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.

VENEZUELA AFTER MADURO: WHEN EXTRACTION EMPTIES LEGITIMACY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This brings us to the uncomfortable present. 

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

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

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

UGANDA’S ECONOMY KEEPS TIME, POLITICS MUST CATCH UP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is neither.

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

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

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

So what should 2026 be about?

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

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

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

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

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