WHAT 2025 REALLY TOLD US ABOUT THE USE

The headline from the Uganda Securities Exchange in 2025 was not turnover, nor even the 36.6% rise in the USE All Share Index. It was the emergence of what Crested Capital aptly dubbed the Black Diamonds — a small clutch of counters that delivered returns north of 25% and reminded investors that, even in a shallow market, price discovery still works .

At the top of this glittering pile sat Bank of Baroda, whose share price more than doubled, rising 111.24% over the year. That is the kind of return that forces even the most hardened bond investor to glance sideways at equities. Close behind was Quality Chemical Industries (QCIL) with an 82.68% capital gain, sweetened further by dividends that pushed total shareholder return close to 90%. Stanbic Uganda, Airtel Uganda, and dfcu Limited completed the Black Diamonds list, all posting solid double-digit gains and, in Airtel’s case, an attractive income kicker that lifted its total return to nearly 60% .

These results matter because they cut through a persistent narrative that the USE is “dead money.” It is not. It is selective money. In a market of barely a dozen domestic listings, dispersion is brutal. Pick right, and you compound meaningfully. Pick wrong, and you can sit on capital erosion for years. The same report that celebrated Black Diamonds also recorded painful declines in Uganda Clays and Umeme, whose shares fell over 40% during the year, underlining that risk is very much alive and unequally distributed .

Beyond prices, 2025 also showed a gradual, if uneven, deepening of participation. Equity turnover rose to sh98.4 billion, up nearly 27% from 2024, with activity strengthening through the year as dividend positioning and institutional flows picked up. Yet the market remains heavily concentrated. MTN Uganda alone accounted for almost 57% of total turnover, with Stanbic taking another fifth. Liquidity, in other words, follows familiarity, scale, and balance-sheet comfort, leaving smaller counters largely orphaned .

The contrast with fixed income could not be sharper. Government securities continued to dwarf equities in both scale and liquidity, with accepted bids rising to sh28.8 trillion and secondary market turnover topping sh102 trillion. Bonds remain the market’s workhorse — predictable, deep, and irresistibly convenient for institutions — while equities fight for attention one dividend and one price rerating at a time .

Looking ahead, 2026 will test whether the Black Diamonds story was a one-off sparkle or the start of something more durable. MTN’s long-awaited fintech separation could reshape valuations. Airtel’s push to meet free-float requirements may broaden participation. And Umeme’s arbitration outcome remains a binary event with real consequences for confidence...

For now, the lesson of 2025 is simple. The USE did not reward breadth; it rewarded conviction. In a market this small, alpha does not come from owning everything. It comes from knowing which diamonds are real — and having the patience to hold them when they shine.

VENEZUELA AFTER MADURO: WHEN EXTRACTION EMPTIES LEGITIMACY

The US' weekend arrest and extradition (Abduction?) of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro landed  with the force of history breaking through the door. 

Legal outcomes will be contested, delayed, and politicised, but the symbolism is already set: a regime that ruled as an extraction cartel rather than a national steward has finally run out of road. For many Venezuelans, this moment is not about court filings; it is about a long-denied reckoning.

Venezuela did not unravel because of one doctrine or one foreign adversary. It collapsed because power mutated into entitlement. Oil rents stopped financing institutions and started feeding patronage, secrecy, and personal accumulation. The state ceased to arbitrate fairly and began to loot efficiently. Once that happened, trust evaporated, incentives died, and the social contract dissolved.

The testimonies pouring out of Venezuela—some gathered and archived on Shillings & Cents 

are not ideological pamphlets. They are grief accounts. Endless food lines. Businesses nationalised into extinction. Imports choked. Production shattered by price controls. Savings erased by inflation. Families fragmented by migration. This was not a slow decline but a violent one. A functioning, if imperfect, economy imploded with shocking speed once extraction became the organising principle of governance.

When ruling cliques turn countries into resource pits, sovereignty hollows out from within. Consent drains away. Power becomes brittle. And brittle power invites outside pressure. Venezuela’s exposure to what critics deride as an American “cowboy adventure” is not an accident of geography or conspiracy; it is a domestic product of years spent alienating the very population that grants legitimacy.

This is not a Venezuelan anomaly. In North Africa, similar dynamics played out. 

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak learned that decades of patronage and security-state dominance could not survive the withdrawal of street consent. In the Maghreb, extraction politics and gerontocratic entitlement hollowed regimes until public patience snapped, an arc associated regionally with figures like Tunisia's Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose fall underscored how quickly legitimacy can evaporate once rulers appear to exist only for themselves.

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi mistook oil rents and bravado for immunity. Mobutu Sese Seko ran a country like a personal vault. Robert Mugabe hollowed out production while elevating loyalty over competence. Each believed wealth, coercion, and rhetoric would outlast consent. Each was wrong. When extraction severs the bond between ruler and ruled, the end is rarely dignified.

Venezuela also punctures the romance of “alternative” patrons. China, Russia, and shadowy intermediaries did not rebuild; they extracted. Anti-Western language proved no substitute for maintenance, investment, and competence. Extraction without reinvestment is looting with better branding, and Venezuelans felt the outcome in empty shelves and darkened hospitals.

This brings us to the uncomfortable present. 

Any renewed involvement by the United States will not be a silver bullet. Washington’s record elsewhere gives no credible reason to expect tidy outcomes or benevolent miracles. Interventions carry costs, contradictions, and unintended consequences. Yet there is a deeper, sadder indictment here: when a local population would rather gamble on foreign intrusion than endure domestic rule, the failure lies squarely with the ruling elite. It is an extraordinary moral collapse when citizens welcome outside pressure because it feels like the least bad option left.

For people who have lived through institutional collapse, pragmatism displaces purity. If refineries are rebuilt, infrastructure repaired, imports reopened, and people allowed to work and earn with dignity, hope returns—not because the arrangement is perfect, but because something finally functions. Functionality, after years of trauma, is not a slogan; it is survival.

The lesson reverberates far beyond Caracas. States are not mines. Nations are not ATMs. When leaders gorge themselves at the trough of public resources, they alienate the people and hollow out sovereignty. And when the brown stuff hits the fan, no offshore billions, foreign friends, or security cordons can compensate for lost consent. Power without legitimacy holds—until it doesn’t.

UGANDA’S ECONOMY KEEPS TIME, POLITICS MUST CATCH UP

Uganda enters a new political season with one stubborn, reassuring fact ticking away in the background: the economy keeps growing, almost like clockwork. Not spectacularly. Not noisily. But steadily enough to matter.

 "In a world where growth has become erratic, fragile, and often policy-dependent, that consistency is one of Uganda’s quiet advantages. It buys us time. It absorbs shocks. It creates room—if we use it well to fix what still holds us back.

But elections change the weather. They sharpen incentives, redistribute attention, and tempt governments to confuse visibility with impact. Business as usual is not an option, not least because the numbers are no longer polite.

More than half a million young people are entering the job market every year. Infrastructure deficits—from feeder roads to power transmission to urban services are no longer abstract planning concerns; they are binding constraints. And if growth is to remain clockwork rather than luck, the business environment must improve faster than population pressure.

The 2025 story, seen through Shillings & Cents lens, was one of resilience with unresolved tensions. Inflation behaved. Growth held. Exports—especially coffee did the heavy lifting yet again, quietly underwriting foreign exchange stability. Regionally, progress continued in small, unglamorous ways: smoother borders here, shorter transit times there, another logistics bottleneck eased. These are not headline moments, but they matter because investors do not invest in flags or anthems; they invest in access to markets.

This is why Uganda’s liberal economic architecture remains one of its strongest assets. The decision—made decades ago to let markets allocate capital, allow private enterprise to take risks, and keep the economy broadly open has paid dividends. Even today, despite periodic nostalgia for state control, the fundamentals remain intact. And where there have been attempts to drift back toward command-economy instincts, the results have been as expected: inefficiency, rent-seeking, and slow-moving bureaucracy dressed up as strategic intervention.

One understands the temptation. Governments everywhere want to “get back into business.” Ownership makes patronage easier to spread. Jobs can be announced. Assets can be pointed to. Losses can be rationalised. Soon enough, the argument follows that state enterprises need not make money as long as they employ people and deliver some socially useful service. It sounds compassionate. It even sounds pragmatic.

It is neither.

This logic creates a vicious cycle. Loss-making public enterprises weaken the broader business environment, crowd out private investment, and distort prices. As efficiency declines, the same government is forced to pour more billions into plugging gaps—arguing, correctly but incompletely, that collapse would be worse. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost quietly grows. Every shilling poured into a public enterprise black hole is a shilling not spent fixing roads, paying contractors on time, or improving service delivery where the state actually has no substitute.

Domestic arrears sit squarely in this story. By 2025 they had become a chronic drag on enterprise. Contractors waiting years to be paid borrow to survive, pass costs on to prices, or exit altogether. Banks reprice risk. Investment decisions are delayed. What looks like a government accounting issue quickly becomes a private-sector liquidity crisis. An economy can survive high interest rates, external shocks, even elections. It struggles when its own largest client stops paying on time.

And yet, growth kept ticking. That is the paradox and the opportunity. Uganda grows because demand is real, demography is strong, and regional markets are increasingly accessible. Trucks still move. Coffee still ships. Mobile money still hums. This baseline momentum is not an accident; it is the dividend of openness. But momentum alone will not carry us through the next decade.

So what should 2026 be about?

First, corruption must be confronted not as a moral footnote but as an economic emergency. Corruption lengthens project cycles, inflates costs, and erodes trust. It is why roads take longer than planned, why budgets leak, and why investors price Uganda with a caution premium. Tackling it is not about virtue signalling; it is about lowering the cost of doing business.

Second, domestic arrears must be brought under control. Clearing verified arrears, enforcing commitment discipline, and aligning spending with realistic cash flows would release immediate oxygen into the economy. Few reforms would do more, faster, to restore confidence.

Third, project cycles must shorten. Uganda does not suffer from a lack of plans; it suffers from slow execution. Delays are expensive, corrosive, and often unnecessary. Faster delivery raises returns on public spending and sends a powerful signal that the system works.

Above all, 2026 should be about protecting and deepening the business environment. Investors will come because markets are accessible, contracts are honoured, and rules are predictable—not because they like you, sympathise with you, or owe you political favours. Beware of those who invest out of sympathy. Worse still are those who come bearing friendship instead of fundamentals. They are almost always fly-by-night companions.

Uganda’s clockwork growth is a gift. The question before the new political season is simple: will we use it to fix the plumbing, or will we gamble that the clock will keep ticking forever?

GUEST BOOK REVIEW: RICH DAD POOR DAD

By Andrew Muhimbise, Monday 5th January 2026

The book’s teachable lesson is that, simply convert your earned income into assets so you transition from working for money to having money work for you. The comprehension of what an asset is, meaning something that puts money in your pocket, is the core message in the book with the antagonist view that that house you own and live in is not an asset simply because it doesn’t put money in your pocket. It pumps you up by destroying all of pre-conceived notions on money by laying bare to you to wealth generation thought patterns and doable actions from wherever you are at dismantling all or any excuses.

Kiyosaki premises his book on six lessons starting with the provocation to unnerve the reader with lesson one of the rich don’t work for money, he then starts off by showing how that happens with lesson two on why teach financial literacy with clarity on how financial intelligence and not money solves problem including money problems, the author follows up with a call to action in a jolting lesson three mind your business with a dissuasion on wanting to look rich and ending up in debt with a message of becoming wealthy by converting earned income into passive or portfolio income as quickly as possible over time in patience.

Lesson four on the history of taxes and the power of corporations is a call to make the best of your financial intelligence by leveraging the advantages of limited liability with lessons on accounting, investing, understanding markets and the laws of the land. 

In lesson five Kiyosaki attempts to unlock and rewire the reader’s imagination is a call to ACTION demonstrating how the rich invent money and lastly in lesson six the authors emphasizes the important but not urgent need to have a long view to life! Work to learn – don’t work for money.

The books reverts back to chapter format, chapters seven to nine with functional measures of how to overcome obstacles and getting started in real time, peeling away excuses real or perceived for action to take root. 

I read this book 15 or so years ago and I was awestruck by the concepts I picked up then and have implemented over the years without a recollection of the source of such ideas. 

The first being that an investment is not seen by the eyes but processed in the mind, a pure function of bypassing the optics and analyzing.     

The second is about Fear of failure, the doggedness of not fearing to fail a recognition of fear and embracing it knowing that failure is not fatal, not trying out of fear is.

The third one being that profit on an investment is made when you buy, not when you sell. Basically you don’t project an unknown return.

Lastly the one on risk and knowledge correlation, where the more knowledge on the subject matter lessens risk. Knowledge eliminates risk a Warren Buffet thinking.

Lesson One: The Rich Don’t Work for Money.

The poor and middle class work for money; the rich have money work for them.

You don’t need permission to make money; great creativity, original thought, and initiative are more than sufficient.

Most people only talk and dream of getting rich.

Learn by engaging, being in the thing.

Patience is non-negotiable.

Life doesn’t talk, it pushes you around, you got to take responsibility and curate your destiny. Rich Dad being called cheapskate was to buffer his future wealth.

People spend all their lives working for money not caring what it is they are working for.

If you think something else is the problem, you have to change it.                               If you realize you’re the problem, then you change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves.

Learn how money works, so you could make it work for you.

True learning takes energy, passion, and a burning desire. Anger is salient as Passion is anger and love combined.

Most people, given more money, only get into more debt/trouble.

Trap of needing more, greed can also be desire, insatiable desire!

The avoidance of money is just as psychotic as being attached to money. 

Living in denial: Many people say they are not interested in money yet work 8 hours a day at a job.

Emotions is energy in motion.

Master the power of money instead of being afraid of it. They don’t teach this is school and if you don’t learn, you become a slave to money.

If you have no income you look for opportunity and grow your skills, arouse a need to want to grow.

Lesson Two: Why Teach Financial Literacy?

It is not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.

Intelligence solves problems and produces money.

Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.

If you want to be rich you need to be financially literate, lends credence to the Abdallah Amiri Financial I.Q initiative building a coalition of the willing for member personal wealth gains supported within an ecosystem.

Rich people acquire assets, the poor and middleclass acquire liabilities that they think are assets.

The difference:

 Assets - puts money in my pocket.

Liability – takes money out of my pocket.

An intelligent adult often feels it demeaning to pay attention to simplistic definitions. KISS - keep it simple, stupid!

To be rich simply, know what an asset is, acquire them and you will be rich.

What defines an asset or liability are not words, it is what it does in or out of pocket!

Cash flow tells the story of how a person handles their money. Money only accentuates the cash flow pattern running in your head.

How to make money and how to manage money are DIFFERENT.

More money seldom solves someone’s problems, intelligence solves problems.

By not fully understanding money, the vast majority of people allow it awesome power to control them.

An intelligent person hires people who more intelligent than he is, otherwise what’s the point!

When it comes to money, high emotions tend to lower financial intelligence (on home being a liability).

Real tragedy is that the lack of early financial education is what creates the risk faced by average middleclass people.

Wealth measures how much your money is making, therefore financial survivability.

Wealth is a measure of cash flow from the asset column compared with the expense column.

The rich buy assets, the poor only have expenses.

The middleclass buy liabilities they think are assets.

Lesson Three: Mind Your Own Business.

The rich focus on their asset column while everyone else focuses on their income statement.

Mind your business- Me I am a freedom fighter, fighting for personal freedom.

Your business revolves around your asset column, not your income column.

Financial struggle is often the result of people working all their lives for someone else.

So many people have put themselves in deep financial trouble when they run short of income.

Keep expenses low, reduce liabilities, and diligently build a base of solid assets.

Start minding your own business, keep the daytime job but start buying real assets, not liabilities.

An important distinction is that rich people buy luxuries last, while poor and middleclass tend to buy luxuries first. Reason is that they want to look rich but end up deep in debt on credit.

The long term rich build their asset column first, then use income generated from the asset column to indulge in luxury.

Buying luxury on credit often causes a person to eventually resent that luxury because the debt becomes a financial burden.

Lesson Four: The History of Taxes and the power of Corporations.

An employee with a safe, secure job, without financial aptitude has no escape.

Corporation is the King of Tax. Allowable expenses et al

If you work for money, you give the power to your employer. If money works for you, you keep the power and control it.

To get out of the Rat race you need strong financial knowledge (financial I.Q).

Financial I.Q is made up of knowledge from the four arears:

1.     Accounting

2.     Investing

3.     Understanding markets

4.     The Law

Financial I.Q is a synergy of many skills and talents, notably the above four (4).

Lesson Five: The Rich Invent Money.

Often in the real world it is not the smart people who get ahead, but the bold. Fortune favours the bold!

People know the answer, but lack the courage to act on the answer.

Your financial genius requires both technical knowledge as well as courage to execute. If fear is too strong the genius is suppressed.

Information is wealth, the new wealth cannot be contained by boundaries and borders as lad and factories were.

The anger or reluctance at doing the numbers, the income statement and balance sheet come from the embarrassment about not understanding them (visible at cash games hosted by Rats).

Increase your financial intelligence so you be the kind of person who creates your own luck, you take whatever happens and make it better. Few people realize that luck is created, just as money is.

The poor and middleclass work for money, the rich make money and have it work.

Money is not real, the more real you think money is, the harder you will work for it.

The single most powerful asset we have is our mind. If trained well it can create enormous wealth.

Financial intelligence is made up of these four main technical skills;

1.     Accounting

Accounting is financial literacy, or the ability to read numbers. This is a vital skill if you want to build businesses or investments.

2.     Investing

Investing is the science of money making money.

3.     Understanding Markets

Understanding markets is the science of supply and demand.

4.     The Law

The law refers to the awareness of accounting corporate, state, and federal regulations. It is recommended to play by the rules.

The problem with SECURE investments is that they are often sanitized, that is, made so safe that the gains are less.

 Good investment is seen not with the eyes; it is processed by the brain.

It is your intelligence that can spot a bad deal, or make a bad deal good.

The statement: You cannot do that here is usually for the one saying: I don’t know how to do that here – yet.

Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your mind.

Most people never win because they are more afraid of losing.

In school we learn that mistakes are bad and we are punished for making them YET humans learn by mistakes, we learn to walk by falling down.

People are terrified of losing, main reason why not many people are rich.

Winners are not afraid of losing; failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

Two types of investors: Off-shelf and Deal stream creator who assembles deals;

           Skills for Investor who creates opportunities:

1.     Find opportunities that everyone missed

2.     Raise money, in learned skilled of raising money It is what you know, more than what you buy. Investing is not buying, it is more a case of knowing.

3.     Organize smart people, intelligent people are those who work with or hire a person who is more intelligent than they are.

It is what you know that is your greatest wealth. It is what you do not know that is your greatest risk.

Lesson Six: Work to Learn – Don’t work for money.

Job security meant everything to my educated Dad, learning meant everything to my rich Dad.

When it comes to money, the only skill most people know is to work hard.

You want to know a little about a lot. Inch deep - mile wide.

The hardest part of running a company is managing people.

It’s best to go broke before 30, you still have time to recover.

School doesn’t think financial intelligence is an intelligence.

A horrible management theory: ‘Workers work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that workers won’t quit’.

Seek work for what you will learn, more than what you will earn.

Take a long view of life.

The fear of failure and rejection is why most people are unsuccessful.

Education is more valuable than money in the long run.

Business systems, the McDonald hamburger story

The world is filled with Talented poor people.

Management skills needed for success:

1.     Management of Cash flow

2.     Management of Systems

3.     Management of People 

The most important specialized skills are sales and marketing. The ability to sell – to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse or child – is the base skill of personal success.

Communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to a life of success.

The better you are at: communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.

Give and you shall receive in contrast to receive and then you give. Do it first otherwise no one will.

 

Chapter Seven: Overcoming Obstacles.

The primary difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they manage fear.

Why financially literate people fail to develop abundant asset columns is because of five (5) reasons;

Fear              Cynicism                 Laziness                  Bad Habits           Arrogance

 

1.    Overcoming Fear

I have never met a rich person who has never lost money. But I have met a lot of poor people who have never lost a dime – investing that is.

The fear of losing money is real, everyone has it, even the rich. Fear is not the problem, how you handle fear is.

If you hate risk and worry, start early.

People are so afraid of losing that they lose, greatest reason for lack of financial freedom was because people played it safe.

Winning means being unafraid to lose.

Winning usually follows losing.

Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die, most people dream of being rich, but are terrified of losing money.

Failure inspires winners, failure defeats losers.

They play not to lose; they don’t play to win.

Safe, diversification BALANCE, you must be focused, not balanced, Go all in. Don’t put a few eggs in many baskets.

 

2.    Overcoming Cynicism

The sky is falling.

What makes you think you can do that? Don’t need permission from anyone.

Words of doubt that curtail action:

If it’s such a good idea, how comes someone else hasn’t done it.

That will never work. You don’t know what you are talking about.

A savvy investor knows that the seemingly worst of times is actually the best of times to make money.

Buyer’s remorse.

Doubt is expensive, listen to only those actually doing the thing you want to do.

Unchecked doubt and fear creates a cynic.

Cynics criticize and winner analyze, cynicism blinds while analysis opens the eyes.

Investing to win is better than investing not to lose.

Don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on what you want e.g. can say rental property investing carries stress of dealing with tenants, hate fixing toilets focus on rate of return if superior you can outsource the headaches to another and earn your return.

3.    Overcoming Laziness

Busy people are often the laziest. Too busy to take care of their wealth and health. They don’t mind their business, laziness by staying busy.

Cure for laziness is a little greed, desire for self, yearning to have something nice, new, exciting.

To keep emotion of desire under control it is suppressed with guilt, guilt tripping desire.

The words ‘I can’t afford it” shut down your brain. ‘How Can I afford it’ opens up possibilities, excitement and dreams.

The human spirit can do anything (subconscious mind). Be careful what you wish for, you will get it.

How can I afford it creates a stronger mind and a dynamic spirit.

Not about the goal, but the process of the attaining the goal (pedals over podium, journey over destination).

To exit the Rat race a simple question of ‘How can I afford to never work again?’ then the mind figures it out.

Always ask, what is in it for me (Why am I doing this?) to cure laziness.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you will be criticized anyway. You will be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

4.    Overcoming Bad Habits

Pay yourself first as a habit, pressure to pay others / bills motivates.

5.    Overcoming Arrogance

What I know makes me money, what I don’t know loses me money.

Watch out for hubris.

We use arrogance to hide our ignorance.

They are not lying, but they are not telling the truth either.

When you know your ignorant in a subject, start educating yourself.

Chapter Eight: Getting Started.

There is gold everywhere. Most people are not trained to see it.

Our culture (religious) has educated us into believing that the love of money is the root of all evil. It has encouraged us to learn a profession so we work for money, but failed to teach us how to have money work for us.

10 Steps to awaken your financial genius

1.    Find a reason greater than reality: The power of Spirit

A reason or purpose is a combination of ‘wants’ and ‘don’t wants’ e.g. don’t want to work all my life, wants to be free to travel, freedom of thought, freedom from bad health. Deep seated emotional reasons must be strong to propel you into ACTION.

2.    Make daily choices: The power of Choice

Choice is the main reason people want to live in a free country, we want the power to choose.

With every shilling (dollar) we get in our hands, we hold the power to choose our future; to be rich, poor, or middleclass.

Our spending habits reflect who we are, Poor people have poor spending habits disguised as good or noble.

For most people being rich is too much of a hassle, so they invent things like: am not interested in money, I will never be rich, I don’t have to worry I am still young, my salary is little; SUCH words rob you time, learning, and agency.

Having no money should not be an excuse to not learn.

The mind is the only real asset; most powerful tool we have dominion over or total control.

Most people buy investments rather than first investing in learning about investing.

A truly intelligent person welcomes new ideas, for new ideas can add to the synergy of others, thereby accumulating knowledge.

Listening is more important than talking: we have 2 ears and one mouth!

3.    Choose friends carefully: The power of association

People with money talk about money, they don’t do it to brag, they are simply interested in the subject.

People is dire straits do not like talking about money, savings, and investing, they think it rude or unintellectual.

From those who struggle learn what not to do.

Do not listen to poor or frightened people.

In the market the crowd shows up late and it is slaughtered.

If a great deal is on the front page, it’s too late in most instances.

Smart investors don’t time markets.

Profits are made when you buy, not when you sell.

Reason you want to have rich friends is because that is where money is made, in their ecosystems. It is made on information.

4.    Master a formula and then learn a new one the power of learning quickly

You become what you study. In order to make bread every baker follows a recipe, even if it’s only held in their heads. The same is true for making money.

5.    Pay yourself first: The power of self-discipline

If you cannot exercise control over yourself, do not try to get rich. It makes no sense to invest, make money, and blow it. Self-discipline is vital.

Three most important management skills to start your own business are management of: Cash flow, people, and personal time.

Self-discipline is internal fortitude.

To pay yourself first, keep in mind that: 

I don’t get into large debt, I build up assets first and when pressure comes let it inspire your financial genius.

If you’re not tough on the inside, the world will always push you around anyway.

 

 

UGANDA 2025; GROWTH AND UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Uganda’s economic year of 2025 ends on a tone that is both promising and unfinished.

Seen through this column’s lens, it feels a bit like hearing a good song and realising the chorus you feel in your bones has barely kicked in. The melody is there. The rhythm holds. But something keeps interrupting the flow.

On the surface, the macro numbers suggest stability. Growth is alive. Inflation is subdued. The shilling has behaved. Our exporters — especially coffee, gold and tourism are bringing home hard currency. Those charts whisper resilience, and that is no small feat given global uncertainties, tightening capital, and a jittery world economy.

Coffee delivered yet another record. In the 12 months to October 2025, Uganda exported about 8.2 million 60-kg bags of coffee, valued at roughly US$2.3 billion (Sh8.1 trillion) — the highest figure in our history. That represents about a 64% increase in export value year-on-year, proof that even smallholder beans, when steered through cooperative value chains and favourable prices, can become national hard-currency anchors.

Gold and minerals, too, did heavy lifting. Merchandise export receipts climbed over 50% year-on-year to around US$1.25 billion, with gold an increasingly meaningful contributor alongside coffee. And tourism quietly reclaimed its place as a foreign-exchange pillar. By March 2025, foreign visitors had generated about US$1.52 billion, a strong rebound from pandemic lulls that underlines Uganda’s enduring appeal as a travel destination.

Yet here is the part most Ugandans live every day rather than chart every week: good numbers do not automatically translate into accessible opportunity.

Domestic arrears — money owed by government for goods and services already delivered  continued to sap liquidity from the private sector. For contractors, suppliers and small firms, delayed payments meant delayed investment, heavier borrowing and cautious hiring. Arrears do not announce themselves as crises in macro tables; they show up quietly as stalled projects, idle machinery and jobs that never materialise.

This is also where corruption, as documented repeatedly in this column this year, reveals its most damaging form. Not corruption as headlines and handcuffs, but corruption as delay, opacity and rent-seeking. The kickback that inflates contract costs. The procurement process slowed until “something moves.” The invoice that waits, not because money is unavailable, but because incentives are misaligned. Economically, corruption functions like sand in the gears — raising transaction costs, distorting competition and quietly taxing honest enterprise.

Mobile money. It is no longer tangential to the economy; it has become Uganda’s unofficial banking system. MTN’s MoMo platform alone serves more than ten million active users, forming the informal financial spine of inclusion — paying merchants, sending remittances and settling bills with a tap.

The scale is staggering. 

In 2024, Ugandans transacted about Sh159 trillion through MTN Mobile Money, an average of Sh435 billion every single day, amounting to roughly 4.3 billion transactions in a year. As of mid-2025, Uganda counted about 34.6 million active mobile money subscribers, dwarfing traditional banking penetration and underscoring just how central digital finance has become to everyday economic life.

But scale is not the same as depth. High transaction volumes do not automatically produce wealth. Many users still treat mobile money as a pass-through — in today, out tomorrow — rather than as a platform for saving, investing or borrowing productively. And here again, corruption lurks quietly: fake agent float shortages, weak consumer protection, and regulatory blind spots that allow inefficiency to persist. Mobile money has opened the door to inclusion, but it has not yet completed the journey to wealth building.

We saw something similar with the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) in 2025. The Fund posted one of its strongest years, growing assets from about Sh22.1 trillion to nearly Sh26 trillion and paying out record benefits. That matters. Pension capital is patient capital — the kind economies need for long-term investment. But compliance challenges persisted, particularly among smaller employers squeezed by cash-flow pressures and delayed payments. Again, institutional strength collided with the lived economy.

So where does this leave us as we close 2025?

Uganda’s economic story is not one of stagnation — far from it. Exports are firing on multiple cylinders. Tourism dollars are returning. Mobile money and digital finance are reshaping how people transact and interact with the economy. Institutional savers like NSSF are sitting on growing pools of investable capital.

Yet the felt experience — that moment when a parent pays school fees without anxiety, or a micro-entrepreneur accesses credit at a reasonable rate remains uneven. Growth is present, but distribution is patchy. Systems exist, but trust is thin.

That is the real lesson of 2025. Resilience is necessary, but inclusion is indispensable

. Macro figures matter, but they must be married to integrity, execution and household realities. Growth can be strong without being broad. And corruption, left untreated, does not always collapse economies — it slowly robs them of momentum.

The task for 2026 and beyond is therefore clear: execution that reaches people, credit that empowers production, and mobile finance that goes beyond payment into saving and investment — all underpinned by systems that reward efficiency rather than extraction.

Because statistics can tell you how big an economy is.
But only lived lives tell you whether it’s working.

RIDING THE CORRUPTION TIGER: AFRICA NEEDS MORE DANGOTES

Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote’s recent broadside—accusing a Nigerian regulator of sabotaging his giant refinery and then publishing a full-page ad questioning how that same official pays foreign school fees on a civil servant’s salary, sent tremors across the continent.

This was not a billionaire having a tantrum. It was Africa’s most ambitious industrialist warning that corruption has become so entrenched, so predatory, that even those who mastered the system now risk being eaten alive by it.

To understand the depth of this crisis, one must appreciate the scale of what Dangote has built.

 

His refinery is not a glorified factory. At 650,000 barrels per day, it is designed to be the largest single-train refinery in the world—capable of meeting all of Nigeria’s fuel needs and exporting massive surpluses across Africa.

The fertiliser plant beside it is equally imposing, producing three million tonnes of urea annually, helping secure Africa’s food future at a time when global fertiliser markets are volatile and dominated by non-African suppliers. These are not Nigerian assets alone, they are continental assets. They tilt the balance of power in Africa’s favour, revealing the scale of possibility when indigenous capital dreams boldly.

But bringing these dreams to life came at a cost—financial, political, and personal. Dangote originally budgeted around US$9 billion for the refinery. Delays in land acquisition, incessant regulatory battles, changes in engineering design, global supply chain disruptions, and a cocktail of local sabotage ballooned the cost to more than US$20 billion. For nearly a decade the refinery became a punchline, mocked as a fantasy too large for African hands. Yet in truth, much of the delay came from the system working overtime to frustrate progress.

When former Nigerian president Olesegun Obasanjo sold him the Port Harcourt refinery, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) unions revolted. Obasanjo’s successor Musa Yar’Adua reversed the deal. Undeterred, Dangote started from scratch. Once the refinery began taking shape, the attacks intensified: regulators falsely labelled his products sub-standard; NNPC refused to supply him crude, forcing him to import from the United States; trucking unions accustomed to illicit tolls accused him of monopolistic behaviour; strikes erupted; attempts to unionise his staff surfaced; unexplained fires were recorded. After 22 incidents of sabotage, Dangote sacked 800 workers. Parliament begged him to take them back. He did—then quietly redeployed them far from the refinery.

Yet today the refinery produces PMS, diesel, aviation fuel, and polypropylene. The fertiliser plant exports to the US, Brazil, India and sub-Saharan Africa. Foreign exchange flows in. And still, a Nigerian regulator insists on spending scarce forex importing fuel to keep European refineries in business. If that is not economic sabotage, the phrase has lost meaning...

But the more uncomfortable truth is this: the sabotage of Dangote is not merely the work of petty local actors protecting rent streams. It stretches outward—to global fuel traders, European refiners, and transnational interests for whom an industrialising Africa is inconvenient.

Corruption is an ecosystem, and Africa is not just fighting internal greed; it is confronting a global system that benefits enormously from our dysfunction. Dangote himself quipped that the drug cartels have nothing on the global oil cartels.

If Nigeria stops importing fuel, someone loses billions. If Africa stops importing fertiliser, someone loses control. The corrupt know this. They feed on it. They weaponise it.

And that is why, for all his imperfections, Africa needs more Dangotes. We need industrialists who know our dust, our politics and our unpredictability. People who won’t flee at the smell of tear gas. People whose understanding of risk is shaped not by spreadsheets in London but by lived experience in Lagos, Kampala, Dakar and Abidjan. Indigenous capital with staying power, not foreign capital that vanishes at the first sign of smoke.

Attempts by African governments to manufacture such business classes have mostly failed. Angola tried. Egypt tried. Kenya tried. Senegal too. The result was often the same: tycoons created by decree, not competition, billionaires of political favour, not industrial merit. When the winds shifted, they disappeared without legacy.

Asia took a different path. The Asian Tigers incentivised exporters, those who could compete globally—not import substitutors hiding behind tariffs and inflated monopolies. Samsung, Hyundai, Tata and Mahindra did not grow because the state protected them; they grew because the state pushed them to conquer global markets. Africa instead built systems that rewarded rent-seeking over productivity.

Thus the Dangote refinery does not simply threaten corrupt networks, it threatens a continental order that feeds on Africa staying small.

And corruption’s deadliest effect is not financial loss but the erosion of trust. Citizens see civil servants sending children to schools costing tens of thousands of dollars annually. They do not see ambition, they see impunity. Inequality becomes obscene. The social contract collapses.

History is clear about what follows. France’s Bourbons, Russia’s Romanovs, Ethiopia’s Solomonic dynasty, Iran’s Pahlavis—all believed they could ride the corruption tiger forever. It eventually turned and devoured them. Africa is no exception. Our populations are young, urban, connected and impatient. A corrupt state is a brittle state.

Which brings us back to Dangote. His refinery and fertiliser plant are not just private investments. They are continental testaments to what Africa can build when ambition meets capital, and capital meets courage. They expose the hollowness of the argument that Africa must wait for foreign benevolence or donor funding to industrialise. They show what is possible—and that is precisely why they are attacked.

Asia learned long ago to empower builders, not gatekeepers. Africa must do the same. Because the corruption tiger is restless. Many think they can ride it. Eventually, it stops obeying—and when it does, it eats everything in its path, including the elites who once fed it.

 

UGANDA AIRLINES: POLITICS CANNOT OUTRRUN THE NUMBERS

Every few years in Uganda, a moment arrives that forces us to ask whether we learn from our history or simply enjoy replaying it with new actors and shinier equipment. 

The unfolding saga at Uganda Airlines is one such moment — a national drama that began with the promise of pride in the skies but has ended, for now, in a familiar turbulence of losses, excuses, and rushed decisions. Anyone watching closely knows this storm did not start today. It began on the ground, long before the first cabin crew buckled up passengers on the new Bombardiers.

When government announced the revival of Uganda Airlines, officials spoke with the confidence of people who had cracked the aviation code. 

The business plan, they said, had input from the National Planning Authority (NPA), as if that alone was enough to inoculate the project against failure. But a closer reading of that plan revealed more holes than a kitchen sieve. It projected a break-even in two years — a proposition so detached from aviation reality that even industry veterans chuckled quietly. Airlines, everywhere in the world, bleed before they breathe.

 

Even the most mature carriers take five to seven years before anyone utters the word “profit.” But our business plan seemed less concerned with aeronautics and more with arithmetic designed to loosen the government’s purse strings.

And loosened they were. Long before the first commercial route was opened, the real feast had already taken place. Aircraft had been procured, consultancies paid, systems installed, training contracts awarded, and branding campaigns rolled out. Many of the key beneficiaries of Uganda Airlines’ rebirth vanished as soon as the procurement smoke cleared, satiated and licking their chops while the rest of the country was left to finance the hangover.

In aviation, reality eventually catches up with optimism. Richard Branson captured it best when he said that if you want to be a millionaire, start as a billionaire and open an airline. The industry is a black hole by design: fuel volatility, maintenance complexity, pilot training, aircraft depreciation, seasonal travel trends, global shocks, they all conspire to keep profit a distant dream. Even giants stumble. Kenya Airways bleeds. South African Airways has died and resurrected more times than Lazarus. Etihad burnt through billions chasing global dominance..

If airlines with deep pockets and global alliances struggle, what then of a young carrier in a small market?

Uganda Airlines entered this unforgiving world with enthusiasm but without insulation. Today the numbers are unforgiving. Accumulated losses have surged into the hundreds of billions. Operational costs rise like a jet on takeoff while revenues limp behind. Auditor General reports read like recurring episodes of the same tragedy — ticket fraud here, underutilised aircraft there, bloated staffing everywhere. The Airbus A330s we acquired as symbols of national pride now symbolise something else entirely: long-haul operations that drain more than they deliver. The CRJ900s, meant to anchor regional routes, are from a model already discontinued by the manufacturer. And just when one imagines the bleeding might trigger a sober pause, Parliament has greenlighted an additional sh400 billion as a deposit for new jets — a decision that qualifies as throwing good money after bad. But what does Parliament care? It is not Parliament that must justify this to the taxpayer.

A realistic reevaluation of Uganda Airlines must begin by acknowledging that losses are not an anomaly, they are the default. Even the regional carrier Uganda admires most, RwandAir, has not made a profit in its entire fifteen-year existence — despite disciplined governance, aggressive marketing, global partnerships and a well-aligned tourism strategy. If RwandAir, with all its structural advantages, has never crossed into profitability, on what basis did Uganda Airlines imagine it would break even in twenty-four months?

Yet the question we must confront is not simply whether the airline will ever make money. The deeper issue is the cost of choosing this path. Uganda has sunk trillions into the national carrier — in capitalisation, in procurement, in subsidies, in operational losses, and now in deposits for additional aircraft. 

But what else could that money have achieved? 

It could have transformed our human capital landscape, funding vocational institutes, strengthening teacher training, and scaling STEM programmes that would serve Uganda for generations. It could have repaired the structural cracks in our business environment, smoothing regulatory processes, strengthening SMEs, digitising public services, and lowering the cost of doing business. It could have modernised our creaking infrastructure, from roads and power reliability to turning Entebbe into a true regional aviation hub. And it could have turbocharged our tourism and MICE ambitions, where every shilling invested returns more shillings — unlike the aviation black hole, where every shilling invested demands two more to keep the aircraft in the sky.

Perhaps Uganda Airlines can still be rescued. But only if we stop pretending that politics can outvote economics. Uganda must decide whether it wants a commercial airline or a national symbol kept alive by subsidies and sentiment. It cannot be both. Until we confront the truth, that this project was conceived on flawed assumptions, executed through extractive procurement, and protected by political emotion, we will continue feeding a bottomless pit with no return.