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.

BOU NUMBERS SUGGEST STEADY PROGRESS, THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL

The economy often whispers truths long before politicians ever shout them from podiums. The Bank of Uganda’s December 2025 macroeconomic indicators offer precisely this kind of whisper: a picture of resilience and caution, of macroeconomic stability shadowed by persistent structural questions, brought into sharper relief as Uganda approaches the 2026 elections.

At first glance, the numbers are superficially reassuring. Headline inflation settled around 3.1 percent by December, well within the policy target band—reflecting price stability unseen in many past cycles. The trends show that this is not a sudden anomaly but the continuation of a long-term trend.

In 2012 this column pointed out that the broader concern was that economic growth was outpacing development itself. Growth alone was insufficient because people still lacked basic services: there was just one doctor for every 11,000 Ugandans and nearly 50 pupils per primary school teacher—metrics that spoke of deep structural deficits even while GDP figures ticked upward. This column argued then that

for development to be real, gains from growth had to be distributed into human development—health, education, jobs—not just infrastructure or headline GDP numbers. Fast forward to 2025, inflation is low and stable, but the broader question remains: has this macro stability translated into better human outcomes across the country, or has it merely created a calmer statistical façade?

The answer today is more nuanced. Yes, price stability makes life more predictable than a decade ago, but many of the core challenges that frustrated development back then—limited access to quality healthcare, education gaps, and underpowered job creation, still linger beneath the surface. This echoes the earlier message: economic growth makes the numbers look better; actual development is measured in people’s lives.

Another instructive snapshot from Shillings & Cents’ archive comes from the same early-2010s lens: the 2012 reflection on institutional and market formalization. At that time, the informal economy, estimated to comprise two-thirds of all economic activity in Uganda, was cited as a major drag on development, because so much of the nation’s economic value was “invisible” to formal structures that could mobilise savings and lend for investment. More than a decade later, while digital finance and mobile money have expanded dramatically, a significant share of enterprise remains informal and undercapitalised.

The December macroeconomic indicators show modest private credit growth and a stable shilling, but that stability exists alongside an economy where informal businesses still struggle to access affordable credit, dampening the potential boosts from stable inflation and exchange rates.

Yet not all old narratives remain static.

The shift in Uganda’s economic structure is perhaps best captured by the transformation in the relative role of services, industry, and agriculture, a theme that Shillings & Cents explored in reflections about Uganda’s “uneven transformation” over the 2010s. Back then, services barely outpaced agriculture and manufacturing was a modest part of GDP, with real risk that growth might bypass large swathes of the population tied to the land or small enterprise.

By 2025, the story has changed enough to be visible in the Bank of Uganda data: the Composite Index of Economic Activity (CIEA) shows broad-based expansion across sectors, and private sector engagement in services and trade has strengthened. Growth has shifted slightly away from agriculture into services and light manufacturing, and digital transactions and formal financial participation have widened compared with a decade ago.

But the phrase “uneven transformation” still applies. Even as macro indicators improve, low inflation, a stable exchange rate, and rising activity, the underlying structural tensions remain. The import bill, for example, surpassing US$ 4.1 billion

in recent quarterly data, reflects stronger demand for capital and intermediate goods, but also highlights Uganda’s dependency on foreign inputs due to limited domestic industrial capacity. This echoes the old development concerns: industries that could absorb agricultural output and turn it into higher-value products are still underdeveloped, leaving Uganda with a persistent trade imbalance.

Moreover, the reserve cover remaining around three to three-and-a-half months’ imports reminds us that despite progress, the economy lacks a deep buffer against external shocks. In an election year this matters greatly: financial markets reward stability, but thin reserve buffers can quickly sour sentiment if political uncertainty rises.

What the historical Shillings & Cents examples make clear is that Uganda’s progress is neither linear nor guaranteed.

The 2012 debates about whether growth was accompanied by genuine development still echo through policies today; the persistence of a large informal sector continues to constrain credit and investment; and the structural connection between agriculture, industry, and exports remains too weak. Yet the fact that macroeconomic indicators are calmer now than they were in the early 2010s does indicate real progress in institutional stability and financial management.

The approach of 2026

thus finds Uganda in a place it has struggled to reach before—a moment where macro stability exists alongside tangible, if uneven, structural change. If the country can leverage this combination, stable prices, a dependable exchange rate, broader economic activity, and growing formalisation of finance, into deeper structural reforms in agriculture, industry, and human development, then the next decade could mark the long-sought pivot from growth to broad-based development.

UGANDA’S WEALTH INEQUALITY: MORE THAN STRUCTURAL

When Oxfam reported last week that one percent of Kenyans control 78 percent of the country’s wealth, there was a sharp intake of breath across the region.

Inequality is not news, but such a naked statistic hits differently. Kenya—East Africa’s economic powerhouse, with deeper capital markets, a broader tax base, a stronger middle class, and a culture of data transparency still finds itself staring into an abyss of wealth concentration. And if this is Kenya, what on earth might Uganda’s distribution look like? Our guess, if we ever bothered to measure it, is that the disparity would be even more dramatic.

Uganda’s structural foundations were laid in a way that almost guarantees a tight concentration of wealth at the top. Our economy still leans heavily on low-value agriculture and a vast informal sector, both of which struggle to accumulate capital.

Infrastructure gaps from roads that dissolve every rainy season to electricity that flickers like a hesitant flame, more difficult than it should be. A farmer may produce, a trader may hustle, but reaching the customer remains a heroic enterprise.

Our business environment does us no favours either.

The World Bank’s past Doing Business reports have consistently shown how tortuous it can be to start a company, secure permits, enforce contracts, or even understand the tax code. Add to that a human capital challenge skills mismatches, limited vocational training, uneven education outcomes and you begin to see how productivity is throttled at the source.

Then, of course, there is corruption: the ever-present shadow tax on everything. It quietly inflates costs, diverts resources, distorts incentives, and erodes trust. In such an environment, those with access to capital, networks, land, and privileged information inevitably pull ahead—and then accelerate. Once inside that circle, the compounding begins. Wealth grows faster than the economy itself, while the majority labour twice as hard only to remain pinned to subsistence.

But to blame structure alone is to miss the full picture. There is a more intimate layer to Uganda’s inequality one woven out of personal financial behaviour. Give two Ugandans the same income, and watch where they end up ten years later. One budgets, saves early, invests regularly, keeps records, buys assets, steadily builds. The other spends in the moment, postpones saving, dreads paperwork, relies on expensive borrowing, and treats financial planning as something to attempt “when things settle”. Over time, these behaviours carve out chasms that no government programme can bridge.

This is where the global lesson becomes clear: eliminating wealth inequality is utopian. It does not exist anywhere, not even in Scandinavia—the poster child for equality. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark boast some of the world’s lowest income inequality numbers, with Gini coefficients in the mid-20s to low-30s after taxes and transfers. But shift the lens to wealth, and the picture sharpens in uncomfortable ways.

In Sweden, the top 10 percent control between 60 and 70 percent of all wealth, while the top 1 percent hold more than a third. Across Scandinavia, the top 0.01 percent command nearly five percent of national wealth, numbers eerily similar to those of unapologetically capitalist economies like the United States.

"The welfare state flattens incomes, yes, but accumulated capital continues to compound in the hands of those who started early, invested wisely, and stayed disciplined. Even the world’s most equal societies cannot iron out the wealth curve. Which brings us back home.

If we were to hazard a breakdown, structural factors—poor infrastructure, weak business environment, corruption, limited industrialisation, and lagging human capital might explain 60 to 70 percent of our disparity. But the remaining 30 to 40 percent? That is personal. It is behaviour. It is habit. It is mindset. And unlike the structural issues, this part can change today—without a parliamentary vote, a budget allocation, or a donor conference.

Kenya’s 78 percent statistic is frightening, yes. But it is also clarifying. Inequality is not exclusively a national problem to be solved in boardrooms and government offices. It is a household problem, shaped by the roads we build and the habits we keep. By the markets we regulate and the budgets we maintain. By the schools we run and the savings we protect.

Uganda will never eliminate wealth inequality. No society ever has. But we can blunt its harshest edges. And the quickest lever available to us is not a new policy framework or an ambitious reform blueprint it is a quiet revolution in personal financial behaviour across millions of Ugandan homes.

BOOK REVIEW : THE ART OF SPENDING MONEY

Morgan Housel has established himself as one of the most influential financial thinkers of the 21st century. His breakout classic, The Psychology of Money, became required reading for anyone trying to understand the human side of finance. Later came Same as Ever, his second exploration into how timeless patterns shape behaviour. Now, with The Art of Spending Money, Housel delivers his third book—arguably his most intimate and philosophical yet.

"Where many personal-finance books focus on earning, saving, and investing, this one asks the harder question: What, exactly, is money supposed to do for your life?...

It is a deceptively simple inquiry that unravels into deep psychological terrain.

At the centre of Housel’s argument are four emotional traps that distort how we spend and, ultimately, how we live: envy, comparison, identity, and insecurity. These forces are more dangerous than bad markets or bad luck because they work silently—inside our stories, our egos, our fears.

Envy, he writes, is a game with no finish line. You envy someone’s lifestyle today, only for someone else to leap ahead tomorrow. The standard of success keeps shifting like a mirage. In Uganda, where visible consumption often becomes a proxy for achievement, this insight is particularly relevant. Envy converts money into a scoreboard, not a tool. And once you fall into that trap, no amount of earning can bring contentment.

Comparison is just as insidious. Social media, public life, and even family gatherings have become arenas for comparing incomes, cars, schools, houses, holidays—even children’s performance. Housel warns that comparison doesn’t just distort spending; it distorts purpose. Instead of asking, “What do I want?” you begin asking, “How do I keep up?” This is how financially disciplined people slide into lifestyle inflation and, eventually, debt. It is how long-term goals get derailed by short-term temptations disguised as status.

Identity

forms the third trap. For many people, money becomes a canvas on which they paint who they want the world to think they are. In our own context—where titles, neighbourhoods, and brands are deeply symbolic—this is a cultural truth. Housel’s caution is simple but profound: when your identity depends on money, your identity becomes fragile. The moment the money falters, the self-image collapses. True wealth, therefore, is internal before it is external.

Finally, insecurity—the quiet force behind most reckless spending. Housel notes that people often buy things not because they need them but because they want to feel respected, admired, included, or important. But insecurity is a bottomless vessel. No amount of spending can fill it. In fact, the more you rely on money to soothe emotional wounds, the more financially unstable you become. What looks like overspending is often emotional self-medication.

Where Housel truly excels is in clarifying the complex relationship between money and happiness. He does not pretend money is irrelevant. Money can buy comfort, options, dignity, and time, especially in a society like ours where financial instability is often tied to emotional stress. The ability to educate your children, support your parents, choose better healthcare, avoid debt traps, these are real sources of happiness.

But money cannot buy the deeper, more durable forms of joy: purpose, belonging, trust, identity, self-respect, or love. It cannot buy inner quiet. It cannot buy a meaningful life. It cannot buy the ability to sleep peacefully at night. Money is an amplifier: it magnifies who you already are. If you are grounded, money expands your freedom. If you are chaotic, money multiplies the chaos...

For Ugandan readers—professionals, traders, teachers, students, and hustlers alike, this book is a mirror. The emotional traps Housel describes are universal. You cannot budget your way out of envy. You cannot save your way out of insecurity. You cannot invest your way out of comparison. You must think your way out.

The Art of Spending Money is not a manual; it is a meditation. A challenge. A provocation. It forces you to ask: What do I want my money to do for me? Until you answer that honestly, no salary, no business, and no investment strategy will give you peace.

With this third book, Housel has completed a kind of philosophical arc. And after finishing it, I intend to revisit Same as Ever, if only to round off my understanding of his growing body of thought and the worldview he is quietly shaping.

This is the rare personal-finance book that doesn’t just teach you how to spend. It teaches you how to live.