COFFEE WAR WILL BE WON IN LONDON, NOT LWENGO

For three decades, Uganda’s coffee story has been told as a triumph of liberalisation. The state retreated from direct marketing. Private exporters flourished. Volumes climbed to roughly seven million 60kg bags annually. The sector became more efficient and competitive.

That reform worked.

But liberalisation solved the efficiency problem. It did not solve the value problem.

Because in a global coffee economy worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, the real constraint has never been how much we grow. It has been where we sit in the value chain.

Consider scale. Starbucks operates more than 35,000 stores globally and is estimated to consume in the range of 15–20 million 60kg bags annually. One global retail chain can theoretically absorb Uganda’s entire annual output almost three times over.

Pause there.

The issue is not demand. The issue is access and ownership of the channels that convert beans into branded beverages.

Once Ugandan coffee leaves Mombasa, it enters a sophisticated ecosystem. Prices are referenced to futures markets in New York and London. Contracts are structured in Geneva trading houses. Branding decisions are made in Seattle and Milan. By the time a cappuccino is sold for four dollars, value has been multiplied several times, yet the Ugandan farmer remains exposed to the most volatile and least remunerative segment of the chain.

We have invested in agronomists and soil scientists. We have improved yields and quality. But we have not invested with equal seriousness in market professionals fluent in futures contracts, risk management and global procurement strategy. We have been farming with 20-20 vision and marketing with one eye closed.

This is not entirely new terrain for Uganda.

The story of the Bugisu Cooperative Union offers both inspiration and caution. At its peak, Bugisu Cooperative Union (BCU) demonstrated that organised farmers could move beyond simply selling parchment coffee. Through aggregation, branding, particularly under the “Bugisu Arabica” identity and structured marketing, BCU showed that producers could exercise influence and capture a measure of value beyond the garden gate.

Its relative success lay in organisation and brand recognition. Farmers were not isolated sellers; they were part of an institution that could negotiate, aggregate volume and maintain quality standards linked to a geographic identity.

Yet BCU’s struggles, governance challenges, political interference, debt overhang and operational inefficiencies reveal the fragility of cooperative-led market ambition without professional management and financial discipline. The lesson is not that market participation is impossible. It is that ambition without governance is unsustainable.

That is precisely why the next phase must be more sophisticated.

The instinctive response today is to push for “roast at origin.” It is not a pipe dream. It can be done. But breaking into supermarket shelves in Europe or North America from scratch is costly and slow. Those markets are mature, defended by incumbents with decades of brand equity and distribution networks.

There may be a more efficient route.

Rather than attempting to rebuild the entire value chain independently, Uganda could pursue strategic equity participation in downstream firms — roasters, traders or retail chains. Ownership provides market entry without absorbing the full learning curve.

Examples exist globally. Pachamama Coffee integrates cooperatives into ownership of roasting and retail operations. Pachamama Coffee is a 100% farmer-owned cooperative offering a range of organic, single-origin coffees and blends sourced directly from smallholder farmers in five countries.

Colombia’s farmers, through Procafecol, own the Juan Valdez chain. uan Valdez is a multi-national coffeehouse chain and premium coffee brand owned by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC). While originally a fictional advertising icon created in 1958, the brand now represents over 540,000 Colombian coffee-growing families and operates more than 400 stores worldwide.

Both cases involved farmers coming together to improve productivity, bulking for improved bargaining power and owning retail stores in export markets. Producers shifting from being price takers to shareholders.

But why reinvent the wheel? Why not buy interest in some of the major players instead and leverage existing brand and distribution channels in the short term and building our own  recognizable brands as part of a long term plan to capture more value for ourselves?

Equity is leverage. Dividends can supplement volatile farm-gate prices. Ownership aligns sourcing incentives. Market intelligence flows back to origin. Meaningful stakes can influence procurement frameworks in ways that purely transactional relationships cannot.

In a liberalised coffee economy like Uganda’s, government’s role in this transition should be catalytic, not commercial. There is no need to resurrect monopoly boards. Instead, government can facilitate the creation of a professionally governed Coffee Investment Fund designed to deploy capital strategically into global value chains -- something NSSF is already working on. Anchor capital could crowd in institutional investors, provided governance standards are robust and insulated from political interference — a lesson reinforced by BCU’s past.

Government can also invest in market intelligence infrastructure. Just as we fund agricultural research, we should cultivate expertise in commodities trading, hedging and global retail negotiation. Financial literacy for exporters and cooperatives is as important as agronomic literacy for farmers.

Stronger cooperative governance frameworks would make producer institutions investable and capable of pooling capital for strategic stakes. Policy stability, above all, must be maintained; equity strategies require long horizons, and regulatory unpredictability undermines investor confidence.

Uganda has proven it can grow coffee at scale.

The next test is whether it can grow influence at scale, without repeating the governance missteps of the past.

If one global retail chain can absorb our production multiple times over, then the decisive battleground is not acreage. It is access, expertise and ownership.

Bugisu showed us that producers can organise and move up the chain. Its shortcomings showed us what happens when governance falters.

The soil will always matter.

But in a half-trillion-dollar industry, markets and the institutions that navigate them, matter more.

UGANDA AIRLINES: HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY

The departure of Jenifer Bamuturaki from the helm of Uganda Airlines was marked with the requisite politeness that defines such announcements in Kampala: gratitude for service, assurances of past effort and a gentle aspiration for smoother skies ahead.

But beyond the press release language and Instagram captions lies an uncomfortable truth: Bamuturaki is not the root cause of Uganda Airlines’ woes. She is a symptom—and in many ways a victim of a project whose foundational assumptions were flawed, whose execution was disorderly, and whose government support was never anchored in fiscal reality. Never mind its has been reported severally that she is not qualified for the position.

When the airline was resurrected in 2018, the business case presented to Cabinet and Parliament came wrapped in patriotic language and future-market optimism. Officials touted job creation, national pride and supposed benefits to tourism and trade. But the underlying feasibility study projected a break-even within two years, a laughable proposition to anyone with even a passing understanding of global aviation economics. Airlines do not make money like supermarkets or telecoms: they bleed before they breathe. Even seasoned carriers with alliances, deep capital, and decades of brand loyalty take five to seven years—sometimes more—to approach profitability.

This column meticulously chronicled this misstep as far back as 2018: industry veterans who reviewed the feasibility plan were astonished by assumptions that ignored basic airline economics—load factors, marketing budgets, competition on key routes, brand loyalty, and the difficulty of entering already saturated markets from Entebbe.

Step back for a moment and consider this: the plan assumed not just early profitability, but that a neutral-balance airline could somehow compete against global carriers on routes to Brussels, Dubai, Doha and Johannesburg without established customer bases or alliances. Those were not business forecasts, they were wish lists.

But the optimism did its work: Parliament green-lit tens of billions in allocations—first an initial $400m package to acquire six aircraft, then

additional budget supplements and deposits for new jets.

Meanwhile, the Auditor General’s successive reports have delivered sobering headlines: billions lost annually, with Shs237-billion in losses revealed as recently as 2025 amidst revenue under-performance, ticket fraud, inflated crew allowances and expensive overseas maintenance.

This should not surprise readers of Shillings & Cents. The project was, from the outset, trying to sprint before it could crawl. There was no honest reassessment at the first sign of trouble—only deeper political commitment and cost escalation. And here is where the fatal flaw becomes clear: the plan assumed government would bankroll the airline indefinitely, not just over the “valley of death,” but through the entire uphill climb that all airlines endure. That assumption was never grounded in Uganda’s fiscal habits.

Uganda’s public finance record is troubled with persistent domestic arrears and payment delays. Contractors, local suppliers and service providers know that government pays on its own schedule. But the international aviation value chain does not. Aircraft lessors, insurers, fuel suppliers, maintenance firms and global partners operate on contracts backed by hard currency and strict timelines. They do not accept bureaucratic payment delays or creative excuses. Meanwhile, an airline that cannot pay on time becomes

uninsurable, untrusted, and ultimately unviable. There is a story of one supplier shutting down the planes engines remotely when they missed a payment deadline.

In this context, Bamuturaki—no matter her qualifications or efforts was handed a plan that expected the impossible: disciplined, predictable government funding where none historically existed, and profitability in a timeline that defies industry data. She was dealing with a bad plan, and the results have been predictable: chronic losses, a brand that struggles to fill seats, and continual injections of capital with little to show for them.

We must now ask the uncomfortable but unavoidable question: what next?

Uganda faces two stark choices.

Option One: Cut Losses and Close Shop

This option requires political courage—acknowledging that the airline, as conceived and executed, will likely never become a sustainable commercial enterprise. Liquidation would allow us to recover at least a portion of the assets and stop the bleeding. Yes, the loss will be politically painful. Yes, there will be finger-pointing. But it would be an honest admission that some national projects—however seductive in rhetoric—are simply beyond our economic reach right now. Accepting the loss would free up trillions of shillings for urgent priorities: roads, schools, health facilities, and critical business infrastructure that yield tangible societal returns. That is the sober choice.

Option Two: Rewrite the Playbook

This is the more expensive, but potentially coherent alternative. It demands a completely new business plan, anchored in realistic timelines (profitability in a decade, not two years), disciplined cost forecasts, and transparent, ring-fenced funding that does not get interrupted by arrears politics. It requires restructuring the governance of the airline, separating day-to-day management from political influence, and potentially bringing in external strategic airline partners who understand the deep economics of global aviation. But this option should not be pursued half-heartedly.

If the state intends to keep a national airline, it must own the fact that it will cost billions of dollars and timescales will be long and unforgiving. Otherwise, the next cycle of losses will look exactly like this one.

To accuse Bamuturaki of personal failure is to miss the forest for the trees. Although one could argue that if she was as seasoned an airline manager as she wanted us to believe, she would know not to clamour for the assignment in the first place.

The real failure lies in policy optimism that ignored economic reality, and in political persistence that treated wishful thinking as strategy. The moment of reckoning is here. Uganda must choose: learn from this, or repeat it. Too much taxpayer money and national ambition deserves better.

 

MTNU SHARE PRICE JUMPS 30 PCT IN POST ELECTION RALLY

Shares of MTN Uganda climbed 29.7% over the past two weeks, rising from Ugx330 on 27th January to a new post-listing high of Ugx428 by February 6, in a rally analysts attribute to pent-up institutional demand released after political uncertainty eased.

Market participants say buying interest had been building ahead of the , with some large investors opting to stay on the sidelines until the outcome was settled. Once election risk receded, that deferred demand appears to have flowed rapidly into the MTN counter, accelerating a price move that had already begun to gather momentum in late January.

The rally intensified in the first week of February, when MTN Uganda gained 18.89%, including a 9.84% rise on the final trading day. Turnover surged to Ugx634.65 million from 1.69 million shares, up sharply from Ugx108.60 million and 331,030 shares traded in the final week of January. On Friday alone, the stock accounted for Ugx103.41 million in turnover, underscoring the scale of institutional participation.

MTN Uganda’s advance helped lift overall activity on the (USE). Weekly market turnover rose to Ugx1.52 billion, more than five times the Ugx303.09 million recorded a week earlier, while volumes traded increased to 22.91 million shares from 3.82 million shares.

Elsewhere, Stanbic Holdings Uganda led weekly turnover with Ugx669.63 million from 9.76 million shares, closing 4.24% higher at Ugx70.36. Bank of Baroda Uganda traded Ugx127.44 million from 2.64 million shares, ending the week at Ugx48.10, up 1.93%.

Other gainers included dfcu Limited, which rose 1.33% to Ugx305, and Quality Chemical Industries Limited, up 0.85% to Ugx118, while Uganda Clays fell 4.0% to Ugx4.80.

The Crested Local Companies Index (C11) advanced to 168.99, reflecting the stronger tone in local equities, as the Uganda shilling also firmed modestly against the US dollar over the week.

BOOK REVIEW: WANT WEALTH? UNLEARN POVERTY

Buy HERE for on sh20,000

Paul Busharizi’s Want Wealth? Unlearn Poverty is a rare finance book that resists the temptation to shout. It doesn’t promise shortcuts, secret strategies, or dramatic transformations. Instead, it whispers—persistently—until uncomfortable truths about money finally land. The result is a thoughtful, disarming, and ultimately empowering work that speaks directly to the millions of people who are busy, disciplined, informed…and still financially stuck.

The book follows a simple narrative device: a series of conversations between Unco Money, a calm and incisive mentor, and Jack, a young professional doing “everything right” yet making little progress. Jack is not exaggerated or naïve. He works hard, consumes financial content, and postpones indulgence when necessary. His problem is not behaviour in the narrow sense, but belief. Like many readers, he is guided by ideas about money that sound sensible but quietly sabotage progress...

Busharizi structures the book around five myths: that wealth should wait until income improves; that knowledge must precede action; that hard work naturally leads to prosperity; that financial discipline requires pain; and that one big break will eventually fix everything. Each myth is dismantled patiently, not with charts or formulas, but through reflection and lived logic. The power of the book lies in its sequencing: the reader recognises themselves in Jack before being gently forced to question assumptions they have never consciously chosen.

What distinguishes this book from typical personal finance titles is its focus on psychology and systems rather than tactics. Busharizi is not interested in telling readers what to buy or where to invest. He is interested in how people think about money when no one is watching. Wealth, in this framing, is not an outcome but a direction—a consequence of structure, consistency, and identity rather than income size or intellectual sophistication.

The prose is clean, conversational, and deliberately unflashy. Unco Money’s voice is firm but never preachy, offering lines that linger long after reading. Concepts like “action creates clarity,” “assets outlive effort,” and “boring consistency” recur not as slogans but as hard-earned insights. The absence of dramatic success stories is refreshing; instead, readers are shown the slow, quiet emergence of stability—and why that is the form of wealth most people actually need first.

The epilogue, set five years later, is particularly effective. Jack is not rich in a cinematic sense, but he is calm, resilient, and in control. His anxiety has been replaced by margin. His future is no longer a rescue fantasy but a continuation. It is a powerful reminder that financial success often looks unimpressive from the outside—and that this is precisely why it works.

Want Wealth? Unlearn Poverty will resonate most with readers who are tired of motivational noise and ready for intellectual honesty. It is a book less about getting ahead than about stopping self-sabotage. In doing so, it makes a quiet but persuasive case: before money can grow, the ideas governing it must be unlearned.

UGANDA AIRLINES: WHEN WILL PRUDENCE REPLACE HOPE?

Madness, Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. If that definition holds, then the saga of Uganda Airlines increasingly looks less like a calculated national investment and more like an expensive exercise in institutional denial.

The announcement that the board is advertising for a new chief executive nearly four years after Jennifer Bamuturaki took the reins should therefore come as no shock. It is not a rupture; it is a rhythm. A familiar cycle in which leadership changes are treated as solutions, while the underlying economics of the business remain largely unexamined. Fortunes decline, pressure mounts, a probe is launched, and the organisation responds by changing faces at the top — hoping, once again, for a different result.

The timing of Ms Bamuturaki’s exit is telling. It comes barely weeks after investigators from the Criminal Investigations Directorate, working jointly with the State House Anti-Corruption Unit

, demanded a trove of financial, procurement, and contractual records. These include board-approved business plans, aircraft acquisition documents, and detailed accounts relating to the airline’s most ambitious and capital-intensive venture: the London route. When law-enforcement interest begins to orbit an enterprise so closely, it is rarely about a single individual. It is usually about systems...

The Original Sin: Optimism as Policy

To understand how Uganda Airlines arrived at this juncture, one must return to its revival in 2019. The relaunch was framed as a bold statement of national intent — restoring pride, boosting tourism, and reclaiming airspace surrendered to foreign carriers. 

But beneath the symbolism lay a set of assumptions that Shillings & Cents questioned early on and repeatedly thereafter: unrealistic timelines to profitability, underestimation of operating costs, and overconfidence in the ability of a start-up airline to muscle into fiercely competitive routes...

Aviation is not forgiving. Even globally established airlines with scale, alliances, and deep capital buffers struggle to post consistent profits. New entrants bleed first and ask questions later. Yet Uganda Airlines’ original business plans spoke confidently of early break-even points, as though this were a manufacturing plant rather than a high-risk, low-margin service business. Optimism was not merely cultural; it was embedded as policy.

Follow the Money, Not the Rhetoric

Since revival, government has poured close to Shs1 trillion into the airline through direct capitalisation, guarantees, and supplementary budget allocations. As recently as December, Shs696.5 billion was channelled through the Ministry of Works to bolster fleet acquisition as part of a wider Shs1.6 trillion supplementary request. Officials insist this is a long-term investment in connectivity and trade. In theory, that argument holds water. In practice, it requires discipline.

The numbers tell a sobering story. According to the latest Auditor General’s report, Uganda Airlines reduced its net loss marginally from Shs231.58 billion to Shs230.81 billion year-on-year — an improvement of just 0.33 percent. This narrowing was driven largely by a 19.2 percent increase in revenue, itself a function of route expansion and increased capacity. Progress, yes — but of a fragile kind. When losses still run into hundreds of billions, celebrating incremental improvements risks confusing direction with destination.

Governance Matters — Especially in Aviation

Financial strain alone does not doom an airline. Poor governance does.

In August 2022, Parliament’s Committee on Commissions Statutory and State Enterprises revealed that the CEO did not meet the formal qualifications specified in the job description, notably lacking postgraduate training in administration. The defence offered was that experience compensated for academic requirements. Perhaps. But this episode mattered not because of degrees, but because it signalled a broader disregard for process in a business where process is everything.

Airlines live or die on systems — safety protocols, procurement discipline, route analytics, cost control, and compliance. When governance standards are treated as negotiable, risk multiplies quietly until it erupts loudly, often through losses, audits, or investigations. The current scrutiny by CID and SHACU should therefore be read not as an isolated event, but as a symptom of deeper institutional fragility.

Expansion Is Not the Sin — Unexamined Assumptions Are

It is important to state this clearly: an airline does not need to be profitable before expanding its network. That would be an impossible standard in an industry where even the best operators invest ahead of returns. Expansion can, under the right conditions, be part of the path toward sustainability.

The problem with Uganda Airlines is not expansion itself, but the quality and opacity, of the assumptions used to justify that expansion.

Every route is a bet. A bet on passenger volumes, yields, cargo uplift, and the airline’s ability to attract and retain traffic in the face of formidable competition. Those bets must be grounded in rigorous market data and honest stress-testing. Without that discipline, expansion becomes faith-based economics...

Consider the London route. This is not just another destination; it is the airline’s flagship statement. London is a mature, brutally competitive market dominated by carriers with deep networks, strong brands, and aggressive pricing strategies. Success on this route depends on sustained marketing, corporate travel contracts, diaspora loyalty translated into repeat business, and seamless connectivity.

If an airline struggles to consistently market and fill its London flights, no amount of optimism will magically make the Riyadh route profitable.

This is not cynicism; it is arithmetic. Routes do not become viable because they are announced at press conferences. They become viable because demand exists at the right price and because the airline can capture that demand efficiently. If the most obvious, diaspora-rich route is underperforming, prudence demands a pause — not a sprint into additional long-haul destinations on the assumption that “the next one will work”.

What assumptions underpin Riyadh, Muscat, Accra, or Gwangju? Are we betting on labour traffic, religious travel, cargo contracts, or transit passengers? And are these flows backed by firm data and commercial agreements, or inferred from hopeful correlations? In aviation, scale can lower unit costs — but it can also magnify losses if demand projections disappoint.

The Expansion Trap

Uganda Airlines’ repeated announcements of new aircraft and new routes create the appearance of momentum. But motion is not the same as progress. Adding aircraft increases fixed costs immediately — crew, maintenance, insurance, fuel, and ground handling,  while revenues take time to materialise, if they do at all. Without disciplined sequencing, expansion simply widens the loss profile.

This is where the airline risks falling into a familiar trap: mistaking growth for success. Expanding before optimising existing routes is like building additional lanes on a road whose traffic patterns are poorly understood. More asphalt does not fix congestion if the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

The Hidden Cost: Opportunity Lost

Every shilling invested in Uganda Airlines carries an opportunity cost. Public capital is finite. Close to Shs1 trillion sunk into aviation could have funded agricultural productivity, vocational skills, SME finance, or export-oriented manufacturing, sectors that employ far more Ugandans per shilling spent.

Tourism, often cited as the airline’s justification, does not depend solely on owning aircraft. Tourists arrive because destinations are competitive, safe, affordable, and well-marketed. There are cheaper and often more effective ways to improve connectivity: code-sharing agreements, route incentives for foreign carriers, and rationalisation of aviation taxes that make Entebbe more attractive as a hub.

So What Must Change?

Advertising for a new CEO is the easy part. The harder task is structural reform.

Uganda Airlines needs a brutally honest reset: transparent route-level economics, publicly articulated performance benchmarks, and a governance framework insulated from political interference. Expansion should remain an option but only when justified by clear data and sequenced prudently. Above all, expectations must be recalibrated. Losses are not temporary irritants to be explained away; they are signals to be interrogated.

Conclusion: From Hope to Hard Choices

Uganda Airlines still has potential. It has assets, a growing brand, and a strategic position in a region with rising demand for air travel. But potential is not performance. And national pride, while emotionally resonant, does not pay lease rentals or fuel bills.

Unless prudence replaces hope as the organising principle — unless assumptions are challenged as rigorously as ambitions are proclaimed, the airline risks repeating its cycle: expansion, losses, leadership change, and renewed appeals to the taxpayer. That is not nation-building. It is expensive repetition.

And repetition, as we have been reminded, is only madness when we expect a different result.

IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS: AFTER THE INCH, UGANDA MUST MIND THE MILE

Last week, President Yoweri Museveni was re-elected for another term in office, extending a political era that has now spanned four decades. 

Few administrations in the developing world have presided over such a long arc of economic change, and fewer still can credibly point to the turnaround Uganda has experienced since the late 1980s.

Whichever way one looks at it, today’s economy is a far cry from the dark days of super-inflation, commodity shortages and broken infrastructure. There was a time when prices doubled almost on a whim, when basics vanished from shop shelves, and when moving produce from farm to market was an exercise in endurance rather than commerce. Contrast that with the present: inflation that has largely been tamed, markets stocked with goods from across the region and beyond, and an infrastructure network that—while still incomplete—would have been unimaginable to an earlier generation...

At the core of this shift has been macroeconomic stability and the liberalisation of markets. These ideas may sound technocratic, even dull, but they are the quiet enablers of progress. Stable prices allow households to plan and businesses to invest. Liberalised markets, imperfect as they are, unlocked private initiative and forced efficiencies into an economy once strangled by controls. 

Over the years, billions of dollars have flowed into Uganda—some from foreign investors, many from local businessmen who finally felt confident enough to risk their own capital. The results are visible across banking, telecommunications, retail, construction and services.

But history offers a stern warning: success breeds temptation. Or, as the proverb goes, give them an inch and they will take a mile. With achievement come expectations; with stability come louder demands. That is natural. People who have known stability demand prosperity; those who have tasted growth demand inclusion. The challenge for the next five years is to meet these expectations without destroying the foundations that made them possible...

The first test is maintaining macroeconomic stability. Uganda has enjoyed such a long period of relatively low inflation that many have forgotten what inflation feels like. Amnesia is dangerous. It invites policy flirtations with ideas that sound compassionate but are fiscally reckless—most notably pouring billions into failing state enterprises. Inflation does not announce its return politely; it creeps in through budget indiscipline and explodes through excess. When it arrives, it punishes the poor first and hardest.

The second test is the management of oil revenues. Oil offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to upgrade social services and the general business environment. Used wisely, it can finance healthcare, education, roads and energy—investments that raise productivity long after the last barrel is pumped. Used badly, it becomes a curse: consumption over assets, patronage over productivity. The difference is not oil itself, but discipline, transparency and execution.

A third temptation is to roll back liberalisation simply because government now has more resources. The argument that the state should “get back into business” resurfaces whenever revenues rise. It ignores history. Many state-owned enterprises did not collapse for lack of money; they collapsed due to poor management, weak incentives and terrible oversight. Fresh capital injected into unreformed governance structures is not reform, it is denial.

Then there is corruption—the tiger we do not want to ride. Corruption widens inequality, erodes trust and convinces citizens that the system is rigged. In the short term it masquerades as grease; in the long term it becomes sand in the gears. Left unchecked, it feeds resentment that can spill into unrest and political instability. Investors can price risk; they struggle with unpredictability born of public anger.

Yet even as we guard these fundamentals, there is another danger: resting on our laurels. Stability is not an end state; it is a platform. To sustain momentum—and, crucially, to spread the gains more equitably, we must take calculated risks. Not reckless leaps, but deliberate stretches that deepen inclusion without undermining the stability we have worked so hard to build...

Nowhere is this more urgent than agriculture, the livelihood of roughly seven in every ten Ugandans. For too long, our debates have stopped at production—plant more, harvest more. Productivity matters, yes, but production alone does not build prosperity. Farmers remain poor not merely because they produce little, but because they are disconnected from markets, locked out of processing, and squeezed in distribution.

The next phase must take a hard look at the entire value chain. Productivity on the farm must be matched by access to inputs and finance, reliable storage, processing capacity, logistics, branding and marketing. Markets must be enabled so that higher yields translate into higher and more stable incomes. When farmers see clear pathways to buyers, incentives change: investment rises, quality improves and risk becomes manageable. That is how agriculture becomes a business rather than a subsistence trap—and how wealth disparities begin to narrow.

If we get this right, another long-standing anxiety begins to fade: the youthful bulge. A young population is often spoken of as a threat, something we constantly look over our shoulders for. But youth are only a threat in an economy that cannot absorb their energy. In an economy that creates productive work, connects effort to reward and opens pathways up value chains, they become our greatest asset. The same reforms that deepen agricultural value chains and strengthen the business environment are the ones that turn demography into destiny.

The delicate task ahead is balance. We must continue doing what brought us this far—discipline, openness and stability—while stretching our capacities to include more Ugandans in growth. Get too excited and we risk inflation, waste and reversal. Move too cautiously and we risk stagnation, inequality and a squandered demographic dividend.

The story of the last forty years shows what sensible economics can achieve. The question for the next five is whether we can protect those gains, take calculated risks, and spread prosperity more evenly. The inch has been taken. The challenge now is to resist the mile—while still daring to move forward.

UGANDA’S ELECTION YEAR ECONOMY DOWN THE YEARS

Uganda’s economic data carries a quiet election-year signature. You see it not in speeches, but in slowed investment, cautious banks, thinner trading volumes, and postponed decisions.

For three decades, elections have tended to coincide with softer GDP growth, not because the economy stops working, but because it starts waiting...

The numbers bear this out.

Growth slowed in 1996 after a strong recovery year. It dipped again in 2001 despite a liberalised economy that was otherwise expanding rapidly. In 2011, inflation surged, household purchasing power collapsed, and growth fell to about 4 percent. In 2016, drought and political uncertainty combined to push growth below 4 percent once more. Only 2006 escaped the trend, buoyed by exceptional post-war momentum and a services boom strong enough to drown out political noise.

The mechanics have always been familiar. Elections inject uncertainty. Businesses delay expansion. Government spending tilts toward consumption rather than productivity. Agriculture—still the economy’s backbone—suffers when extension services stall and inputs become politicised. As

Shillings & Cents has argued for years, productivity lost in election seasons lingers well beyond polling day.

After 2016, however, a new variable entered the equation: internet shutdowns.

In earlier cycles, the internet was limited by how peripheral the digital economy still was. That is no longer true. By 2026, Uganda’s economy is deeply digitised. Mobile money underpins daily trade. Logistics depend on constant communication. Government revenue systems, e-commerce platforms, and service providers assume connectivity as a given.

That is why the January 2026 internet blackout matters in a way earlier shutdowns did not. The disruption lasted roughly five days, from January 13 to 18, and initial estimates suggest a direct economic loss of about $15–18 million, or roughly $3.8 million per day. That daily cost is almost double the estimated impact of a similar shutdown in 2021. The reason is not politics; it is structural change.

Critically, while the general blackout was lifted on Sunday 18 January 2026, connectivity did not simply snap back to normal. Access to social media platforms remained constrained, muting the recovery in commerce, advertising, communication, and informal trade that now relies on these channels. For many small businesses, it is social media—not websites or emails—that drives orders, payments, and customer engagement. Partial restoration, in practice, meant partial economic recovery.

This matters even more when viewed against a longer backdrop.

Access to Facebook has remained restricted in Uganda since 2021. That means a significant portion of the economy has been operating for years in a permanently constrained digital environment. When analysts speak of “internet access,” they often assume full functionality. Uganda’s reality is different. Even in non-election periods, businesses have adapted to a throttled digital ecosystem, shifting to workarounds that are often slower, costlier, and less efficient.

The January 2026 shutdown therefore did not occur in a neutral digital space. It landed on top of an already incomplete recovery of online freedoms. That magnified its impact.

The sectors hit hardest illustrate this clearly.

In logistics and trade, communication gaps disrupted cargo coordination, including clearance processes linked to regional supply chains. E-commerce platforms such as SafeBoda and Jumia reported near-total operational halts. Government portals for tax payments and social security contributions were inaccessible, delaying revenue collection at a time when fiscal stability matters most.

Against this, the macro outlook for 2026 still appears strong. Real GDP growth is projected between 6.5 and 7.6 percent, driven largely by oil and gas infrastructure investment and a rebound in agricultural exports. Oil investment, running into the billions of dollars, does not pause for political events. Pipelines do not wait for internet access to be restored. That scale provides a cushion capable of absorbing multimillion-dollar short-term losses.

But this is where analysis must become more precise.

Internet shutdowns function as a digital tax. They may not derail headline GDP growth, but they disproportionately burden the non-oil private sector—SMEs, traders, startups, media houses, and service providers. These are the sectors expected to create jobs, diversify the economy, and absorb young entrants into the labour market. Lost days for them are not easily recovered.

There is also a longer shadow. Repeated shutdowns and persistent platform restrictions raise Uganda’s perceived digital risk. Investors price in uncertainty. Startups hesitate to scale. Innovation slows not dramatically, but cumulatively. Growth becomes less broad-based, more dependent on capital-intensive sectors like oil that create fewer jobs.

Yet here lies the uncomfortable trade-off policymakers confront, and it should be acknowledged honestly. The economic cost of a temporary digital shutdown, while real and rising, is still bounded and measurable. A breakdown of law and order is not. Disorder does not shave decimals off growth; it resets expectations, drains confidence, and inflicts damage that can take years to repair...

That is the real election-year calculus. But as the economy digitises further, the cost side of that trade-off is changing fast. What was once tolerable disruption is becoming material economic drag.

The likely outcome for 2026 is therefore nuanced. The blackout—and the continued constraint on social media will not collapse the growth story. Oil investment is too large for that. But they may prevent Uganda from reaching the upper end of its projected 7.6 percent growth, while quietly weakening the very private sector meant to carry the economy beyond oil.

UGANDA TRANSFORMATION WILL START ON THE FARM

Every so often, a report lands on the table and quietly confirms what the numbers — and lived experience — have been telling us all along. The World Bank’s December 2025 Uganda Economic Update is one such document.

It acknowledges the good news first: Uganda is growing at about 6.3 percent, inflation is contained, exports — especially coffee, gold and tourism are doing the heavy lifting, and poverty has edged down. Then it delivers the uncomfortable truth. Most Ugandans are still trapped in low-productivity activity, and the centre of that trap is agriculture.

This matters because development is not a story of averages. It is a story of where people work, how much value they create there, and whether that value allows them to move. Nearly seven in ten Ugandans earn their livinag from agriculture. Yet the sector contributes roughly a quarter of GDP. That imbalance alone explains why growth often feels abstract to rural households, why inequality persists, and why every election cycle comes with the same anxieties.

An economy cannot transform when the majority of its people are producing too little to accumulate, save, invest or graduate to higher-value work.

For years, this column has argued that Uganda’s development arithmetic has been upside down. We talk industrialisation, services and digital futures, while leaving the foundation — farm productivity largely untouched.

The World Bank puts some hard numbers to it. Fertiliser use averages between 3 and 8 kilograms per hectare. Irrigation covers less than one percent of potential farmland. Only a sliver of farmers use improved seeds. These are not marginal gaps; they are structural failures. They explain why agriculture absorbs labour without creating wealth.

Low productivity is not a moral failing of farmers. It is an economic outcome shaped by policy, incentives and neglect. A farmer producing just enough to eat has no surplus to sell. Without surplus, there is no cash flow. Without cash flow, there is no investment in better inputs, tools or practices. The result is a cycle where effort does not translate into progress. That cycle is what keeps poverty stubbornly rural and growth stubbornly urban.

This is where the fashionable argument that Uganda should simply “move beyond agriculture” collapses. No country has ever transformed by abandoning the sector that employs most of its people while it is still unproductive. The historical record is unambiguous. Structural transformation begins when agriculture becomes more productive, not when it becomes irrelevant. Productivity raises incomes, lowers food prices, expands domestic markets and releases labour. Only then do factories, logistics and higher-value services become viable at scale.

The World Bank’s emphasis on agro-industrialisation is therefore not a contradiction of agriculture; it is its logical extension. But agro-industrialisation without productivity is a hollow slogan. You cannot process what is not produced in sufficient quantity or quality. You cannot build value chains on thin, volatile supply. Coffee illustrates this clearly. Where yields and quality have improved, processing capacity has followed, exports have surged and foreign exchange has flowed in. Where productivity lags, everything downstream weakens.

There is also a fiscal dimension that this column has warned about before and which the World Bank now highlights politely. Rising debt service and recurrent spending are crowding out the very investments that raise productivity — extension services, irrigation, rural infrastructure, research and quality control. Interest payments are visible and unavoidable; productivity gains are slow and quiet. One gets prioritised, the other postponed. The cost of that postponement is borne not in spreadsheets but in villages.

Raising agricultural productivity is not glamorous work. It requires getting the basics right at scale. Inputs must be genuine and affordable, not counterfeit and politicised. Extension must be present, practical and continuous, not episodic workshops. Water must be controlled, even at small scale, so farming stops being a bet on the weather. Markets must reward quality and consistency, not desperation. And institutions must function with boring reliability.

Climate change sharpens the urgency. Low-productivity systems are the first to collapse under stress. Productive systems adapt, diversify and recover. In that sense, productivity is not just an economic imperative; it is a resilience strategy. A country whose poor depend on rain-fed subsistence farming cannot afford to treat climate adaptation as an afterthought.

What the World Bank’s update does — and what Shillings & Cents has long insisted, is remind us that Uganda’s transformation will not be announced; it will be built. Acre by acre. Yield by yield. Farmer by farmer. No amount of rhetoric about middle-income status can substitute for the quiet revolution of producing more with the same land and labour.

Uganda’s choice is therefore stark, even if uncomfortable. Either we raise productivity where most Ugandans actually work, or we accept an economy that grows on paper while leaving millions behind. Transformation does not begin in boardrooms or conference halls. It begins on the farm.

SEVENTY-ONE PERCENT IN A HALF EMPTY ROOM

Uganda woke up after the 2026 presidential election to a familiar headline delivered with an unfamiliar undertone. Yoweri Museveni had won again, this time with roughly seventy-one percent of the vote. 

On paper, it looked like a commanding endorsement, a suggestion that the political clock had been turned back to the era of overwhelming victories. But elections, like markets, only reveal their truth when you read the fine print. The other number that mattered—quietly but profoundly was turnout, hovering around the low fifties. The victory was wide, but the room was half-empty.

What made this result unusual was not just the arithmetic. It was the tone struck at the very top. In his acceptance speech, Museveni himself called for an investigation into low voter turnout. That single line, almost an aside, was more revealing than the percentage printed on the results sheet. 

Incumbents who believe they are riding a wave of popular enthusiasm rarely ask why fewer people showed up. This one did. In doing so, Museveni inadvertently acknowledged what the numbers already suggest: that the story of 2026 is not simply about a dominant winner, but about a thinning electorate.

To understand how Uganda arrived at a seventy-one percent victory attended by barely half the voters, one needs to step back three decades and trace the long arc of participation and power. 

In 1996, the country’s first direct presidential election under the current constitutional order, Museveni secured about seventy-four percent with turnout close to three quarters of registered voters. Uganda was emerging from years of turmoil; politics felt new, consequential, and personal. The high margins of that era were anchored in mass participation. People showed up in large numbers because they believed the future was being actively shaped.

By 2001, Museveni was still dominant, just under seventy percent, but competition had arrived and with it a subtle shift in political psychology. Politics became contested rather than consensual. That tension sharpened in 2006 when Museveni dipped below sixty percent for the first time. The significance of that election was not that he nearly lost—he did not—but that he entered a phase where margins could no longer be taken for granted. From then on, victories would need to be managed.

The years that followed confirmed this new equilibrium. In 2011 Museveni rebounded into the high sixties, but turnout fell sharply. In 2016 and 2021 his share hovered around sixty percent, while participation remained stubbornly depressed. For roughly fifteen years, Uganda’s elections settled into a pattern of compressed dominance: the ruling party winning comfortably, but no longer expansively; the opposition energetic, but structurally constrained. 

This was the context into which Robert Kyagulanyi -- Bobi Wine burst onto the scene.

Bobi Wine did not just add another name to the ballot. He injected emotion, generational language, and cultural symbolism into opposition politics. For the first time in years, dissent felt youthful and immediate. 

Shillings & Cents noted early that this mattered deeply, but also cautioned that enthusiasm is not the same as organisation. Wine’s appeal resonated powerfully in urban centres and among young voters who felt excluded from economic progress. Yet Uganda remains predominantly rural, and rural politics is shaped less by symbolism than by networks, relationships, and pragmatic calculations. That terrain still favoured the ruling party.

The 2021 election illustrated both Wine’s breakthrough and its limits. The opposition achieved its strongest showing in years, and the ruling party suffered unexpected losses, particularly in Central Uganda, where the National Unity Platform made dramatic parliamentary inroads. The result fed a narrative that Museveni’s grip was loosening. 

But even then,

the column warned that votes are delivered not by momentum alone, but by sustained grassroots presence. The danger, left unaddressed, was that frustration could mutate into abstention rather than mobilisation.

By 2026, that danger had crystallised. Many voters simply did not turn up. Some were disillusioned by the aftermath of 2021, others intimidated or fatigued, others resigned to the belief that participation would not meaningfully alter outcomes. Abstention, in such a system, is not neutral. It redistributes power in favour of those with reliable bases. And reliability, in Uganda, sits squarely with the incumbent.

This is where the ruling party’s own reading of the results becomes important. The National Resistance Movement has claimed a statistical victory in Central Uganda in 2026, pointing to the recapture of constituencies lost in 2021 and a notable reduction in the number of MPs from the National Unity Platform. From the NRM’s perspective, this is evidence that the political tide has turned back in its favour, that the shock of 2021 has been absorbed and reversed.

Yet those gains need to be read alongside turnout figures. Winning back seats in a context of lower participation is not the same as reclaiming broad consent. It suggests that the ruling party’s machinery—its local networks, resources, and institutional presence proved more resilient than the opposition’s in a demobilised environment. The base held; the opposition’s softened.

This, ultimately, is Museveni’s most enduring political advantage: adaptability. In the 1990s, legitimacy flowed from mass participation and post-war recovery. In the 2000s, as challenges mounted, control tightened. In the 2010s, the system learned to manage margins rather than chase overwhelming approval. By the 2020s, the objective was endurance. Elections no longer needed to inspire; they needed to conclude predictably.

Museveni’s call for an investigation into low turnout sits squarely within this logic. It can be read as concern, but also as confidence. A system that wins comfortably even when half the electorate stays home is not under immediate threat. But it is also a system aware that thinning participation carries long-term risks. Markets formed on low volumes are stable until they are not. Politics built on shrinking turnout carries a similar fragility.

For the opposition, and particularly for the Bobi Wine tendency, the lesson is hard but clear. Charisma, outrage, and symbolism can open doors, but they do not keep them open. Politics remains an organisational exercise. Without patient investment in rural presence, voter protection, and turnout discipline, moments of anger will continue to flare brightly and then fade at the polling station.

Thirty years of Ugandan election data tell a story that is neither triumphalist nor apocalyptic. Museveni’s victories have grown less participatory even as they remain decisive. The opposition has grown louder even as its turnout machinery has struggled. The 2026 result—seventy-one percent in a half-empty room, captures that tension perfectly.

The warning embedded in the numbers is subtle but unmistakable. Dominance sustained by low participation is durable, but brittle. It holds until something compels the absent to return. When that happens, margins built in quiet rooms can change very quickly indeed.

IN 2026, FIX YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE BEFORE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE UGANDA ECONOMY

I have two words for businessmen in the New Year: customer service.

When businessmen come to me in 2026 to complain about the economy, that will be my rejoinder. First audit your customer service before you complain about the economy. If you have better than good customer service, then — and only then — you may complain about the economy.

The festive season, of all times, should be the easiest period to make money. Spirits are high, wallets are open, and customers are arriving already half-convinced to spend. Yet this past season I watched, with reckless abandon, businesses actively turn away people who had shown up ready to part with hard-earned cash.

In one instance, we went for a brunch advertised for 11am. Service eventually began at 5pm. Someone joked that perhaps we had read the invite wrongly,  they meant service would begin at sawa ekumi n’emu (5pm). We laughed, because humour is how Ugandans survive absurdity. But beneath the joke sat a serious truth: a business had summoned customers and then treated their time as worthless.

In another place, the waitress got the orders wrong. The kitchen clearly could not be bothered. When we finally asked for the bill, the cash desk said the printer wasn’t working. No apology. No urgency. No attempt to close the loop. It was as if concluding the transaction — the very purpose of the enterprise, was an inconvenience.

Then there was the petrol station. The pump attendant sat scrolling through TikTok while customers drove in, parked, waited, and drove off confused. Only after inquiry did we discover they had run out of fuel. No sign. No announcement. No courtesy. We were expected to work it out for ourselves.

These were not random mid-January lapses. They happened during the festive season  the very month businesses later cite as proof that “the economy is bad.” Too many customers, we are told. That argument collapses on contact with reality. Too many customers is not a problem. It is the job.

"So how exactly do you complain about a bad economy when you are actively turning clients away?

The uncomfortable truth most businesses avoid is that customer service is not a soft skill. It is hard currency. It converts foot traffic into revenue, revenue into repeat business, and repeat business into resilience when conditions tighten. Ignore it, and no interest-rate cut, election cycle or macro-recovery will save you.

Customer service begins with awareness. Be clear that you are open. Be clear about what you have. Be clear about what you don’t. If service starts at 11am, it must start at 11am, not when the kitchen finally warms up. If you have run out of fuel, food or a key ingredient, say so clearly and early. Customers can forgive scarcity; they rarely forgive indifference.

Next is responsiveness. Questions must be answered promptly. Orders must be confirmed and delivered as promised. Silence, shrugs and the infamous “just wait” are not neutral acts — they actively destroy trust. In crowded markets, customers don’t punish poor service with complaints. They punish it with absence.

Then there is proactive selling, a skill too many frontline staff seem never to have been taught. A customer who has walked into your premises has already crossed the hardest barrier: intent. Why then take the bare minimum order and retreat? Why not tell them what else is available? The better option. The add-on. The promotion. Selling is not harassment; it is guidance. Most customers appreciate being shown value.

Cleanliness and hygiene, too, are not extras. They are silent salespeople. A clean floor, a tidy counter, a decent restroom send a clear message: you are welcome here. Disorder sends the opposite signal, that you should eat quickly, pay quickly, and not return.

And yes, smiles matter. Frontline staff should not be allowed to work without one. This is not about artificial cheerfulness; it is about basic acknowledgement. A smile says, “I see you.” Without it, every interaction feels transactional at best and hostile at worst.

Business owners will argue that staff are tired, underpaid and stressed. Fair enough. But leadership exists precisely to design systems that protect service standards even under strain. Train your people. Rotate shifts. Reward excellence. Make customer care measurable, not optional.

Because the reality is this: many businesses are not victims of the economy; they are accomplices to their own struggles. They leak goodwill in December, then blame inflation in January. They squander festive traffic, then complain about footfall in February.

And if anyone still doubts that customer service pays, look no further than Cafe Javas. Only last week, Café Javas opened its ninth branch in Kenya — a four-storey operation in the upscale Nairobi suburb of Lavington. Should we be surprised?

Café Javas — or CJs, as regulars now call it  has quietly become the gold standard of responsive, proactive and consistently cheerful service in Uganda (A classic case of measuring oneself against pygmies). Seating space at their branches is almost always at a premium, not because Kampala or Nairobi lack alternatives, but because customers know exactly what they are going to get: prompt attention, clean spaces, smiling staff and kitchens that respect orders.

What genuinely shocked me was learning, on inquiry, that about 60 percent of the revenues at the Kisementi branch come from delivery. Think about that. Most customers do not even need to come to you to buy from you. That is the purest proof of repeat business — trust so embedded that inspection becomes unnecessary. People order because experience, not hope, guarantees satisfaction.

That is what good customer service compounds into: loyalty, habit and effortless revenue. It converts festive crowds into year-round cash flow. It insulates a business from economic noise because customers keep coming — even when wallets tighten to places that treat them well.

So in 2026, before complaining about the economy, first audit your customer service. If you pass that test, then we can talk macroeconomics. Until then, the economy is not your problem.

Customer service is.

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.