CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE: UGANDA PAYING FOR LOANS IT DOESN'T USE

There is something far more worrying than Uganda’s rising public debt.

It is this: while our debt is increasing faster than our revenues, we are paying dearly for loans we do not even use.

That is not just inefficiency. It borders on criminal negligence.

According to the latest Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group update , Uganda paid Sh73.9 billion in commitment fees in FY2023/24 alone for undisbursed loans. Between 2018 and 2024, we paid nearly Sh470 billion in penalties on funds that were signed, negotiated, and committed—but never properly utilised because projects were unprepared.

Fifteen out of 49 loan-funded projects reportedly had no feasibility studies whatsoever.

Let us pause there.

We are borrowing at scale. We are breaching our own fiscal guardrails. We are watching debt servicing swallow an ever-growing share of domestic revenue. And yet we are signing loans for projects that have not even been properly designed.

This is not a debt crisis in the classical sense. It is a governance crisis.

Borrowing Faster Than We Can Earn

Uganda’s total public debt now stands at about $32.24 billion—roughly Sh118 trillion as of June 2025 . That is a 26% increase in just 12 months.

The debt-to-GDP ratio has breached the 50% ceiling embedded in our Charter of Fiscal Responsibility, hitting 50.9% and projected to rise further.

Now, debt can grow faster than revenues during periods of high investment. That is not unusual. Countries borrow ahead of growth cycles. We did it when infrastructure gaps were glaring. We are doing it again in anticipation of oil production.

But borrowing faster than revenue growth only makes sense if the borrowed money is efficiently deployed and yields returns greater than its cost...

What we are witnessing instead is this: debt rising, interest payments rising, and money wasted on idle commitments.

We are compounding liabilities without compounding assets.

From Prudence to Elastic Budgets

Two decades ago, when Uganda first dipped into the domestic bond market, the sums were modest. In January 2004, government raised Sh20 billion via a two-year bond. It was tentative. Cautious.

Before that, Treasury bills were largely instruments of monetary policy—to mop up excess liquidity and manage inflation.

Today, the domestic market is the mainstay of budget financing. We routinely raise hundreds of billions in a single auction. Treasury bills and bonds outstanding now hover around Sh58–60 trillion, with bonds accounting for over Sh50 trillion.

Domestic resource mobilisation is, in theory, a sign of maturity. Poor countries are poor because they cannot mobilise their own savings. A functioning bond market shows institutional depth—banks, pension funds, insurance companies all pooling capital.

But mobilisation without discipline is merely self-lending without accountability.

And the discipline is thinning.

In FY2023/24, government requisitioned and received Sh8.93 trillion in supplementary funding on top of a Sh52.73 trillion regular budget—yet total expenditure came in lower than the original allocation . More recently, Sh14 trillion was introduced via corrigenda with limited time for parliamentary scrutiny.

A budget that keeps expanding mid-year ceases to be a plan. It becomes an improvisation.

Markets can tolerate borrowing. They are less tolerant of drift.

The Silent Appropriation Called Interest

Perhaps the most chilling statistic is this: debt servicing consumed 20.99% of domestic revenue in FY2023/24—well above the 12.5% ceiling government committed to . Projections suggest that by FY2026/27, nearly 45% of domestic revenue could go toward servicing debt.

Almost half of every shilling collected domestically would go to honour past borrowing.

Interest is the most efficient spender in the national budget. It never delays. It never goes unpaid. It always comes first.

Yet interest builds no classrooms, plants no crops, drills no boreholes.

When debt servicing expands, it crowds out agriculture, health, education, and child protection.

We speak of transformation. But transformation is not funded by interest payments.

The Opportunity Cost of Poor Planning

The most indefensible aspect of our current trajectory is not that we borrow. It is that we borrow without readiness.

Commitment fees arise when loans are signed but funds remain undisbursed within agreed timelines. In effect, lenders charge you for reserving capital you fail to utilise.

This is analogous to booking a fleet of trucks for delivery and then never loading the goods. You still pay.

The Mbarara–Masaka transmission line and Kampala road rehabilitation projects were among those affected by implementation delays . These are not trivial undertakings. They are central infrastructure components.

When 15 projects lack feasibility studies, the problem is systemic. Feasibility studies are not bureaucratic luxuries. They are the foundation of sound borrowing.

Borrowing without feasibility is fiscal recklessness.

If a private CEO borrowed billions without project design, shareholders would demand resignations. In the public sphere, the bill is quietly passed to taxpayers.

Risky Bets in the Name of Industrial Policy

The governance concerns do not stop at undisbursed loans.

Nearly Sh930 billion has reportedly been invested in private enterprises without proper procedures, due diligence, or parliamentary approval . Some investments were executed without valuation reports.

Industrial policy is not inherently flawed. Strategic state intervention can catalyse sectors.

But industrial policy without process becomes patronage. And patronage financed by debt amplifies fiscal risk...

Every shilling deployed without scrutiny compounds vulnerability.

The Domestic Borrowing Paradox

Ironically, one of Uganda’s strengths has been the deepening of its domestic capital market. Institutions like NSSF have grown substantial asset bases. Banks and insurers are active participants in government securities.

Countries transform when they mobilise domestic resources effectively. External aid is unstable; domestic savings are sustainable.

But when government absorbs the majority of available liquidity, the private sector feels the squeeze.

Why lend to SMEs at uncertain risk when you can earn double-digit returns on risk-free sovereign bonds?

Credit to the private sector slows. Entrepreneurship suffers. Growth momentum weakens.

The state becomes both the largest borrower and the safest borrower.

That is not a recipe for dynamic capitalism.

Oil and the Mirage of Future Relief

Much of the recent borrowing is justified under the banner of oil preparation. Roads, pipelines, industrial parks—all front-loaded on the assumption of future petroleum revenues.

There is logic in borrowing ahead of revenue streams. But logic requires realism.

Oil markets fluctuate. Transition pressures mount globally. Project timelines slip. Revenues can underperform projections.

If oil earnings arrive later or smaller than anticipated, debt servicing will not wait.

Fiscal space is a buffer against uncertainty. Uganda’s buffer is shrinking.

The Real Reform Agenda

So where does that leave us?

First, project readiness must precede loan signature—not follow it. No feasibility study, no borrowing. Full stop.

Second, supplementary budgets must return to their constitutional purpose—true emergencies. Not routine fiscal padding.

Third, tax policy must be rationalised. Generous exemptions erode the revenue base and force additional borrowing. We cannot borrow to replace revenue we voluntarily forgo.

Fourth, enforce the fiscal rules we set. The 50% debt-to-GDP ceiling and 12.5% debt service-to-revenue limit were not decorative clauses. They were guardrails.

Fifth, institutional accountability must be strengthened. Commitment fees on unused loans should trigger automatic review and consequences for responsible accounting officers.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth: paying Sh470 billion in penalties over six years for loans we did not use is not misfortune. It is preventable.

Final Reflection

Debt, used wisely, accelerates development. It builds infrastructure before savings accumulate organically. It smooths shocks. It bridges gaps.

But debt without discipline magnifies weakness.

Uganda’s domestic bond market reflects institutional progress. We have deepened capital markets. We have mobilised savings. We have reduced reliance on volatile external aid.

These are gains worth protecting.

Yet borrowing faster than we earn, breaching fiscal ceilings, expanding supplementary budgets, and paying dearly for idle loans erodes that progress.

We are not merely swimming in deeper waters than in 2004 when we raised Sh20 billion experimentally. We are swimming against a rising current of our own making.

Debt is not the villain. Indiscipline is.

And unless we confront the negligence embedded in our borrowing practices, the cost will not merely be fiscal.

It will be generational.

THE POVERTY OF UGANDA'S POLITICS

When Yusuf Nsibambi crossed from the opposition to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) earlier this week, the outrage was swift. Betrayal. Opportunism. Moral collapse. Yet perhaps the more honest question is this: why are we still surprised?

We cling to a consoling fiction, that politicians are primarily in public life for the public good. In Uganda’s political economy, politics is often closer to capital investment. Campaigns require money, logistics, networks. Office delivers income, access, influence. Remove the office, and the investment sours.

Nsibambi’s earlier episode laid this bare. After losing his re-election bid, he reportedly disconnected his constituency from the electric power grid—a connection he had personally bankrolled in the hope it would convert into votes. The signal was unmistakable: if loyalty ends, so does the benefit.

And this is not an isolated case. We have seen MPs retrieve ambulances they donated once the electorate turned against them. Scholarships once paraded before cameras quietly evaporate when the benefactor is voted out. Public goods become private campaign assets—withdrawable upon defeat.

Outrage is justified. Astonishment is not.

Viewed through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the behaviour becomes less mysterious. Political office here is not self-actualisation; it is security. It provides economic stability and social standing in a scarcity environment. When security disappears, sunk costs loom large. Why are we shocked when politicians behave like investors defending capital?

The uncomfortable truth is that our leaders reflect us. A society negotiating material poverty often produces moral compromises. Patronage becomes rational. Defection becomes strategic. Scarcity breeds scarcity instincts.

Nsibambi’s defection is less scandal than mirror.

But the mirror reflects beyond personal ambition—it reveals structural weaknesses in Uganda’s opposition politics.

For years, the opposition’s reflex has been to appeal outward—Washington, Brussels, London hoping international pressure will reshape domestic power. Yet regime change engineered or heavily influenced abroad has rarely delivered stability. Libya’s fragmentation after Gaddafi. Iraq’s prolonged instability post-Saddam. Syria’s catastrophic entanglement. External actors pursue interests. The social cost is borne locally.

Legitimacy cannot be airlifted in. 

History offers another lesson. Ruhollah Khomeini

did not unseat the Shah by lobbying Western governments. From exile, he built domestic networks, distributing cassette tapes until his message saturated Iran’s political bloodstream. Whatever one’s view of the outcome, the strategy is instructive: build local infrastructure before claiming national authority.

In Uganda, distribution networks remain uneven.

Urban centres consistently reject the NRM. Taxpayers in Kampala and other towns feel the state monthly—PAYE, VAT, fuel taxes. When infrastructure fails or services falter, the arithmetic between contribution and return feels immediate. Dissatisfaction sharpens where taxation is visible.

Rural Uganda experiences the state differently. Direct income taxation is less palpable. Government often appears as provider—roads, agricultural inputs, cash programmes. Cultural restraint tempers demands. The political thresholds differ.

This divergence shapes election results.

Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine and the National Unity Platform (NUP) transformed parliamentary opposition politics, emerging as the largest opposition bloc by number of MPs. Yet geographically, NUP’s strength is heavily concentrated in Buganda and urban centres. Beyond those zones, its representation thins dramatically.

In fact, NUP reportedly failed to nominate candidates in roughly 190 constituencies. That absence is structural. It is difficult to claim national majority while absent across large stretches of the map.

This creates another uncomfortable perception: the party that accuses the NRM of concentrating power in western Uganda risks appearing more geographically confined itself. While critics portray the NRM as regionally anchored, it has registered electoral victories across vast parts of the country—north, east, west—losing decisively mainly in NUP’s Buganda stronghold. In raw geographic spread, the ruling party appears more nationally distributed than its chief challenger.

NRM planners would be clever to keep it that way—to preserve a broad coalition that transcends regional perception. A geographically diversified mandate provides resilience.

None of this dismisses valid grievances. The electoral process has been marred by rights abuses and uneven enforcement. The terrain is imperfect. But here lies the strategic pivot: a level playing field will not materialise through shaming power. Power rarely concedes because it is embarrassed. It concedes when compelled—through sustained organisation, leverage, and negotiation—to adjust.

Compelling power demands numbers. It demands presence in every constituency, not only in sympathetic strongholds. It demands coalition-building that transcends regional identity. It demands transforming indignation into structure.

Nsibambi’s crossing underscores incentive logic. Politicians migrate toward perceived durability. They hedge against uncertainty. Floor-crossing is an assessment of longevity as much as loyalty.

Meanwhile, the ruling party should not interpret rural arithmetic as permanent immunity. Urban rejection remains consistent. Cities are engines of growth, taxation, and narrative. Persistent service delivery gaps accumulate political cost over time.

Uganda’s politics therefore balances on dual illusions. The opposition’s illusion is that international endorsement equates to domestic power. The ruling party’s illusion is that rural breadth guarantees eternal stability.

Beneath both lies a deeper reality: our politics mirrors our society. If ambulances can be retrieved and power lines disconnected when votes disappoint, institutions are weak and incentives skewed. If parties struggle to build national footprint beyond regional bases, identity remains potent.

A level field will not descend from moral outrage. It will be constructed patiently, arithmetically, constituency by constituency.

Until then, defections will continue. Outrage will spike and fade. And the mirror will remain, reflecting not just Nsibambi or the NRM or NUP—but Uganda itself.

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.