FSDU DRAGGING UGANDA OUT OF THE FINANCIAL STONE AGE

Uganda has never truly been a poor country.

What we have always been is an under-aggregated one—a place where money exists in fragments, scattered across households and hidden in the folds of everyday survival. Anyone who has lived here knows the choreography. Coins dropped into tins. Notes folded into kaveera and tucked under mattresses. A cow or goat standing in for a savings account. Family lending circles filling the gaps left by formal finance.

"Our people save, and often with remarkable discipline. What they have lacked are the mechanisms to turn that saving into something larger than the sum of its parts...

Scattered money is powerless money. It cannot compound. It cannot be intermediated. It cannot fuel investment or finance growth. It simply sleeps. And when money sleeps, the country sleeps with it. This is the quiet crisis at the heart of our development challenge: not the absence of resources, but the absence of aggregation.

That is what made Financial Sector Deepening Uganda’s (FSD) 10-year journey is worth more than ceremonial applause. At a recent event to commemorate the annivessary speaker after speaker underscored the organisation’s role in building the infrastructure, trust, and systems required to aggregate Uganda’s fragmented savings into national capital.

Central bank governor Michael Atingi-Ego, reminded the room that the financial sector we see today, more inclusive, more digital, more resilient, did not emerge by chance. It is the product of deliberate policy, thoughtful regulation, and patient collaboration.

He described the national payment switch, the central data hub, eKYC, digital supervision and other reforms as “the digital nervous system of our credit ecosystem,” the architecture that allows money to move safely and efficiently. Without such a nervous system, aggregation simply cannot happen. Money remains stuck in the micro-spaces of household life; it never graduates into productive capital.

Finance permanent secretary Ramathan Ggoobi, recounted walking into a bank as a young man, hoping to open a savings account, only to be asked whether he “really had money” (he did not name the bank).

 It was a humiliation delivered casually, but one so many Ugandans know intimately. He used the story to illustrate a larger point: the financial system was never built for the majority. And without inclusion, aggregation is that much harder. Money outside the system cannot help the person who owns it, nor can it help the country that needs it.

Together, these two voices captured the twin truths of Uganda’s financial evolution: that systems build trust, and trust builds inclusion. And inclusion is the gateway to aggregation.

This is the context in which FSD Uganda’s work over the past decade becomes transformative. Through policy support, a steady push for innovation, and an insistence on evidence-based dialogue across the sector, financial inclusion has risen from 29% to 68%. Beneath that statistic lies a more meaningful shift—billions of shillings have migrated from mattresses, secret tins, and informal networks into the formal economy, where they can be intermediated, lent out, invested, and multiplied. Ugandans who were once spectators to the monetised economy are now participants in it.

At the same time, FSD has worked to widen the channels through which aggregated money can flow. The Mastercard Foundation, supported Recovery Fund has channelled credit to over 130,000 micro and small businesses, 70% of them women-led enterprises that have always had the energy and ambition, but rarely the capital. The Deal Flow Facility, now mobilising over $8.2 million for growth-stage firms, is pushing opportunity closer to investment, turning potential into financing reality. Both initiatives reflect the same principle: aggregation is not only about savings—it is also about aligning capital with the ventures capable of driving structural transformation.

"Uganda’s entrepreneurs have never lacked drive. What they have lacked are mechanisms linking that drive to finance. FSDU has helped build those mechanisms.

This work becomes even more urgent when set against Uganda’s long-term economic ambition. Vision 2040, reinforced by government’s tenfold growth agenda, requires private-sector credit to expand from sh27 trillion to more than sh270 trillion. It is an audacious expectation—and it is only possible if Uganda aggregates its savings at scale. Household savings, SACCO deposits, pension surpluses, remittances, mobile money balances, investment capital, these must be pooled into channels capable of financing agriculture, manufacturing, technology, renewable energy, and the logistics systems of a modern economy.

This is why Project Okusevinga, reducing the minimum investment in government securities to sh10,000, is so consequential. It democratises investment. It makes wealth-building a mass-participation activity. If embraced, it could shift Uganda from a cash-based culture to a savings-and-investment culture within a decade.

Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done. Emma Mugisha, FSDU’s Board Chair captured the moment aptly: the first decade was about building the pipes; the next must be about filling them. Uganda now has the rails -- digital, regulatory, institutional, required for national aggregation. What remains is to build the culture, trust, and usage that turn infrastructure into impact.

Uganda is not poor. Uganda is under-aggregated. And FSD Uganda’s first 10 years show what becomes possible when a country begins to solve that problem—quietly, steadily, one account, one business, one innovation, one empowered citizen at a time. The task of the next decade is simple but profound: to turn aggregation into transformation.

POSTBANK REBRAND SIGNALS UGANDA BANKING INDUSTRY’S COMING OF AGE

My father told me how, as a young man, he would deposit money at the Post Office, the precursor to PostBank, in Nairobi, then jump on the train and withdraw the same funds days later in Kasese by simply showing his passbook. No computers. A surprisingly efficient way of transferring money across the region in the 1960s and early 1970s.

That story captures the trust, reach, and quiet efficiency that defined the old postal banking system. And it is this same spirit that came alive again at the beginning of November when PostBank opened its 59th and newest branch in Luweero town, hard on the heels of the bank’s rebrand to Pearl Bank.

The two events were symbolic of both expansion and transformation, a bank that once helped knit East Africa together by train and paper now positions itself to do the same through fibre optics and mobile networks.

It is easy to see how the rebrand opens the possibility to recapture that regional ambition, this time fused with digital capacity and renewed national purpose.

"The new name signals far more than a cosmetic change of colour from blue and yellow to the royal purple and orange of the Pearl. It represents a maturing institution and, by extension, a maturing banking industry in Uganda...

When PostBank was spun off from the old Uganda Post & Telecommunications Corporation twenty-seven years ago, it inherited a modest mandate: to preserve the savings culture that post offices had cultivated among ordinary Ugandans. For years, it operated as a small, government-owned lender serving rural and low-income customers. But as Uganda’s economy expanded and technology redrew the boundaries of finance, the bank evolved into a credible national player.

Its story mirrors that of Uganda’s wider banking sector.

The 1990s were years of cleanup and stabilization. The 2000s saw consolidation and cautious expansion. The 2010s ushered in a digital revolution led by mobile money and agency banking. And now, in the 2020s, the focus is on integration—of people, systems, and regional economies.

That ambition is no small matter. For years, one of the quiet frustrations of Uganda’s commercial expansion across the region has been the absence of a strong homegrown bank with regional reach, an institution capable of doing for Ugandan capital what KCB and Equity Bank have done for Kenya. As Ugandan firms push into South Sudan, the DRC, Rwanda, and Tanzania, they often find themselves banking with Kenyan or multinational institutions. The emergence of

Pearl Bank, with its deep national roots and growing technological sophistication, may finally begin to fill that gap.

Its mission remains anchored in inclusion. Over the past decade, the bank has become a crucial partner in government’s drive to bring millions of citizens into the formal economy. Its integration with national programs such as the Parish Development Model (PDM) has turned it into a key artery for channeling development funds to rural households and cooperatives. What was once a logistical maze of forms and ledgers has become a streamlined, digitized process linking parishes, SACCOs, and individual accounts in real time, through the banks’ Wendi digital wallet.

This has not only expanded access to finance but also restored confidence in public financial systems, an achievement that resonates deeply in a country where mistrust of government banking once ran high.

This unique position, halfway between commercial and developmental banking, has made the Bank the institutional bridge between state aspirations and citizen livelihoods. It has shown that inclusion, sustainability, and profitability are not mutually exclusive goals. The success of this hybrid model reflects a larger truth about Uganda’s banking evolution: that stability and innovation can coexist when trust, technology, and governance are aligned.

Within the broader industry, this new development signals a new phase in Uganda’s financial maturity. Two decades ago, state-owned banks were dismissed as bureaucratic relics. Today, they are proving commercially viable and strategically vital. The bank’s steady profitability, expanding branch footprint, and disciplined management reflect a sector that is not just growing but professionalizing. The industry’s key indicators, capital adequacy, liquidity, and asset quality are stronger than they have ever been. Non-performing loans have stabilized, deposits continue to grow, and local institutions are beginning to look beyond Uganda’s borders with confidence.

The bank’s evolution also mirrors changing economic priorities. With agriculture still employing seven in every ten Ugandans, the Bank’s support for structured agricultural financing has become central to its growth strategy and to national development. The shift from transactional to developmental banking—supporting farmers, small businesses, and women-led enterprises—illustrates a deeper understanding of what banking must mean in an economy still finding its industrial footing.

At the same time, the bank’s investments in financial literacy have helped demystify banking for millions of Ugandans. From women’s groups in rural trading centres to youth cooperatives in small towns, finance is being redefined not as an intimidating institution but as an everyday tool of empowerment. In the long term, this cultural shift may be the most enduring dividend of all.

As government and the private sector deepen integration within the East African Community and the African Continental Free Trade Area, Uganda will need financial institutions capable of supporting its businesses across borders.

My father’s passbook, stamped by a teller in Kasese, was proof of a simple but powerful truth: that trust sustains commerce. Half a century later, that same trust—rebuilt, digitized, and scaled, is what underpins

Pearl Bank’s next chapter.

The trains have been replaced by servers, the queues by mobile apps, but the mission is the same: to connect people, move money, and fuel growth across borders.

MTN’s METAMORPHISIS FROM AIRTIME SELLER TO FINTECH ENGINE

There was a time when MTN Uganda’s performance could be summed up in three words: subscribers, airtime, and coverage. As recently as 2020, as this column observed, the real story was hidden beneath the surface of the mobile-money revolution.

The country’s mobile-money platforms were already moving sums equivalent to half the national GDP—“a silent banking system that doesn’t sleep” even as telecoms continued to measure success by call minutes. MTN was then a strong, cash-generating voice business standing at the edge of a digital frontier it was yet to fully claim.

Fast forward to 2025 and the transformation is ticking along impressively.

The company’s third-quarter performance

underlines the scale of that metamorphosis. Topline revenue rose 15 percent to sh 2.2 trillion, powered by double-digit growth in both data and fintech. Data revenue jumped 22 percent, while fintech climbed 18.6 percent, together contributing almost half of total income.

Voice, once the company’s dominant pillar, grew just 4 percent. Profit after tax surged 23 percent to sh 295 billion. The board rewarded shareholders with an interim dividend of sh 10.5 per share, the largest since the company listed in 2021—a clear statement that the new digital engines are not only humming but also highly cash-generative.

MTN’s current business model has little in common with the one described in this column’s early reflections on Uganda’s telecom boom.

 The company has moved from selling airtime to selling access—to data, to transactions, to platforms. It has poured more than sh 350 billion this year into network upgrades, adding 125 new sites and strengthening its 4G footprint, building what one might call the “digital highways” of Uganda. Each new tower now carries more data than voice, and every new smartphone becomes a tollgate through which MTN collects its share of the digital economy.

Fintech, through MTN MoMo, has evolved into the company’s heartbeat. With more than ten million active users, MoMo has become a daily necessity for Ugandans—paying merchants, sending remittances, settling bills, and increasingly, saving and borrowing. It is not merely a payment platform but an informal financial system, quietly eroding the boundaries between telecommunications and banking. In 2017  we wrote, “mobile money is the real central bank of the people.” That observation feels prophetic now.

Across the border, Safaricom’s half-year results released on the same day as MTN released their Q3 results, offer a crystal ball into MTN’s possible future.

The Kenyan operator’s M-Pesa mobile money platform accounts for 43 percent of service revenue

, and data for another double-digit slice. Voice is no longer king there—it is an afterthought. MTN Uganda is following the same arc, though its story is still in the rising chapters. Where Safaricom processes nearly a billion transactions a month, MTN’s volumes are in the hundreds of millions. The gap is the opportunity, and the dividend signals confidence that management intends to close it.

The data narrative mirrors the fintech journey. Safaricom’s average user consumes roughly twice as much data as Uganda’s, but the trend lines point upward. MTN’s capital spending is laying the groundwork for that growth, ensuring capacity before the demand wave crests. As smartphones become cheaper and apps infiltrate every aspect of life—from learning to trading—Uganda’s data appetite will grow. The paradox is familiar: prices may fall, but usage will more than compensate, pushing revenues and margins higher.

What distinguishes MTN’s story is not just that it has pivoted successfully; it has done so while preserving profitability and a disciplined dividend culture. The sh 10.5 per-share payout, up 61 percent from last year, is a declaration that this transformation is not a gamble but a sustainable model. The company’s strong cash flows, even amid inflation and currency headwinds, have allowed it to fund expansion and still deliver attractive returns—a balance few Ugandan listed firms manage.

Looking ahead, MTN’s trajectory will hinge on execution. Safaricom’s example shows that the next phase lies in opening up ecosystems—through APIs, partnerships with banks and fintechs, and seamless integration into everyday business. MTN has the reach, the trust, and the infrastructure. What remains is to build the bridges that turn scale into depth.

 For investors, the dividend is a reward; for the economy, it is a signpost. The digital dividend has arrived—and this time, everyone gets a share.

MTN UGANDA LIFTS DIVIDEND TO SH10.5 AS PROFIT AND DATA REVENUE SURGE

MTN Uganda has announced an interim dividend of UGX 10.5 per share, up from UGX 6.5 last year, reflecting robust earnings growth and strong cash generation. The payout—totaling about UGX 236.7 billion—marks the telecom’s highest interim dividend since its 2021 listing, underscoring confidence in its expanding data and fintech businesses.

Chief Executive Officer Sylvia Mulinge said the dividend mirrors “resilient execution of the Ambition 2025 strategy and our focus on disciplined cost management and digital growth.”

Financial Highlights (Nine Months to September 2025)

Metric	9M 2025	9M 2024	Change YoY
Service Revenue	UGX 2.20 trillion	UGX 1.91 trillion	+15.3 %
Data Revenue	UGX 663 billion	UGX 542 billion	+22.4 %
Fintech Revenue	UGX 573 billion	UGX 483 billion	+18.6 %
Voice Revenue	UGX 790 billion	UGX 758 billion	+4.2 %
EBITDA	UGX 1.15 trillion	UGX 985 billion	+16.8 %
EBITDA Margin	52.3 %	51.4 %	+0.9 pp
Profit After Tax	UGX 295.3 billion	UGX 240.7 billion	+22.7 %
Capex (Ex-leases)	UGX 352 billion	UGX 340 billion	+3.5 %

Source: MTN Uganda 9M 2025 Earnings Release

Strong Operating Momentum

MTN’s performance was powered by sustained smartphone uptake, expanding 4G coverage, and growth in the fintech ecosystem. Data revenue rose 22 percent as the company modernized its network and upgraded 125 new sites, while fintech services benefited from higher mobile-money transaction volumes and merchant payments through MoMo, which now serves over 10 million active users.

Operating profit margins improved to 52.3 percent, reflecting cost discipline and digital-channel efficiencies. Management said cash flow remained strong, supporting both network investment and the enhanced dividend payout.

Dividend Signals Confidence

The UGX 10.5 payout—representing a yield of roughly 6 percent at current market prices—confirms MTN’s standing as one of the most consistent dividend payers on the Uganda Securities Exchange. Analysts view the increase as a vote of confidence in continued double-digit growth despite inflationary pressures and a weakening shilling.

Chief Financial Officer Andrew Bugembe noted that prudent capital management allowed the company to balance expansion and returns. “We are maintaining investment in our network while delivering attractive shareholder value,” he said.

Strategic Focus and Outlook

MTN Uganda continues to position itself as a digital-services leader. Beyond mobile data and MoMo, it is scaling broadband and enterprise connectivity to tap corporate and home-internet demand. The rollout of rural coverage and 5G-readiness initiatives remains central to its strategy.

Mulinge said the outlook remains positive: “We anticipate sustained revenue momentum as we deepen customer value through affordability, innovation, and service quality.”

Investor Takeaway

With profit up 23 percent and a record interim dividend, MTN Uganda has cemented its reputation as the exchange’s blue-chip bellwether. Its twin growth engines—data and fintech—continue to offset slowing voice revenues, providing resilience in a tight economy. For investors seeking both yield and growth, MTN remains the benchmark counter on the USE.

LOOKING BACK ON UGANDA’S UNEVEN TRANSFORMATION

The phrase “You cannot see the forest for the tees” comes in handy at times like these.

 

Living in Uganda the tendency is to focus on all that is wrong, especially with the economy. A cursory look back in history can be a real eye opener.

 

According to the Bank of Uganda Statistical Abstracts

(2010, 2020, and 2024), Uganda’s economy has changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous three decades. Anecdotal evidence is that the skyline has grown taller, the roads busier and money moves faster.

 

Yet beneath the hum of new malls, banks, and mobile money agents, much of Uganda still bends to the rhythm of the hoe. That is the paradox of Uganda’s transformation — rapid growth built on a fragile rural base.

In 2010, agriculture contributed about 24 percent of GDP, manufacturing under 10 percent, and services nearly half. The typical Ugandan was a smallholder farmer, working a patch of land, selling surplus in the nearest market, and depending on rain for survival. Industry revolved around agro-processing — coffee hulling, sugar milling, breweries, grain grinding and the financial system barely touched the countryside. Credit was limited, expensive, and mostly directed toward importers and traders in Kampala.

By 2020, Uganda’s economy had taken on a new shape. Services had risen above 50 percent of GDP, manufacturing had expanded to around 15 percent, and agriculture had slipped slightly below 23 percent. The country was urbanizing fast; mobile money had turned the phone into a bank, and Kampala’s skyline hinted at a new prosperity.

But beneath the surface, the imbalance persisted. The farms that fed the factories still struggled with low yields, limited financing, and poor access to markets. Credit flowed to real estate, trade, and consumption, while agriculture — employing three-quarters of Ugandans  remained underfunded...

By 2024, the transformation looked complete on paper. Services now contribute more than 55 percent of GDP, manufacturing holds steady between 12 and 15 percent, and agriculture hovers around 25 percent. GDP has tripled since 2010, and private sector credit has reached 20 percent of GDP — the highest in the country’s history. Kampala is busier than ever, real estate booming, and consumption rising. But three out of every four Ugandans still depend on the land for their livelihood. Uganda has modernized, yes, but only in patches. Growth has been faster than transformation.

Nowhere is this clearer than in agro-industry, the bridge between the farm and the factory. In 2010, food, beverages, and tobacco made up about a third of all manufacturing. By 2024, their share has dropped to a quarter, even though output has tripled. The change reflects diversification — Uganda now produces more steel, cement, plastics, and tiles but also a weakening link between agriculture and industry.

The backbone of our industrial economy, the farm, is still too weak to carry the weight of growth. Factories depend on consistent, quality raw materials, yet agriculture remains largely rain-fed, fragmented, and under-financed. When the rains fail, milk deliveries fall, coffee cherries rot and processors stand idle. Our industrial structure, for all its progress, still rests on soft soil.

Uganda’s next phase of growth depends on strengthening that foundation.

The farms must feed the factories. The country cannot industrialize without first revitalizing agriculture. This means putting knowledge back into the hands of farmers through functional extension services. For two decades, the collapse of extension has left millions of farmers without guidance on soil management, pests, or post-harvest handling. Rebuilding that system supported by digital tools and field officers could raise productivity across the board.

It also means investing in water. Less than three percent of Uganda’s arable land is irrigated, leaving farmers at the mercy of the weather. Climate change has turned rainfall into roulette, where one bad season can wipe out entire harvests and cripple agro-processors downstream. More irrigation from smallholder drip systems to valley dams would stabilize output, smooth supply chains, and make agriculture a dependable industrial partner.

And it means facing up to the land question. Uganda’s land tenure system, a web of overlapping claims and insecure titles, discourages investment. Farmers cannot use land as collateral, cannot expand production easily, and often hesitate to make long-term improvements. Simplifying the system while protecting customary rights would unlock credit and encourage commercial farming. An aggressive titling drive would be ideal.

Yet even as production improves, Uganda must think carefully about demand. We can’t build a strong industrial base on exports alone. The first market for Ugandan goods must be Ugandans themselves. The numbers are telling we consume less than a tenth of the coffee we produce and process less than 20 percent of the milk we collect. The same pattern holds for fruits, beef, and eggs.

Strengthening domestic consumption is not only patriotic; it’s strategic. Every cup of locally roasted coffee, every packet of milk sold in Gulu or Masaka, builds a stronger base for exports. “Buy Ugandan, Build Uganda” should stop being a slogan and become a serious industrial policy.

One promising avenue for this is school feeding. Properly designed, a national school feeding program could create a guaranteed market for milk, eggs, beef, maize, beans, and vegetables — stabilizing incomes for farmers and processors alike. It would also nourish the next generation while driving local production.

But it is a double-edged sword. Uganda’s government has a dreadful record of paying its suppliers on time. Domestic arrears, as this column has warned before, have spiraled out of control, strangling businesses and draining confidence. If school feeding contracts become yet another unpaid promise, they could bankrupt the very processors they were meant to help. To make such programs work, the state must first fix its payment discipline. Otherwise, a well-intentioned idea could collapse under the weight of government debt.

Beyond the domestic market, Uganda must also push harder to sell its products abroad. The East African Community has been a good start — our milk, sugar, and grain already find buyers across the region but it’s not enough. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) opens a much larger frontier, and beyond that lie the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Government must invest in trade diplomacy, quality standards, and export infrastructure to turn Uganda’s raw produce into globally competitive brands.

The goal should not be to export coffee beans and bulk milk, but to export roasted coffee, branded dairy, and packaged foods. That’s where jobs and real value lie.

AUTOMATE DRIVER LICENSING TO END UGANDA ROAD CARNAGE

It starts, as it too often does in this country, with twisted metal and wailing sirens. Two buses, an Isuzu and a Tata, collided head-on along the Kampala–Gulu highway, killing sixty-three people on the spot. The news travelled fast — from the police’s terse press statement to the morning talk shows and WhatsApp groups filled with images too horrific to share. For a few days, Uganda mourned. Then, as we always do, we moved on.

But we shouldn’t.

Because the real tragedy on our roads is not just the crashes themselves, but our acceptance of them as normal. According to police data, more than 5,000 Ugandans died on our roads last year, while another 17,000 were left seriously injured. That’s a seven percent rise in deaths and a staggering 36 percent rise in serious injuries compared to the previous year. On average, fourteen people die every single day on Uganda’s roads — the equivalent of a full taxi of lives wiped out before sunset.

Now think about that. Every day, fourteen families begin new lives defined by loss. Every day, fourteen breadwinners vanish from the economy, leaving behind dependents, unpaid loans, and unfinished dreams. And every year, according to studies, road crashes drain an estimated 4.4 trillion shillings from the economy — about five percent of our GDP. That’s more than the national budget for agriculture or education. We are quite literally driving ourselves to poverty.

The official reports like to call it “human error.” It sounds polite, even inevitable. But when over 80 percent of crashes are caused by human error, what it really means is that we have an entire licensing system that has failed to separate skilled drivers from lucky ones...

Take a boda-boda rider weaving through traffic with a passenger, or a bus driver barreling down a narrow tarmac at 120 km/h — you’ll often find they have licenses that were bought, not earned. The testing process itself is still largely manual, with all the weaknesses that come with it: corruption, inconsistency, and human bias. A few thousand shillings can turn a failed test into a pass. A nod from the right officer can put an incompetent driver on the road.

We have made it easier to buy a license than to earn one, and now we are paying for it — in blood, broken limbs and national income.

 The real scandal isn’t that Ugandans drive badly — it’s that the state allows them to. The current testing regime, in its paper-and-pencil simplicity, was designed for a different era. It can no longer guarantee competence in a country where traffic has multiplied, vehicles have become faster, and the stakes far higher.

A modern transport system cannot be built on guesswork. And yet, every day, thousands of new drivers are churned out by an opaque, corruption-prone system that tests neither knowledge nor reflex. The result is visible in every roadside wreck.

The solution is obvious, but long delayed: automation. We need to take the testing process out of the hands of corruptible humans and hand it over to machines that don’t take bribes or play favourites.

Today fully automated, intelligent driver testing systems that evaluate drivers scientifically rather than emotionally are available.

It starts with something as simple as ensuring that every applicant passes a genuine physical fitness test. Machines can now assess vision, color perception, hearing, reflexes, and coordination — no need for dubious doctor’s letters.

The theory exam, too, can be digitized — a computer randomly generating questions on traffic law, ethics, and road safety, complete with facial recognition to prevent impersonation. And the practical road test? That’s where the real magic happens. Smart vehicles equipped with sensors, cameras, and GPS can measure precision in braking, reversing, hill starts, and cornering with an accuracy no human examiner can match. Every maneuver is scored automatically and transmitted to a central command center that oversees all testing centers across the country in real time. No envelopes. No favours. Just results.

For the first time in a long time, a Ugandan driver’s license would mean what it’s supposed to mean — that the holder actually knows how to drive.

But this is about more than safety. Automation will create jobs for ICT technicians, data analysts, and exam supervisors. It will reduce government costs, improve transparency, and even generate revenue through testing fees. Uganda could become a regional center of excellence for driver testing, setting a benchmark for East Africa.

Most importantly, it would restore public trust. Imagine renewing your license knowing the process is fair, efficient, and incorruptible. Imagine the ripple effect of competence — fewer crashes, lower insurance costs, healthier workers, and a calmer, saner traffic culture.

This is not a futuristic fantasy. The technology exists today. What’s missing is the will to implement it.

 

BOOK REVIEW: MIRIAM'S MILLION SHILLING JOURNEY

Buy the book HERE

There comes a moment in every young Ugandan’s life when the thrill of graduation gives way to the harsh mathematics of survival. Rent. Transport. Airtime. Lunch. “Adulting,” as the younger generation calls it, comes wrapped in bills, deductions, and the quiet anxiety of realizing that a million-shilling salary is not the fortune it once seemed.

That’s where Miriam’s Million-Shilling Journey begins — not in wealth, but in that most relatable of realities: a payslip that promises the world and delivers far less. Miriam, fresh out of campus, steps into her first job with hope as bright as her new office blouse. But when PAYE, NSSF, and the company provident fund have taken their share, her take-home of Shs 600,000 feels more like pocket change than a paycheck.

Enter her retired uncle — part philosopher, part financial whisperer, who doesn’t so much lecture her as guide her, gently but firmly, through the labyrinth of personal finance. His is the wisdom of years spent watching people earn more than they ever imagined, only to die broke. He teaches her, and by extension the reader, that wealth has less to do with the size of your income and more to do with how you deploy every shilling.

Miriam’s story isn’t just a parable — it’s a mirror. The narrative unfolds in short, digestible chapters that could easily be read on a taxi ride or lunch break, each one building from the last. She begins by automating her savings, learning the discipline of “paying herself first.” Her uncle’s advice to treat each shilling as a worker that must bring home more shillings echoes like a drumbeat through the book. The result is a rhythm of small, steady progress: a SACCO contribution here, a side hustle there, an investment in a bond, then her first tentative steps onto the Uganda Securities Exchange.

The book’s genius lies in its simplicity. There are no intimidating spreadsheets or jargon-filled lectures. Instead, it takes global financial wisdom — the kind you find in bestsellers about the wealthy — and translates it into everyday Ugandan experience. You don’t need an MBA to understand it; you just need a willingness to start where you are.

By the time Miriam begins her journey into real estate and diversifying her income, you can almost feel the reader’s own confidence grow. The story cleverly mirrors the financial growth curve it preaches: slow, patient, and cumulative. Each page builds the mental muscle of clarity — that quiet but powerful understanding of where your money goes, why it matters, and how to make it work for you.

At just 50 pages, Miriam’s Million-Shilling Journey

packs a surprising punch. It comes with a companion workbook and practical work plans, turning theory into habit. For teenagers, young adults, and anyone ready to escape the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill, this little book offers more than financial advice — it offers perspective.

It doesn’t promise riches. It promises discipline. And in that, it delivers something even more valuable — peace of mind.

Verdict: A clear, relatable, and proudly Ugandan guide to mastering money — one shilling at a time.

BOOK REVIEW: THE ENDURING ENTERPRISE

AUTHORS: DEVIN DECIATIS & IVAN LANSBERG

Every family business in Uganda has a story. A beginning in sweat, sacrifice, and a little faith. A father who opened a shop in the 1980s with one bale of sugar. A mother who built a salon from her veranda. A son who took over and turned it into a supermarket chain. The story of enterprise here is never just about money; it’s about continuity, the stubborn determination to hold the line through good times and bad.

That spirit is at the heart of The Enduring Enterprise by Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg — a book that could easily have been written for Uganda. It explores how family firms in the world’s most turbulent regions survive and even thrive where others collapse. Their secret? Knowing what to hold onto, and what to let go.

Balancing Legacy and Change

DeCiantis and Lansberg argue that enduring businesses are built on adaptive continuity. They never lose sight of who they are, but they aren’t afraid to reinvent how they do business. The values stay — integrity, thrift, service but the tools evolve.

Uganda’s long-standing business families understand this instinctively. The Mukwano Group expanded from soap to plastics to real estate. Roofings turned steel into an ecosystem of industries. The lesson? Change what you must, but never forget what made you. Continuity without adaptability leads to extinction; adaptability without values leads to chaos.

Trust as Currency

In places where institutions are fragile and contracts unreliable, trust becomes the real currency. The book shows how, in frontier economies, relationships are the scaffolding of survival.

That truth rings loudly in Uganda. The trusted supplier in Kikuubo, the loyal driver who’s been with the family for twenty years, the cousin managing the warehouse, they are all part of the same invisible capital that keeps the business upright when banks tighten credit or policy shifts overnight.

DeCiantis and Lansberg call this relational capital. You can’t list it on a balance sheet, but lose it and you lose everything. Ugandan entrepreneurs would do well to guard it  by honouring their word, paying on time, and mentoring the next generation of trustworthy partners.

Resilience Beats Efficiency

Western business schools preach efficiency — cut costs, go lean, automate. But in frontier economies, the book argues, efficiency can be fatal. Lean systems collapse at the first shock.

Ugandan entrepreneurs already know this. The prudent trader in Owino keeps a stash of emergency stock. The factory owner keeps an old generator in storage. The family transport business maintains two trucks even when one would do. That “inefficiency” is actually strategy, what the authors call stabilizing slack.

In a world of rising uncertainty — climate shocks, currency swings, unpredictable taxes, resilience, not efficiency, is the true competitive edge.

Governance: From Founders to the Future

What kills most family businesses isn’t competition. It’s conflict. DeCiantis and Lansberg point out that the failure to plan for succession is the biggest threat to continuity. When founders pass without clear governance, families fracture, and assets scatter.

Uganda has seen this story too many times — thriving companies that collapse within a year of the patriarch’s passing. The cure, the book insists, is simple but seldom practiced: write it down. A family constitution, clear ownership rules, and a plan for leadership transitions can save decades of hard work.

Governance doesn’t kill family spirit; it protects it. It turns inheritance into stewardship.

The Frontier Mindset

Perhaps the most inspiring insight from The Enduring Enterprise is the idea of the frontier mindset, the ability to turn uncertainty into advantage.

Frontier businesses, the authors say, grow strong because they operate where nothing is guaranteed. They learn to improvise, diversify, and adapt.

That mindset is Uganda’s natural terrain. Whether it’s a family in Lira turning sunflower farming into an oil brand, or a Kampala trader pivoting from imports to local manufacturing, success comes from embracing the chaos, not fearing it.

Ugandan entrepreneurs are already masters of contingency — making payroll when the power’s off, finding customers when the shilling tumbles. The authors’ advice is to systematize that agility. Train teams to pivot. Keep backup suppliers. Build businesses modularly so one part can survive when another fails.

Purpose as a Survival Tool

What keeps family enterprises going through hardship is not just money, it’s meaning. The authors show how enduring families tell their story again and again, binding generations through shared struggle.

In Uganda, that story is everywhere. The grandmother who sold cassava to pay school fees. The father who rebuilt after Amin. The son who registered the business formally so the next generation could inherit it cleanly. These stories are not sentiment; they are strategy. They create identity, loyalty, and purpose.

Families that remember their story endure because they know why they began and for whom.

Lessons for Uganda’s Family Enterprises

From DeCiantis and Lansberg’s global examples come lessons tailored for Uganda’s own economic frontier:

• Govern early — don’t wait for crisis to decide who runs what.
• Preserve buffers — liquidity is resilience; never run too lean.
• Professionalize — let competence, not birth order, guide leadership.
• Diversify wisely — stay close to your core but spread your risk.
• Protect your reputation — trust is the most expensive asset to rebuild.

These may sound like old wisdom — because they are. But in a world as uncertain as ours, old wisdom is modern strategy.

BOOK REVIEW: OUTLIER INVESTORS

It is one of the cruel ironies of investing that the market rewards patience but rarely waits for the patient. Most of us come to the market looking for action — daily moves, quick wins, something to brag about at lunch. Yet the men and women who have truly built fortunes from it tell a different story. They speak of waiting. Of boredom. Of years of quiet conviction. That, more than any formula or trick, is the heart of Outlier Investors by Danial Jiwani — a book about the kind of discipline that wins not through brilliance but endurance.

The Long Game

Jiwani opens with an uncomfortable truth: the majority of investors lose not because they lack information, but because they lack patience. The data is clear. The longer one stays invested in quality assets, the higher the odds of success. Yet most people sell too early — panicked by short-term dips or seduced by momentary highs.

He calls this the “time arbitrage” that separates outliers from the crowd. While the average investor is measuring performance in weeks or months, the greats — Buffett, Munger, Lynch, Fisher — are thinking in decades. They understand that compounding is not a trick of numbers but of temperament. Ten percent returns over thirty years will do more for your wealth than thirty percent returns you cannot sit through for two.

In Jiwani’s telling, patience is not passive. It requires a structure — the discipline to ignore noise, the humility to accept you will never time markets perfectly, and the courage to hold your ground when everyone else is running for the exits.

Thinking Different — and Sticking With It

But patience alone does not make an outlier. The book’s subtitle — What Successful Investors Do That Everyone Else Doesn’t — gives away the central idea. Outlier investors think independently, often contrarianly, and then have the stamina to stay with their conviction until the market catches up.

It is not about being stubborn. It is about reasoning from first principles. One of the anecdotes Jiwani shares involves a fund manager who was widely ridiculed for buying into a declining industrial stock while tech shares were booming. He had done his homework, understood the company’s assets were worth far more than the market price, and quietly accumulated more as the stock sank. Two years later, when sentiment shifted, the stock tripled — not because of luck, but because the investor’s analysis was sound and he had the patience to let reality surface.

This is the hard part of investing: standing still while others are moving. And as Jiwani notes, it is psychologically excruciating. Outliers are not immune to fear or doubt — they just structure their decisions so they don’t have to rely on emotion. They build checklists, rely on process, and accept volatility as part of the journey.

Value, Not Fads

Jiwani is firmly rooted in the tradition of value investing, but his treatment of it is modern and nuanced. He defines “value” not merely as cheapness, but as mispriced quality — companies with strong fundamentals trading below intrinsic worth because the market has temporarily lost interest.

The book illustrates this with a refreshing mix of stories and analysis. There are examples of overlooked firms that quietly compound profits in unglamorous industries — the kind of businesses that rarely trend on Twitter but make fortunes for those who notice early.

The takeaway: price is what you pay, value is what you get. And the only way to truly benefit from that difference is to hold long enough for value to reveal itself. In other words, patience again — not as virtue-signaling, but as a deliberate, data-backed advantage.

Managing Risk Before Reward

If the first rule of wealth is to grow it, the second is not to lose it. Outlier Investors devotes a thoughtful section to risk management — the often invisible backbone of every great investor’s success.

Jiwani dismantles the myth that outliers are reckless visionaries. Quite the opposite: they are obsessed with survival. They think of risk not just as volatility, but as permanent loss of capital. This is why they diversify prudently, size positions carefully, and use debt sparingly. They prefer asymmetric bets — situations where the downside is limited but the upside is large.

He quotes a veteran investor who said, “I only get aggressive when I can’t lose much.” It’s a deceptively simple line, but it captures decades of wisdom. In a world where everyone is chasing returns, outliers chase resilience.

The Battle Within

Perhaps the book’s most powerful chapters are those on psychology. Every investor, Jiwani reminds us, is at war — not with the market, but with themselves.

The biggest enemy is emotion: fear when prices fall, greed when they rise, and the subtle need to fit in. Behavioral bias is what turns good research into bad trades. Outlier investors train themselves to anticipate and counter these impulses. They journal decisions, track mistakes, and develop rituals that separate thought from feeling.

He cites Daniel Kahneman’s observation that knowing your biases doesn’t eliminate them — it only helps you design systems to contain them. That is what outliers do. They build emotional discipline into their processes so they can remain rational when the market is anything but.

A Habit of Learning

If there is one thread that ties all outliers together, it is curiosity. Jiwani paints them as relentless learners — reading widely, questioning assumptions, and absorbing lessons from success and failure alike.

They know markets evolve, industries change, and what worked yesterday might fail tomorrow. So they keep sharpening their edge. It’s not that they predict the future; they simply stay adaptable enough to respond intelligently when it arrives.

In one memorable passage, he compares investing to a lifelong apprenticeship. “The market,” he writes, “is the toughest teacher imaginable — she gives the test first and the lesson after.” The only way to survive that class is to keep studying.

Beyond the Numbers

For all its charts and frameworks, Outlier Investors is ultimately about character. What Jiwani is really describing is a mindset — a combination of humility, patience, and discipline that transcends markets.

You sense that he admires these investors not just for their financial success but for their inner stillness. They have mastered the art of detachment: to act decisively but without desperation, to risk but not gamble, to believe but not idolize.

There’s a passage where he reflects on how markets periodically test conviction. Every bear market, every downturn, is an exam in patience and faith. “The crowd,” he writes, “fails not because it lacks opportunity, but because it runs out of endurance.” Outlier investors, by contrast, seem almost indifferent to the market’s mood swings. They are anchored in process, not prediction.

The Uganda Lesson

In our own market — small, thinly traded, often dominated by sentiment — Jiwani’s lessons feel particularly relevant. Many investors here still equate movement with progress, trading with investing. Yet the most successful portfolios, whether in bonds, property, or stocks, are built quietly over years.

The patient investor who holds a 15-year bond or steadily accumulates shares in a dividend-paying company is doing exactly what Outlier Investors prescribes: compounding silently while others chase noise.

In that sense, the book reads less like foreign theory and more like a mirror — reminding us that the path to wealth is not a secret, only a test of temperament.

Final Thoughts

At just over 250 pages, Outlier Investors is compact but rich. Jiwani’s writing is clear, his examples sharp, and his tone refreshingly practical. He doesn’t romanticize success or glorify risk. Instead, he insists on fundamentals: think independently, manage risk, control emotion, stay patient, and never stop learning.

For readers who want fireworks, this may feel too calm. But for anyone serious about building enduring wealth — whether through the stock exchange, real estate, or entrepreneurship — it is a quietly powerful guide.

In the end, Jiwani leaves us with a simple challenge: Can you stay rational longer than the market can stay noisy?

That, perhaps, is the ultimate test of patience — and the truest measure of an outlier.

BOOK REVIEW: HOW TO MAKE A FEW BILLION DOLLARS

It starts with a simple idea: Think big, but stay practical.

That line, repeated in different ways throughout Brad Jacobs’ How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, is not the brag of a tycoon but the steady drumbeat of a man who has built empires in logistics, equipment rental, and finance — and still insists on the discipline of doing the basics right. The title might sound like Silicon Valley chest-thumping, but what Jacobs offers is far subtler: a manual on how to dream audaciously, execute methodically, and never lose sight of the human side of business.

Jacobs’ story is not your typical rags-to-riches tale. It’s more a chronicle of pattern recognition and persistence. He’s started and led seven companies, all now worth billions, but what sets him apart isn’t luck — it’s his ability to see opportunity where others see chaos, to act fast but think long-term. This book distills the lessons from that journey, and in doing so, offers something rare: a pragmatic philosophy of capitalism that actually makes sense in an age of hype and burnout.

Big Thinking, Small Steps

“Think big” is easy advice to give and even easier to misuse. Most people interpret it as dreaming without execution. Jacobs doesn’t. His version of big thinking is tied to what he calls “tactical realism.” You begin with a vision that’s larger than your current resources — a market transformation, a new industry, a reimagined customer experience — but you must anchor it in small, testable, repeatable actions.

Every giant company he built began with meticulous groundwork: gathering data, testing assumptions, understanding human psychology, and building systems that could scale. The difference between fantasy and ambition, Jacobs suggests, lies in the plan. You must be ready to execute one small disciplined act after another — day after day — until the big idea starts to move under its own momentum.

He dismisses the romantic notion of the lone genius. What wins in the end, he argues, is structured obsession — that blend of curiosity, endurance, and humility that keeps you tinkering with your model until it works.

The Mindset Before the Money

The book’s early chapters focus heavily on psychology. To make billions, Jacobs insists, you must first rearrange your brain. It sounds dramatic, but what he means is that most people are trapped by their own limiting beliefs about risk, effort, and what’s possible.

He breaks this down with examples from his early ventures: how fear, handled properly, can become fuel; how failure, dissected unemotionally, becomes feedback; and how optimism, when paired with realism, is a force multiplier.

What’s refreshing is his refusal to peddle positive-thinking clichés. He treats mindset as a working discipline — a craft that you refine like coding or carpentry. It’s not enough to “believe in yourself.” You must train yourself to act decisively, stay calm amid chaos, and keep learning faster than your competitors.

In a world that worships hustle, Jacobs preaches something more grounded: focus. “Do fewer things, better.”

Finding the Wave Before It Breaks

One of Jacobs’ superpowers is timing — the ability to see trends just before they become obvious. He did it in waste management in the 1980s, in equipment rental in the 1990s, and in logistics in the 2000s.

He argues that technology is the great amplifier of our time — it magnifies both opportunity and risk. But technology itself is not the business; it’s the force multiplier of a good idea. The real work lies in understanding human needs, spotting inefficiencies, and aligning your company with long-term structural shifts.

The point is not to be trendy but to be early and right. “Trends are like waves,” he writes. “Catch them too soon, and you waste energy. Too late, and you drown in the whitewater.”

For any entrepreneur in Uganda or elsewhere, this insight is gold. The market rewards those who prepare in silence long before the crowd catches on — whether it’s renewable energy, AI, logistics, or digital finance.

M&A Without Mayhem

Jacobs is one of the world’s top dealmakers, but he’s blunt about the dangers of mergers and acquisitions. “Most M&A destroys value,” he says flatly. The reason? Ego, poor integration, and cultural mismatch.

His advice reads like the opposite of the Wall Street playbook: move slowly, integrate meticulously, and prioritize people over spreadsheets. The financial model may look great, but if the human systems — incentives, communication, leadership — don’t sync, the deal dies in the boardroom before it ever hits the market.

It’s a lesson worth remembering in a continent like Africa, where consolidation is the next frontier. Scale, Jacobs warns, only helps when culture and execution keep pace.

The Power of Teams and “Electric Meetings”

For all his talk of billions, Jacobs is most passionate when writing about people. His chapters on building teams and running “electric meetings” are among the book’s best.

He sees a company as a living organism — a superorganism in his words — whose intelligence depends on the clarity and trust within it. The leader’s job is to make that organism think faster and smarter.

Meetings, then, are not bureaucratic rituals but moments of energy transfer. A good meeting is “electric”: focused, candid, and generative. Everyone leaves smarter than they arrived. He insists on open debate, rapid decision-making, and no passengers. Every voice counts — but clarity of purpose must prevail.

There’s a quiet humility in how Jacobs describes his management style: listening more than he talks, hiring people smarter than him, and creating conditions for brilliance to emerge.

Fear, Speed, and the Value of Humility

At the heart of his philosophy is paradox: stay humble while chasing greatness. Use fear without being ruled by it. Move fast, but never lose your balance.

Jacobs calls fear of failure “a healthy motivator.” It sharpens focus and fuels learning. But unchecked, it paralyzes. The trick is to make fear your servant, not your master — to channel it into preparation and urgency.

He also insists that humility is a strategic advantage. In a fast-changing world, arrogance is expensive. Markets evolve, technologies shift, consumer habits mutate. The leaders who thrive are the ones who stay teachable — the ones who admit what they don’t know and keep adjusting.

It’s an insight that applies as much to national economies as to personal finance. The Ugandan business ecosystem, for instance, often punishes vulnerability and rewards bluster. Jacobs flips that logic: those willing to learn fastest win longest.

Beyond the Money

Perhaps the most surprising thread in the book is how little it talks about money as an end. Jacobs uses wealth as a metaphor for impact. He argues that the principles of wealth creation — vision, execution, adaptability, empathy — are transferable. They work in the arts, philanthropy, sports, and even family life.

His success, he insists, is not about accumulation but creation. The joy is in building something that endures, something that improves lives. “Wealth,” he writes, “is not a number. It’s a process of increasing value — for others, for yourself, for the world.”

That’s a message that lands powerfully for anyone building from modest beginnings. You don’t need billions to apply billionaire discipline. You just need the mindset that treats every opportunity — every shilling, every relationship — as a seed worth nurturing.

Final Thoughts

Brad Jacobs’ How to Make a Few Billion Dollars isn’t a motivational pep talk. It’s a builder’s manual — dense with frameworks, reflections, and stories that reveal how empires are really made.

Its lessons could as easily apply to a mid-level manager in Kampala as to a Wall Street investor:

• Think big, but stay practical.

• Spot the trend before it breaks.

• Fear is useful — if you own it.

• People matter more than deals.

• Culture eats valuation for breakfast.

What lingers after the final page isn’t the glamour of billions but the quiet dignity of craftsmanship. Jacobs reminds us that wealth — real wealth — is built in layers: curiosity, courage, character, and execution.

And in that sense, this isn’t just a book about making money. It’s about mastering the art of making things happen.