Maj. Gen. Richard Otto replaces Gen. Dick Olum as Mountain Division commander

He replaces Maj. Gen. Dick Olum.

This puts him in command of Operation Shujaa, the joint military campaign between the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) and their Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) counterparts, the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC).

The joint campaign seeks to remove the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist rebel group, from the eastern DRC.

Maj. Gen. Richard Otto had been in South Sudan to oversee the stabilisation mechanism and he has switched offices with Olum.

Gen Olum has been the Mountain Division Commander since 2022 when he replaced Lt. Gen. Kayanja Muhanga, who is now the commander of Land Forces.

Maj. Gen. Dick Olum, who has been replaced by Maj. Gen. Richard Otto -- was appointed Mountain Brigade commander in October 2022.

According to publicly available information, Gen. Dick Olum was born in Zombo District, West Nile sub-region, Northern Region of Uganda in 1970.

Before his current position, he was Uganda’s military attaché at the Ugandan embassy in the D.R.C.

From April 2015, until October 2017, he was the commanding officer of the third army division of the UPDF, based in Moroto.

Before that, he served as the commander of the UPDF contingent in Somalia as part of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

In 2006, when the Uganda Junior Staff College, based in Jinja, was founded, Lt. Col. Olum was selected to be its commandant.

In 2010, at the rank of colonel, he was transferred to the Uganda Military Academy in Kabamba as chief instructor.