Uganda heads into the 2026 polls with two frontrunners manifestos framing two very different economic agendas.
The ruling National
Resistance Movement (NRM)of President Yoweri Museveni has staked its ground on Protecting
the Gains. The National Unity Platform under Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu,
Bobi Wine, is calling for A New Uganda Now.
The NRM’s
document reads like a long ledger of growth. It starts in 1986 with a collapsed
economy and the black market as the main avenue for trade, then traces the rise
to a $66 billion economy today.
Museveni divides
this journey into five neat phases—recovery, expansion, diversification, value
addition, and entry into the knowledge economy. His promise is to push Uganda
into the next phase, a $500 billion economy built not on raw exports but on
processed goods, automobiles, vaccines, ICT, and a unified East African market.
It is a story of continuity, of the same formula—peace, infrastructure, value
addition, applied with consistency and patience.
The NUP manifesto
is cast in a sharper, more urgent tone. It describes an economy weighed down by
food insecurity affecting over half of households, debt that has climbed to sh116
trillion, and youth unemployment that leaves more than half of under-30s
without work or training. It paints corruption as the single greatest threat to
national progress, siphoning off ten trillion shillings a year.
The response is a
reset: ten million jobs in the next decade, a nationwide school feeding program
to fight hunger and boost agriculture, protection of land rights, and a
strategy to harness the diaspora as a source of remittances, investment, and
skills. Where the NRM offers continuity, the NUP offers rupture.
Yet when one reads more closely, there is an interesting admission embedded in the NUP document.
While railing against corruption and inequality, it does not dismiss the fact that Uganda has grown under NRM rule. It nods quietly to that reality but then moves quickly to the argument that growth has not been fairly shared. Its emphasis is less on how to grow the economy than on how to spread its fruits through aggressive social programs. School feeding, jobs targets, and land redistribution all speak to fairness, but they rest on an economy that still needs to be grown. How that growth will be engineered is the thinner part of the NUP story.
The NRM has the
opposite problem. Growth is its strongest suit: roads, dams, and industrial
parks are there to be seen. But it is weak on equity. The numbers show
expansion, yet for many households the benefits remain out of reach. Income
gaps persist, youth unemployment remains stubborn, and corruption continues to
hollow out the very institutions meant to deliver services.
The manifesto leans heavily on the idea that growth will eventually trickle down, that if the economy is made bigger, distribution will take care of itself. But after nearly four decades, Ugandans are entitled to ask whether growth without fairness is enough.
The two documents
thus circle the same dual challenge—how to grow and how to distribute, but
approach it from opposite ends. The NRM promises to grow and assumes equity
will follow; the NUP promises equity but is less convincing on how to sustain
growth. Museveni’s vision is anchored in infrastructure and industry, betting
that prosperity will eventually filter to the ordinary household. Kyagulanyi’s
vision is anchored in social programs and redistribution, betting that equity
will unlock growth by energising the population.
For the voter,
the decision is not abstract.
It is about
whether the boda rider in Kampala sees fuel prices ease, whether the farmer in
Bushenyi gets a fairer price for bananas, whether the graduate in Gulu finds
work, and whether the taxpayer in Mbale feels their shillings are not stolen
but spent on schools and hospitals. Protecting the gains may feel safer, but it
risks leaving too many behind. Resetting may feel fairer, but it risks
overpromising on resources that may not exist.
The 2026 election, therefore, is not just about growth or equity, but about the uneasy balance between the two. NRM offers continuity in growth but is still learning the politics of distribution. NUP promises distribution but has not fully spelled out the mechanics of growth. Between protecting gains and betting on a reset lies Uganda’s contested path to prosperity—an old story retold, but one that each generation must decide anew.
