THE GREAT REPOSITIONING: MUSEVENI TAKES BACK TOTAL CONTROL OF THE TRANSITION

The most interesting thing about President Yoweri Museveni’s latest cabinet reshuffle is not simply who was promoted or dropped, but what the changes reveal about the political moment Uganda has entered. These are not ordinary administrative adjustments. They increasingly look like positioning moves in a carefully managed transition process where the central question is no longer whether succession politics are underway, but how they are being choreographed — and who controls them.

One striking detail immediately stands out: 28 ministers did not return to cabinet. That is not cosmetic pruning. It is significant political surgery.

The removal of such a large bloc of ministers signals a deliberate attempt to recentralise authority around Museveni himself after several years in which competing power centres had begun emerging within the ruling establishment. Most notably, the sidelining of Anita Among dramatically changes the internal balance of power.

For a while, Among had evolved from merely a parliamentary leader into a formidable political actor in her own right — building extensive patronage networks across MPs, cultivating financial leverage and increasingly appearing as an autonomous centre of political gravity. The recent corruption scandals surrounding Parliament, culminating in public outrage over elite excess, weakened that project considerably.

With Among politically wounded and many of her allies displaced, Museveni now appears firmly back in control of the transition process. The reshuffle feels partly like a reassertion of presidential authority over a ruling coalition that had started developing too many independent ambitions.

Why Alupo Suddenly Matters More

To understand the deeper logic of the reshuffle, one has to begin with an often-overlooked constitutional fact: under Uganda’s Constitution, the Vice President is the formal successor mechanism should the presidency unexpectedly fall vacant. That suddenly makes Vice President Jessica Alupo’s continued prominence politically interesting.

Alupo is not merely a civilian politician from Teso balancing regional arithmetic. She is also a retired Major in the UPDF and previously served in the Special Forces Command (SFC), the elite military unit over which Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba built his influence and from which much of Uganda’s contemporary military power structure has evolved. Muhoozi is now the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), effectively sitting atop the country’s formal military hierarchy. (cia.gov)

In ordinary political times that detail might seem incidental. In transition politics it becomes enormously consequential.

It suggests that the formal constitutional succession line and the informal security architecture are increasingly being aligned rather than left to chance. In many African political systems, transitions become unstable when constitutional authority and security power centres diverge. Museveni appears determined to minimise that risk.

The Defence Ministry as Political Insurance

Kiryowa Kiwanuka’s move from Attorney General to Defence reinforces that interpretation.

Defence in Uganda is not merely a military docket. It is political insurance. Whoever controls the security architecture controls the pace and stability of any transition process. Kiryowa is not a bush-war historical figure or battlefield general. He is a corporate lawyer, politically disciplined and deeply embedded within the President’s inner trust networks.

Those trust networks themselves are revealing.

Kiryowa is law partner to Edwin Karugire, Museveni’s son-in-law, in one of Kampala’s influential legal practices. Their relationship stretches back decades. They were in the same class at King’s College Budo and later studied together at Makerere University’s law school — ties that speak to how Uganda’s ruling elite has long functioned through tightly knit educational, social and familial networks.

Kiryowa first came to national prominence as part of the legal team that defended Museveni’s contested 2001 electoral victory. In other words, his rise has long been intertwined with the regime’s political survival architecture itself. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Karugire connection goes even deeper historically. Edwin Karugire’s father, the late historian Prof. Samwiri Karugire, was one of western Uganda’s most influential intellectuals. Following his death, his children were in many ways absorbed into the extended Museveni family orbit. The relationship between the Karugires and the First Family is therefore not merely political. It is deeply personal, historical and generational.

Seen through that lens, Kiryowa’s appointment to Defence is less surprising. Museveni appears to be placing strategically sensitive institutions into the hands of people bound not simply by political loyalty, but by decades-long personal relationships forged through family, school, history and shared political battles.

That is classic transition-era behaviour.

Sam Mayanja and the Coming Legal Battles

Sam Mayanja’s appointment as Attorney General is equally revealing, though in a different way. Mayanja is intellectually combative, ideological and deeply invested in constitutional and historical debates. He is not a cautious technocrat. He is a political lawyer.

That may indicate government expects sharper legal and constitutional contests ahead — over elections, political settlements, land and perhaps even succession questions themselves.

Yet Mayanja’s temperament also introduces risk. Attorney General requires institutional restraint and legal steadiness. Mayanja thrives in ideological confrontation. In a politically sensitive period, that can either energise the regime intellectually or unnecessarily inflame tensions.

Ayebare, Kagame and the Rwanda Question

Adonia Ayebare’s appointment as Foreign Affairs minister may be the strongest technocratic choice in the reshuffle. Ayebare is internationally respected, diplomatically sophisticated and deeply networked within multilateral systems. (monitor.co.ug)

Ayebare is also a former journalist, a background that gives him unusual communication instincts for diplomacy. He understands both narrative management and international perception — skills Uganda increasingly needs as succession politics intensify.

Equally important, Ayebare has historically maintained relatively good personal relations with Paul Kagame. That matters enormously given the simmering tensions between Kampala and Kigali over the last two decades.

Relations between the two countries effectively went to pieces in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the beginning of this century, where the former allies found themselves backing rival interests during the Congo wars. Although relations have improved recently, mistrust still lingers beneath the surface.

Ayebare’s appointment therefore appears designed not merely for global diplomacy, but also for regional stabilisation. He is likely to complement Muhoozi’s increasingly visible efforts to engineer détente with Kigali. Muhoozi himself has often projected unusually warm public messaging toward Rwanda and Kagame compared to the harder nationalist rhetoric that occasionally emerges elsewhere within Uganda’s establishment.

In that sense, Foreign Affairs may now become part of transition management too. Stable relations with Rwanda reduce one major external variable during a potentially delicate succession period.

Katumba’s Quietly Strategic Move

Then there is Gen. Katumba Wamala’s move from Works and Transport to Public Service. At first glance it looks like a demotion. Works is politically visible; Public Service is bureaucratic and low glamour.

But in transition periods, bureaucratic control becomes critical.

Public Service determines appointments, promotions and administrative discipline across the state. Katumba’s reputation as a calm, loyal stabiliser trusted across military and civilian divides may make him particularly useful in keeping the state machinery cohesive during an uncertain political period.

Museveni the Guerrilla Still Keeps Us Guessing

Still, one must be careful not to overstate the certainty of these interpretations.

Museveni is, at his core, a guerrilla strategist. One of the defining characteristics of guerrilla warfare is deception — keeping opponents guessing, masking intentions, creating multiple centres of gravity and never fully revealing one’s endgame. Throughout his political career Museveni has shown an extraordinary ability to play his cards close to his chest, often allowing observers to confidently misread his intentions.

That means all these interpretations may ultimately prove to be sophisticated misdirection. The apparent alignment of constitutional succession, security structures and trusted family networks may be deliberate signalling — or deliberate distraction.

Museveni has survived politically precisely because he rarely moves in straight lines.

Yet even with that caveat, the reshuffle unmistakably suggests a leader thinking carefully about continuity, stability and regime preservation in an uncertain future. Whether by design or instinct, he appears to have covered most of the critical bases if something untoward were to happen tomorrow.

The constitutional line is secure. The military hierarchy is tightly aligned. Trusted loyalists sit atop strategic ministries. International diplomacy is in experienced hands. Bureaucratic management is under dependable figures.

The Opening Moves of Uganda’s Next Era

The broader signal from the reshuffle is therefore that Uganda’s political system is quietly reorganising itself around a future beyond Museveni while publicly insisting that no transition conversation exists. That contradiction is becoming harder to conceal.

This cabinet increasingly resembles a structure designed less for routine governance and more for continuity management — aligning constitutional succession mechanisms, security structures, diplomatic messaging and elite trust networks into a coherent political insurance framework.

The irony, however, is that transition management itself can accelerate transition pressures. Once elites begin positioning for a post-Museveni order, politics subtly changes. Loyalties become conditional. Bureaucracies become cautious. Security calculations become layered. International actors begin hedging their bets.

That may explain why this reshuffle feels less like the beginning of a new government term and more like the opening moves of Uganda’s next political era.

CORRUPTION CORRUPTS EVERYONE IT TOUCHES

One of the more sobering ways to understand corruption is to translate the numbers into human terms.

Last year, Mulago National Referral Hospital told Parliament that its Shs122 billion allocation was grossly inadequate to run the country's largest referral facility and fully operationalise critical units like intensive care. Recent hospital and research data indicate Mulago now handles roughly three million patient interactions annually. That means, very roughly, the hospital spends about Shs40,000 per patient encounter.

Now place that beside the roughly Shs28 billion reportedly discovered in currencies in properties linked to former Speaker Anita Among.

At Mulago's expenditure ratios, that amount alone could theoretically support treatment for about 700,000 patient visits – or the population of Isingiro district; or nearly triple the Shs10 billion the hospital said it urgently needed to fully operationalise its intensive care units...

But here is what the numbers alone cannot capture: corruption does not simply steal money. It corrupts everything it touches. The thief. The witness. The bystander. Eventually, the entire society.

That is the real danger.

It first corrupts the individual.

Once individuals accumulate extraordinary wealth through public office, losing power becomes existential. Retirement stops being an option because without continued access to the machinery of the state, sustaining those lifestyles becomes impossible. No employer in Uganda's economy pays enough to maintain convoys, mansions, entourages, luxury shopping and political patronage networks at that scale. Very few legitimate businesses generate such cash flows either.

So corruption mutates. What begins as theft becomes dependency. What begins as greed becomes survival. Office holders stop behaving like custodians of public institutions and begin behaving like shareholders protecting a revenue stream...

That perhaps explains reports that Anita Among briefly contemplated resisting directives to step aside as Speaker — reportedly exploring an independent political path before raids on homes and the freezing of accounts neutralised those ambitions. One almost understands the logic emotionally, even while rejecting it morally. When a person becomes accustomed to limitless facilitation and elite privilege, stepping away from office can feel economically catastrophic.

Corruption has, by that point, already corrupted the person entirely.

It then corrupts institutions.

As corruption deepens, loyalty shifts from institutions to networks of mutual protection. Politicians protect procurement officials. Procurement officials protect businesspeople. Security actors protect politicians. Everyone possesses compromising information about everyone else. The system survives less on legitimacy and more on shared vulnerability.

Public institutions — hospitals, Parliament, the judiciary stop functioning as instruments of national development and begin operating as platforms for elite extraction. The state does not disappear. It is simply repurposed.

But most insidiously, corruption corrupts the rest of us.

One of the most depressing features of recent public discussions around the Anita Among saga has been the language ordinary people casually use. "Let her eat, after all other people are eating." "Why was she eating all that alone?" "People just need to know when to stop eating."

Notice what has happened there. The debate is no longer whether stealing public resources is wrong. It has shifted to whether the sharing was equitable, or whether the appetite simply became too visible. Corruption has been normalised — treated as an unofficial entitlement of office. We have stopped measuring leaders against principles and begun measuring them against the hunger of those around them.

That is how corruption corrupts citizens. It lowers the moral floor so gradually that people barely notice they are standing somewhere they once would never have tolerated.

This matters because a society can survive inequality. What it cannot survive is inequality stripped of legitimacy. A businessman who builds factories and creates jobs may grow rich and still command public admiration. But wealth born of political office triggers deep resentment, because citizens instinctively understand that public office exists to protect the common good — not to serve as a private ATM.

History repeatedly confirms this. Societies rarely collapse simply because people are poor. They collapse when citizens become convinced that elites are enriching themselves obscenely while ordinary people cannot afford school fees, rent or hospital bills. The French Revolution was fuelled as much by the visible excess of the aristocracy as by poverty itself. The Arab Spring was driven not only by unemployment but by perceptions of corruption, exclusion and elite impunity.

Hopelessness is politically combustible. People eventually stop asking how to succeed within the system and begin asking whether the system itself deserves to survive.

Social media has sharpened this danger considerably. Lifestyles once hidden behind walls are now displayed in real time before frustrated citizens. The gap between what is flaunted and what is endured has never been more visible — or more volatile.

Uganda today is wealthier than it was 40 years ago. There are more banks, highways, telecom towers, malls and private fortunes than ever before. But development without fairness creates instability, because visible prosperity raises expectations. People can tolerate hardship. What they struggle to tolerate is humiliation.

And that is why the fight against corruption cannot be framed as merely a moral or financial issue. It is a question of what kind of society we are becoming. Every time we shrug at stolen billions. Every time we joke about who is "eating." Every time we measure a leader's wrongdoing against someone else's greed rather than against principle — corruption wins another convert.

Because that is precisely how corruption works. It does not only take the money.

It takes us with it.

DANGOTE’S REAL REFINERY IS CONFIDENCE

There is a reason Aliko Dangote is once again dominating Africa’s business conversation.

Yes, his 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery, the largest on the continent is reshaping Africa’s energy landscape. Yes, he is talking about another refinery of similar scale in East Africa and plans for a continent-wide share sale.

But the real significance of Dangote lies elsewhere.

He has de-risked African ambition.

For decades, Africa has suffered from a peculiar inferiority complex. We complain endlessly about poor infrastructure, unreliable power, weak transport systems and limited industrial capacity, yet many of us never truly believed projects of global scale could actually be built here by Africans.

Big refineries were for the Gulf. Industrial megaprojects were for China. Africa’s role was to export raw materials and import finished products at a premium.

Then Dangote built the world’s largest single-train refinery in Lagos.

And suddenly the impossible no longer looks impossible.

That matters because confidence is one of the most underrated forms of infrastructure.

The refinery itself is important, yes. But perhaps its greatest contribution is psychological. It has shown investors, governments and entrepreneurs that African industrial scale is not fantasy. It can be done. More importantly, it can make money.

That last point is critical.

Africans often talk about profit as though it is morally suspicious. Yet every prosperous society in history has been built by people pursuing profit through solving large societal problems. Dangote looked at Africa’s absurd dependence on imported refined fuel despite being rich in crude oil and saw an opportunity.

The result is a refinery capable of meeting Nigeria’s domestic fuel demand while exporting refined products across the continent.

This is capitalism functioning as it should: private ambition aligned with public utility.

Indeed, Dangote is yet another validation of perhaps the most important economic lesson of the last 40 years — the private sector creates wealth far more effectively than governments ever can.

The role of government is not to run businesses. It is to create an environment in which businesses can thrive — stable policy, predictable regulation, security, infrastructure and functioning public institutions.

Businesses then create wealth. Governments tax that wealth and use the revenues to provide public goods such as roads, hospitals, schools and security, which in turn improve the business environment further.

That is the virtuous cycle prosperous societies have mastered.

Dangote illustrates this perfectly. His companies are among the biggest taxpayers in Nigeria. In effect, private enterprise is helping finance the Nigerian state itself.

But perhaps the most fascinating part of the Dangote story is how he financed the refinery.

Africa has become accustomed to thinking of large projects through sovereign borrowing and donor support. Dangote approached financing differently. He raised commercial capital from international markets based on hard numbers, projected cashflows and bankable economics.

During a recent interview with Norwegian fund manager Nicolai Tangen, Dangote casually listed some of the international institutions backing his projects, among them Standard Bank and Standard Chartered.

That revealed something important: he has cracked the code of how to present African projects to global capital..

Not through emotional appeals about poverty or development.

But through commercially compelling proposals grounded in scale, demand and profitability.

The refinery reportedly cost about $20 billion — the kind of figure normally associated with sovereign states, not private individuals. Yet that is precisely the point. Dangote is operating at the scale African nations are supposed to play.

And now comes the next phase.

The planned continent-wide Initial Public Offering (IPO) is not merely about prestige. It is potentially a watershed moment for Africa’s capital markets themselves.

For years we have claimed Africa lacks financing for infrastructure. That is only partly true. Africa does not lack money. African pension funds, insurance pools, sovereign funds and private savings collectively hold billions of dollars. The volume of transactions on mobile money are proof enough.

What Africa lacks is the infrastructure  and often the confidence in existing market infrastructure  to mobilise and aggregate those savings into transformational projects.

Dangote’s listing could help change that.

By going to continental bourses, he is helping energise Africa’s own capacity to fund its development agenda. African pension funds and ordinary investors could directly participate in financing infrastructure that benefits them.

The likely objective of the IPO will also be to pay down part of the refinery’s debt burden, freeing up capital for further expansion into refining, fertiliser, petrochemicals and power generation.

That is how industrial ecosystems are built.

Success creates confidence. Confidence attracts capital. Capital finances expansion. Expansion creates scale.

During the interview with the Norwegian fund manager Dangote made the argument this column has long argued, that businessmen attract businessmen more effectively than smooth-tongued officials pitching investment opportunities abroad.

Success markets itself.

When investors see a refinery operating at that scale in Africa, they begin to imagine what else is possible — fertiliser plants, steel mills, logistics corridors and regional rail systems.

Yet predictably, Dangote has also created enemies. Import cartels, middlemen and corrupt bureaucracies thrive in systems built around scarcity and inefficiency. Large transformational projects threaten existing rent-seeking networks.

Which is why Africa needs more Dangotes.

Not because billionaires are saints. But because the continent desperately needs businessmen with enough ambition, scale and risk appetite to drag development forward faster than bureaucracies can delay it.

But for Africa to produce more Dangotes, it must finally confront one of its biggest economic failures: fragmentation.

We cannot build continental industrial giants while operating as 54 disconnected economies.

A refinery producing 650,000 barrels per day only makes sense within a large integrated market. The same applies to railways, fertiliser plants and manufacturing hubs.

Scale matters.

Dangote’s story ultimately is not about oil.

It is about belief.

Belief that African capital can build globally competitive infrastructure. Belief that African businessmen can think at continental scale. Belief that profit and public good are not enemies.

Most importantly, it is proof that Africa’s vast bounty will not be unlocked by rhetoric.

It will be unlocked by Africans bold enough to build.

THE FALL OF AMONG WAS NOT ABOUT CORRUPTION

After perhaps the most intense weekend of her life, Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Anita Among announced that she would not put herself up for re-election as leader of the country’s legislature in the next Parliament.

The decision came after days of extraordinary political drama: armed security personnel surrounding her home, reports of billions of shillings discovered in dollars, euros and pounds, and mounting public outrage over her newly acquired Rolls Royce.

"In the end, it was the Rolls Royce that finally shifted Anita Among from controversial politician into symbol of elite excess...

The luxury vehicle, reportedly flown into Uganda brand new in January rather than imported second-hand like most luxury vehicles in the country, instantly became politically toxic. Depending on specification, a new Rolls-Royce Cullinan or comparable Rolls Royce model can retail between £350,000 and £450,000 before shipping, taxes and customisation — roughly Shs1.7 billion to Shs2.2 billion at current exchange rates, and potentially much higher once fully imported into Uganda.

In a country where many civil servants struggle to survive on monthly salaries below Shs1 million, the symbolism was devastating.

The subsequent raid merely completed the picture in the public mind.

And in politics, once the public mind settles, recovery becomes almost impossible.

Ironically, she seemed politically untouchable only weeks ago

What makes Among’s apparent fall even more startling is that she emerged from the recent election cycle looking politically stronger than almost anyone in the system except President Yoweri Museveni himself.

Unlike many senior politicians who spent months fighting for survival in their constituencies, Among appeared liberated from ordinary political anxieties. She was elected virtually unopposed and therefore free to crisscross the country shepherding Museveni’s campaign effort and consolidating influence inside the ruling establishment.

At the height of the campaign season, she projected the aura of a politician whose future looked secure, expansive and perhaps even ascendant.

Which is why the speed of her apparent political collapse has caught nearly everyone by surprise.

From indebted MPs to dangerously wealthy politicians

Back on September 9, 2012, in a Shillings & Cents commentary titled “Uganda: MP indebtedness compromising Parliament?” Shillings & Cents — Uganda: MP indebtedness compromising Parliament? (September 9, 2012), I argued that financial vulnerability weakens independent political judgement because politicians trapped by debt become captives of survival rather than servants of principle.

But there is an opposite side to that same coin: excessive accumulation can be just as politically dangerous as indebtedness.

Because wealth changes political incentives.

Ironically, the two realities may now have collided in spectacular fashion inside Parliament itself. For years, quiet whispers around Kampala’s political corridors have suggested that many MPs are indebted up to their eyeballs, not just to banks, but directly to powerful parliamentary figures including Anita Among and Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa, who allegedly evolved into major lenders to legislators.

That matters politically.

Because debt creates dependency. A financially desperate MP is easier to influence, easier to mobilise and easier to discipline. In such an environment, political authority stops being purely institutional and increasingly becomes financial. Patronage then evolves from campaign support into a parallel credit system operating within the legislature itself.

Seen this way, the wealth allegations against Among are not just about personal excess. They potentially point to the emergence of an alternative internal power structure rooted not merely in constitutional office but in financial leverage over fellow politicians...

The coalition that may now be unravelling

But power built through financial patronage rarely operates alone. It inevitably creates a coalition — beneficiaries, loyalists, fixers and opportunists tied together not necessarily by ideology but by access, favours and mutual vulnerability.

Among appears to have cobbled together precisely such a coalition.

Many within it may never have fully understood what her ultimate political endgame was. Some may simply have been responding to immediate incentives: campaign financing, loans, committee influence, parliamentary protection or proximity to power. But once a system begins to suspect that such a coalition is evolving beyond patronage into an independent political centre of gravity, alarm bells inevitably begin ringing.

Which is why this process may still be in its early stages.

It would not be surprising if more politicians, brokers and parliamentary actors are quietly summoned by security agencies in the coming weeks — at best to explain their role within the broader network, at worst to help stitch Among up politically and legally...

Because elite political takedowns are rarely clean or isolated affairs. They often involve carefully dismantling the ecosystem around the principal target.

Yet therein also lies the regime’s dilemma.

The system must manage the process carefully because a genuinely unconstrained anti-corruption campaign could end up bringing down far more than a single political figure. Too many interests are interconnected. Too many careers, alliances and financial relationships overlap.

A serious, uncontrolled excavation of corruption at the highest levels could destabilise the very political edifice the state is trying to preserve.

And that carries potentially damning political consequences.

“Rich men get into politics to protect their wealth”

My father once told me something that sounded cynical at the time but has proved remarkably accurate over the years: “Rich men get into politics to protect their wealth.”

Not necessarily to create wealth. To protect it.

The moment wealth reaches a certain scale, politics stops being an arena of service and becomes a form of insurance. A shield. A guarantee against investigation, prosecution, confiscation or political extinction. That is why across the world, from oligarchies to fragile democracies, wealth and political power eventually begin circling each other like magnets.

In Uganda’s case, this intersection has become increasingly delicate because of the country’s unresolved succession question.

That is why the Anita Among story cannot simply be understood as an anti-corruption story. Corruption is merely the surface layer. The deeper issue is political consequence...

When an individual accumulates wealth at the scale now being alleged, especially while occupying the third most powerful office in the land, it inevitably creates political possibilities. Wealth brings networks. Networks bring influence. Influence breeds ambition, whether stated openly or quietly nurtured behind closed doors.

It would not be far-fetched to conclude that at some point, if she felt politically threatened or isolated, Among’s resources could eventually become the foundation for a play for higher office or, at the very least, a destabilising political faction.

The system gave her enough rope

Power in politics is rarely surrendered voluntarily. It is managed pre-emptively.

That is why the current developments feel less like spontaneous accountability and more like controlled political surgery.

The system appears to have given her enough rope to hang herself. The Rolls Royce became symbolic excess at a time when ordinary Ugandans are struggling with school fees, rent and taxes. The foreign currency allegations then transformed public irritation into moral outrage. She is now politically indefensible in the court of public opinion, which is perhaps the most important battlefield of all.

Was the Sovereignty Bill really about foreign influence?

But there is another intriguing layer to this story that may explain the hurried and controversial introduction of the Protection of Sovereignty Bill earlier this month, and the insistence that the 11th Parliament pass it as virtually its last order of business.

It seems inconceivable that such vast quantities of dollars, euros and pounds could have been accumulated purely through domestic circulation. Hard currency at that scale immediately raises uncomfortable questions about external linkages, foreign financial networks and possible international political interests. Whether those suspicions are true or not almost becomes secondary because in statecraft perception often matters as much as fact.

If the security establishment had reason to believe that foreign actors were cultivating relationships with ambitious political elites during a sensitive succession moment, then the Sovereignty Bill begins to look less random and more strategic.

Suddenly the urgency makes sense.

Suddenly the procedural flaws, the haste and the political pressure to pass it before the end of the parliamentary term begin to appear less like legislative incompetence and more like elite panic...

The state may have concluded that Uganda is entering the dangerous phase many countries face during leadership transitions: the point where internal elite competition starts attracting foreign interest and external influence operations.

History is full of such moments.

Foreign governments and interests rarely wait for transitions to happen before positioning themselves. They cultivate networks early, identify emerging centres of power and quietly build leverage. In fragile political environments, money often becomes the first instrument of influence.

Seen through that lens, the move against Among may not simply have been about corruption or even succession management. It may also have been about shutting down what the system perceived as an emerging node of political and possibly foreign-backed power before it fully matured.

Norbert Mao’s curious role

There is also the curious role played by Norbert Mao in recent weeks. His increasingly public positioning around the Speakership now looks less accidental and more tactical. In hindsight, Mao may have been deployed as a political red herring — a deliberate irritant designed to ruffle Among’s feathers, unsettle her camp and pressure her into strategic mistakes.

Politics often works this way. Direct confrontation is avoided until the target has been psychologically isolated, politically cornered and emotionally destabilised.

One suspects there may initially have been efforts to engineer a quiet exit — a negotiated stepping aside in exchange for dignity, protection and preservation of some political relevance. But if Among resisted such overtures, believing perhaps that her networks, resources and institutional position still gave her leverage, then the escalation we are now witnessing becomes easier to understand...

The result has been a political sideshow that increasingly feels choreographed but is far from over.

Because once elite conflicts spill into public view, they develop their own momentum. Rival factions emerge. Old grudges resurface. Opportunists circle. The public becomes emotionally invested. And institutions themselves can become theatres of political signalling.

The transition question lurking beneath everything

And timing matters.

These developments are unfolding immediately after Museveni’s swearing-in on May 12 and just before new cabinet and political appointments are expected. That cannot be accidental. Political transitions, especially long-managed ones, are rarely dramatic events announced in a single speech. They are often quiet processes involving the careful elimination of obstacles, rivals, uncertainties and centres of independent power.

In many ways, Among may have become the last major obstacle to what appears to be an attempt at constructing an orderly transition architecture behind closed doors...

Uganda’s political history teaches us that transitions are feared precisely because they can easily descend into elite fragmentation. The governing system therefore has every incentive to tightly control the process, neutralise unpredictable actors and ensure that succession happens within a carefully supervised framework.

Seen through that lens, the move against Among begins to make strategic sense.

Why nations fail

The irony, however, is that this entire saga also validates another warning I wrote about recently on August 18, 2024, in a Shillings & Cents commentary titled “Uganda, beware of Why Nations Fail” Shillings & Cents — Uganda, beware of Why Nations Fail (August 18, 2024), discussing Why Nations Fail.

Nations fail not simply because leaders steal. Many countries survive corruption for decades. Nations fail when institutions become too weak to regulate the ambitions of powerful individuals and when political systems become overly personalised.

When wealth accumulation becomes inseparable from state power, politics itself becomes a high-stakes survival game. Public office stops being about governance and becomes access to protection. Losing office then becomes existential.

That is where danger begins.

Because once political competition is no longer about ideas, competence or ideology but about protection of accumulated wealth, transitions become harder, more suspicious and potentially more unstable.

The real lesson

Ironically, the Among saga may therefore reveal both the strength and weakness of the current system simultaneously.

Its strength lies in demonstrating that no political figure, however powerful, is untouchable if the system decides otherwise.

Its weakness lies in the uncomfortable public realisation that wealth accumulation at the highest levels may have proceeded unchecked until political calculations shifted.

Ugandans should therefore resist the temptation to see this merely as entertainment or palace intrigue. It is actually a revealing window into how power is organised, managed and contested in modern Uganda.

And perhaps the biggest lesson is this: in political systems where wealth and power become too intertwined, the fall of powerful individuals is rarely about morality alone.

It is usually about timing.

FORTY YEARS ON: ARE WE FORGETTING HOW WE GOT HERE?

Tomorrow, President Yoweri Museveni takes his seventh oath of office.

Politics aside, the last forty years represent the longest period of sustained economic growth in our country's recorded history. And if you ask observers to name the two biggest achievements of the NRM era, the answers converge quickly: the restoration of security, and the revitalisation of the economy. What is less often appreciated is how deeply the two fed off each other.

In 1986, Uganda was not merely poor. It was dangerous. Investors do not build factories in war zones. Farmers do not plant crops they cannot be sure of harvesting. Security was not just a political achievement — it was the precondition for everything that followed. And as stability returned, the economy began to breathe. And as the economy grew, it gave the state resources to consolidate security further. Growth and stability became mutually reinforcing — a virtuous cycle now so established that we have forgotten it was ever built.

In 1986, the economy was worth roughly $3.5–4 billion. Today it stands at over $50 billion. Exports have grown from under $500 million to nearly $14 billion. VAT alone now contributes Shs8–10 trillion annually — more than the entire tax take of 2006. That is not a footnote. That is a transformation.

But transformations have authors. When VAT was introduced, Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) shut down shops in protest across Kampala for a week. The reform held anyway.

When Nile Breweries was privatised — after fierce, protracted debates the President presided over personally it was producing 2,000 crates a month. Today that output disappears over a long weekend on Bandali Rise.

When agricultural liberalisation came, farmers began earning 70–80 percent of world prices instead of the fraction they had received under state monopolies.

Behind all of it the government forced discipline at a time when indiscipline would have been far easier, and far more popular. And we have begun, rather dangerously, to take what was built for granted.

But here is the part the numbers do not tell you.

The gains have not been shared equally. Uganda remains one of the more unequal economies in East Africa, and the gap between those who have benefited from four decades of growth and those still waiting is wide and, in some places, widening.

The answer starts in agriculture, where the majority of Ugandans still earn their living. Better incentives for farmers, investment in rural infrastructure, access to inputs and markets — these are not new ideas. They are ideas that have not been implemented with the seriousness they deserve. An economy growing at 6 percent while most farmers operate at subsistence level is an economy running on one engine.

The business environment matters too. Corruption — at the counter, in the procurement office, at the border remains a tax on ambition. Every shilling lost to a bribe is a shilling that does not become a job or an export. Fighting corruption is not a moral exercise. It is an economic one.

And then there is oil.

Uganda is edging toward first oil, and the temptation will be to treat the revenues as a solution — a cushion against fiscal pressures, a substitute for the harder work of broadening the tax base and improving the investment climate. That would be a mistake.

Oil revenues, without extraordinary discipline, concentrate wealth rather than distribute it. The resource curse is not a myth. Rents flow upward. Politics become more transactional. And there is a deeper risk — that oil money disrupts the very virtuous cycle that sustained Uganda for forty years, funding patronage rather than institutions, rewarding loyalty rather than productivity, and quietly hollowing out the foundations that made growth possible.

Uganda cannot afford to let oil scuttle four decades of hard-won progress. The revenues must serve the economy, not replace it.

Forty years is long enough for an entire generation to grow up knowing only stability. The battles that produced it — over VAT, privatisation, liberalisation — are ancient history to a 25-year-old in Kikoni. The architecture of the economy is taken for granted, like electricity that only becomes remarkable when it goes off.

The restoration of security and the revitalisation of the economy is a genuine achievement. It should be acknowledged clearly and without embarrassment.

But the next forty years will be defined by whether those gains reach the farmer in Kapchorwa, the trader in Arua, the graduate in Lira who is talented, ambitious, and running out of patience.

That is the real measure of the milestone. And it remains unfinished business.

MTN PROFITS MARGINALLY DOWN, BUT MOMO TRANSACTION VALUE RACES AHEAD

MTN Uganda’s first quarter results reflect a business that absorbed a political and operational shock—but still kept its core engines running.

Profit after tax fell 3.8 percent to Shs174 billion, while margins softened under pressure from higher costs, increased depreciation from heavy network investment, and rising finance charges. Yet EBITDA still rose 4.3 percent to Shs462.9 billion, signalling underlying operational resilience.

The defining event of the quarter was the January internet shutdown during the general elections. The disruption curtailed both data services and mobile money access, affecting usage, transaction flows and new customer onboarding.

That impact is evident in the numbers: revenue growth slowed to 7.8 percent, while fintech performance—though positive—was uneven. In a normal operating environment, these segments would likely have posted stronger gains.

Even so, mobile money delivered the standout metric of the quarter.

Transaction values surged 31.2 percent to Shs55.1 trillion, far outpacing the 7.0 percent growth in volumes to 1.25 billion transactions.

This divergence points to a deeper shift: users are increasingly transacting larger amounts on the platform, signalling growing trust and the migration of more substantive economic activity onto mobile money rails.

Fintech revenue rose 7.4 percent to Shs274.5 billion, suggesting monetisation is still lagging usage growth. Data revenue grew 13.6 percent to Shs267.6 billion, supported by a 16.4 percent rise in users—though even here, growth was tempered by the shutdown.

Meanwhile, MTN ramped up investment, with capex (ex-leases) jumping nearly 70 percent to Shs201.5 billion, reinforcing its long-term digital infrastructure play.

Summary of results

Metric	Q1 2026	Q1 2025	% Change
Total Revenue (Shs bn)	914.5	848.0	+7.8%
Service Revenue (Shs bn)	905.9	841.4	+7.7%
Data Revenue (Shs bn)	267.6	235.6	+13.6%
Fintech Revenue (Shs bn)	274.5	255.6	+7.4%
EBITDA (Shs bn)	462.9	444.0	+4.3%
Profit After Tax (Shs bn)	174.0	180.9	-3.8%
Capex ex-leases (Shs bn)	201.5	118.7	+69.8%
MoMo Value (Shs tn)	55.1	42.0	+31.2%

The takeaway is straightforward: the shutdown dented momentum, but did not derail it. If anything, the surge in mobile money values suggests that once normal conditions resume, MTN’s growth story—anchored on data and fintech—remains firmly intact.

THE SOVEREIGNITY BILL & THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIVER

Believe it or not, there was a time when foreign aid accounted for as much as 70 percent of Uganda’s national budget.

It is a statistic that sounds almost implausible today. Yet for those who lived through the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the lived reality of a country on its knees—fiscally constrained, policy-dependent, and negotiating its priorities as much as defining them.

That reality has been decisively reversed.

And it did not happen by accident.

It happened because Uganda made a series of bold, often unpopular decisions to liberalise its economy—opening up to foreign direct investment, incentivising production, and, perhaps most importantly, unleashing the initiative of its own citizens. The shift from state control to market orientation was not ideological fashion; it was economic necessity...

Today, the numbers tell the story.

In the early 1990s, donor support financed roughly half of Uganda’s national budget. In some sectors, particularly recurrent expenditure and debt servicing, dependence was even more acute. Fast forward to the 2024/25 financial year, and total external support has fallen to about 15.2 percent of the Shs 72.1 trillion budget. Direct budget support accounts for just 1.9 percent (Shs 1.39 trillion), while project support contributes another 13.3 percent (Shs 9.58 trillion). Domestic revenue now finances 44.3 percent of the budget, with the balance coming from domestic borrowing and refinancing.

That is not just a statistical shift.

It is a structural transformation.

And it is the context within which the current debate on the sovereignty bill must be understood.

As Mwesigwa Rukutana—who served as State Minister for Finance during those years of peak dependency reflected last week, Uganda’s policy autonomy was once severely constrained. Budgets and development plans were subject to approval by institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The path out required not just compliance, but conviction: increase production, expand exports, manage inflation, and fully liberalise capital flows.

Uganda chose that path.

And we were fortunate in the calibre of minds that guided it. The steadying hands and intellectual conviction of Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, Chris Kassami and Keith Muhakanizi were central to the reforms that brought us to this point. They were not just technocrats; they were custodians of discipline in a period when indiscipline would have been politically easier...

We miss them.

And perhaps more importantly, we have begun to take what they built for granted.

That is the double-edged sword of success. On the one hand, it is a sign that sound policy has become so embedded in our daily lives that it feels natural. On the other, it breeds complacency—the dangerous illusion that progress was inevitable, automatic.

Only the other day, an armchair pundit on radio made precisely that claim.

It was not inevitable.

We had come from such a deep hole that even Lee Kuan Yew, the man who led Singapore from a third-world backwater to a first-world economy remarked in 1988, that Uganda would not recover in a hundred years. That was the scale of the collapse. That was the depth of the scepticism.

And yet, here we are.

Not perfect. Not finished. But undeniably transformed.

There was, at the time, a chorus of dissent. Armchair socialists warned against “kowtowing” to Bretton Woods institutions, advocating instead for a more insular, state-controlled model. In hindsight, that would have been a grave mistake. 

Had Uganda chosen that route, we would likely still be grappling with shortages, rationing essentials, and navigating an economy where access depended more on connections than on markets. The indignity of needing a minister’s chit to access basic goods would not be a distant memory—it would be current affairs.

That was not sovereignty.

That was stagnation.

The growth of the last four decades—exports rising from about $711 million in the mid-1990s to over $13 billion today, inflation largely stabilised, and a vibrant private sector taking root, was neither inevitable nor accidental. It was earned.

"Which is why the sovereignty bill should give us pause.

Because what has been built is not irreversible...

And because some of the signals emerging from this debate suggest that its framers may not fully appreciate the journey that got us here. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they do not know, rather than have forgotten, what it took to pull Uganda back from the abyss. It is the only explanation for why we would contemplate legislation that risks incinerating decades of progress without a clear appreciation of the consequences...

Take the concerns raised by central bank governor Michael Atingi-Ego in his representation to Parliament last week. His warning was not ideological; it was technical—pointing to the risk that broadly framed provisions could disrupt financial flows, unsettle investor confidence, and complicate macroeconomic management.

The danger lies in the detail.

Clauses that seek to tightly control or pre-approve foreign funding, impose sweeping disclosure requirements, or grant wide discretionary powers to restrict external partnerships may appear politically appealing. But economically, they risk undermining the very foundations of Uganda’s liberalised economy.

This economy runs on predictability.

Foreign direct investment, portfolio flows, and development financing all depend on a regulatory environment that is transparent and consistent. Introduce uncertainty, whether through discretionary approvals or ambiguous restrictions and capital responds accordingly. It hesitates. It retreats. It demands higher returns to compensate for higher risk.

The consequences are not abstract: a weaker shilling, higher borrowing costs, reduced investment, and ultimately slower growth.

Money, as they say, goes where it is treated best—and stays where it is predictable.

Disrupt that, and you undermine not just foreign inflows, but domestic confidence as well.

To be clear, the ambition to reduce reliance on foreign funding is both legitimate and, indeed, already underway. Donor support has declined in recent years, partly due to geopolitical shifts and policy disagreements. Uganda has responded by strengthening domestic revenue mobilisation and expanding its reliance on domestic borrowing.

This is progress.

But it also comes with pressures—higher interest costs, tighter fiscal space, and a more delicate balancing act for policymakers.

As Rukutana cautioned, the transition to self-reliance must be gradual and deliberate. Not a shock. Not a statement. But a strategy.

There is a cautionary tale in Eritrea, which, after independence from Ethiopia, pursued a more insular economic path. Three decades later, the result is an economy that has struggled to grow or attract investment. Isolation, even when framed as sovereignty, has come at a cost.

Uganda’s success has been built on balance, opening where necessary, regulating where prudent, and learning from its mistakes.

The sovereignty bill must be approached in that same spirit.

Yes, insulate—but do not isolate. Regulate—but do not repel. Assert sovereignty—but do not undermine credibility.

Because if the last 40 years have taught us anything, it is this: sovereignty is not declared.

It is earned.

And it can just as easily be squandered, because as they say the importance of the river was not known until it dried up