Christopher Henry Muwanga Barlow (1 May 1929 – 20 August 2006)[1] was a Ugandan poet,[2] notable for his poem "Building the Nation".
[7][8] Starting out as a co-operative officer in 1954, Barlow rapidly rose through the civil service ranks to become Permanent Secretary in 1963, a year after independence.
In 1976 Barlow resigned from the civil service and eventually moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to become secretary general of the African Association for Public Administration and Management.
In spite of his achievements, both as a public administrator and a writer, Barlow maintained a low profile, especially after retiring from civil service.
But even before they were published as a collection, Barlow's poems, especially "Building the Nation", were already popular with poetry lovers both in Uganda and abroad and they regularly appeared in literature journals and text books.