4.49.
The epicentre was located near Nakasongola at around 21:19 local time, in Uganda's central seismic belt.
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The quake was shallow, a factor that likely contributed to its wide perceptibility across multiple regions of the country.
Shallow earthquakes tend to transmit stronger surface shaking over large areas even when their magnitude is moderate.
Reports indicate that the tremors were felt across central Uganda, including Kampala and surrounding districts, extending eastward to Jinja and westward into parts of the Albertine region.
Northern Uganda also registered mild shaking, consistent with seismic wave propagation through the Rift Valley system.
The Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines had not issued an official public statement on the event by the time of publication, with early confirmation instead coming from international seismic monitoring agencies.
Uganda lies along the Albertine Rift, part of the East African Rift System, a tectonically active zone where the African Plate is slowly splitting.
This geological setting exposes the country to recurring seismic activity, typically ranging between magnitude 4 and 6, with occasional stronger events along fault lines stretching into the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The strongest recorded earthquake linked to Uganda's seismic zone remains the magnitude 7.2 event of May 20, 1990, which struck the western rift region near the Uganda-DR Congo border area.
Although remote from major population centres, it stands as the most powerful event in the country's recorded seismic history.
In more recent decades, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake on September 10, 2016, located southwest of Kampala, produced widespread shaking across central and western Uganda, underscoring the country's exposure to regional rift-driven seismic activity.
Uganda also experienced a notable sequence of earthquakes during the 2005-2006 period, particularly around the Lake Albert Rift system.
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Those events caused structural damage in western districts, triggered landslides in hilly terrain, and were felt in Kampala due to the transmission of seismic waves across the central plateau.
The latest magnitude 4.5 event, while moderate, reinforces Uganda's position within one of Africa's most active continental rift systems.
Many residents said the earthquake was unusually strong and had not been experienced in a long time.
"The shaking was intense. At first, we thought the entire home was moving," one resident said.
Others described hearing strange rumbling sounds before feeling the ground shake.
"It felt like the earth was turning underneath us," another resident explained.
Seismologists note that such earthquakes are consistent with ongoing tectonic movement along fault lines beneath the western and central corridors.
Further assessment from national geological authorities is expected as monitoring continues to determine any aftershock activity and refine the final parameters of the event.
