Is there such thing as Ugandan English?

Recently I spoke to a postgrad student here who is interested in the question of whether the English spoken in Uganda should be called 'Ugandan English' or not. Is it a dialect of English? My observation so far, after 6 weeks in Kampala, is that the English spoken here has some systematic differences from other Englishes at pretty much every linguistic level - phonology, wording and grammar, and semantics. So I'd say it's a specific dialect (although I'd be interested to see how it differs from the English spoken in neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania). I have been posting some of my observations of local expressions over the past few weeks (here and here) and thought I'd start to organise them a bit more. I'll start with phonology this time (using as much common-sense language as possible, and no phonetic symbols, for the benefit of non-linguists reading this).

Vowels: The phonological (sound) systems of the Bantu languages spoken in Uganda have only 5 vowels, and a couple of diphthongs, which means that the 20+ vowels in English are usually reduced to these five when speaking English. Vowels such as the 'a' in 'hat' and the 'ur' in 'hurt' do not occur in Luganda (for example) and so they are both approximated to the vowel 'a' as in 'hut'. So the words 'hat', 'hut', 'hurt' and 'heart' all sound much the same (as 'hut'), although sometimes there is a longer vowel in 'heart' and 'hurt' than 'hat' and 'hut'. Likewise the vowels in 'sin' and 'seen' are pronounced the same, as in 'sin'. Also, the 'schwa' vowel that is used in unstressed syllables in English (like the 'a' in 'again' or the 'e' in 'written') is not used, so all vowels are given their full value (again as 'egen', written as 'writ-ehn'). This also affects the rhythm of speech, as there are not as many unstressed syllables.

Consonants: I have only noticed a couple of things so far. One is the 'k' sound, when in combination with 'i' or 'y' sounds, is pronounced as 'ch', e.g. 'particular' is often pronounced as 'particular' (rather than 'partikyular'). I think this is because in some of the local languages, e.g. Luganda and Runyakitara, 'k' is always pronounced 'ch' before 'i' or 'y'. The name 'Runyakitara', for example, is pronounced 'Runyachitara'. It seems that not all varieties of the languages do this, as I've also heard 'Runyakitara'. Another is the sounds 'l' and 'r'. I haven't quite worked out the status of these sounds in the local languages, but I think it's a bit like in Japanese, where the two sounds are not recognised as different sounds but the same 'sound unit' (phoneme) that is pronounced a bit differently depending on the other sounds around it. As with many other world languages, Luganda and other Bantu languages do not have the 'th' sounds as in English 'thin' and 'this', so I think they are usually replaced with 's' for the sound in 'thin' and 'd' for the sound in 'this'.

Intonation: I'm no expert on intonation so it's hard to describe the difference, but I know it's different!

Rhythm: As mentioned above, because the 'schwa' vowel is not used, the rhythm of English spoken here is a bit different. It's not quite the even syllabic rhythm of French (as heard in this cute video), but it's also not quite the 'dum-di-dum' rhythm of British, American (as heard in this amusing video), or Australian (etc) English.