The BBC's world affairs correspondent, Peter Biles, is travelling through Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and Ethiopia to examine the scale of the task the commission has set itself.

Within hours of arriving in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, I am on my way to State House to interview President Yoweri Museveni.

No solution has been found to end the brutal war in the north

The Ugandan leader has led his nation for 18 years. It has been a period of rebirth for a country that was destroyed by the likes of Idi Amin and Milton Obote.

President Museveni is a popular figure on the international stage, but his one serious failing has been his inability to bring an end to the brutal war in northern Uganda against the Lord's Resistance Army.

Mr Museveni assures me the conflict is ending and that Uganda has always had a "multi-channel approach" to the crisis, but his critics accuse him of being too focused on a military solution.

Internally displaced

So it is time to head north.

It is a relief to escape the morning traffic in Kampala and get on the road to Gulu.

Uganda is wonderfully fertile, and there are banana trees everywhere.

The cars must share the roads with hundreds of bicycles and also with small children in their school uniforms, walking long distances to their first lessons of the day.

The road crosses the River Nile at Karuma, where there are powerful rapids surging under the bridge.

Then it is on to Gulu, one of the main towns in the north.

Arriving at Bobi Camp, where there are 20,000 people displaced by the war, it is a delight to meet an old friend who I have not seen for 12 years.

Andrew Timson now works for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and has been in Gulu for the past 10 months.

Our paths have not crossed since we travelled together in Somalia in the early 1990s.

"This is a pretty atrocious camp. It's one of the poorest, and it is very congested," Andrew says, as he guides me past the thatched huts and makeshift shelters.

A camp resident, Laveja Ocen Charles, explains that his home is less than 400 metres away, but he is too afraid to go back there because of LRA rebel activity.

The people here are clearly petrified of the prospect of more LRA attacks and abductions of their children.

MEMBERS OF THE AFRICA COMMISSION Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor Hilary Benn, UK Development Secretary Michel Camdessus, former IMF head Bob Geldof, musician Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister, Ethiopia Trevor Manuel, Finance Minister, South Africa Ralph Goodale, Canadian Finance Minister Nancy Kassenbaum Baker, former US Senator K Y Amoako, UN Economic Commission for Africa Benjamin Mkapa, President of Tanzania L K Mohohlo, Governor Bank of Botswana Dr Anna Tibaijuka, Director, UN Habitat, Tanzania T J Thiam, group director, Aviva, Ivory Coast William Kalema, chairman, Uganda Manufacturers Assn Fola Adeola, chairman, Fate Foundation, Nigeria Ji Peiding, vice-chairman, Chinese parliament's foreign affairs committee Tough task for Commission

The next morning, I see the "night commuters" leaving Gulu.

Hundreds of people are streaming down the road away from the town. They congregate in Gulu for safety to sleep there every night, but return to the countryside in the daytime.

On the north side of town on the way to the Sudanese border, I am welcomed by Archbishop John Batiste Odama, one of the senior church leaders in the Acholi region.

His cathedral is a magnificent building, built around 70 years ago.

The archbishop, who is an advocate of dialogue and an amnesty to end the conflict in the north, speaks passionately about the tragedies of the past 18 years.

"This war has torn Uganda in two," he says.

"The south has a bright future, but the north is wounded, bleeding and suffering."