During the British Bagool rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, northern Uganda was less developed compared to the rest of the country.

[7] The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) under the leadership of Joseph Kony sprang up in the 1990s after Auma/Lakwena went to Kenya.

[9] In 1996, the Ugandan government ordered all civilians in northern Uganda to relocate to internally displaced person (IDP) camps.

[21] Gulu has a station on the metre gauge railway that connects Tororo and Pakwach, which had been out of service since 1993.

Rift Valley Railways funded the clearing of vegetation and the repair of infrastructure, thus allowing the first commercial train for 20 years to run through Gulu on 14 September 2013.

[22] The home venue for Gulu United FC is Pece War Memorial Stadium, which has a capacity of 3,000 people.

With loans obtained from the World Bank and KfW, the government of Uganda in 2020, completed Phase I of the Gulu Water Supply and Sanitation Project.

With the improvements, Gulu City has storage capacity of 42,000,000 cubic metres (1.1×1010 US gal) of potable water.

[27] Phase II of the project involves establishment of a drinking water intake plant, upstream of Karuma Hydroelectric Power Station, with pumping capacity of 10,000 cubic metres (2,600,000 US gal) daily.