UGANDA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH IS REAL, BUT LET IT COME WITH DIGNITY

Last week I attended a function in a suburb of Kampala, which when I first visited it 30 years ago was not served by a tarmac road. It has had a paved ring road now for at least 10 years and the difference from the dusty rutted track of those many years ago is so drastic as to make the whole area unrecognizable.

The apartment building bug has not bitten, but the road is now lined with shops, garages and commercial buildings, which front a sprawling residential area. One can say the people of the area have done well for themselves.

The changes in this one place, replicated around Kampala made me take a look back through my blog – of the same name as this column to see whether It captured the changes that have been happening. Slow because we are in the forest of things but dramatic nevertheless.

In 2010, when my blog Shillings & Cents started chronicling Uganda’s journey through the thickets of development, the outlook was cautiously hopeful.

"The economy was growing at around six percent, the national budget had just crossed sh7.5 trillion, and the idea that Uganda could one day hit middle-income status wasn’t laughable—it was just… distant...

Fast forward to 2025 and the budget now stands at a staggering sh72 trillion. The economy has crossed sh250 trillion in GDP. Inflation is tamed – in 2011 it hit a 19 year high of 30 percent. Life expectancy is up. Mobile money is a way of life. The National Social Security Fund (NSSF), once a sleepy bureaucratic entity, has grown into a sh20 trillion financial behemoth. Uganda today is a very different animal from what it was fifteen years ago. And we must say it plainly—we’ve done well to get this far.

Especially when you consider the global context.

Over the past decade and a half, the world has stumbled from one economic crisis to another. The 2010 Eurozone debt crunch, the China slowdown, COVID-19, supply chain disruptions, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and now, tightening global credit conditions. Through it all, Uganda’s economy has remained on its feet—sometimes limping, sometimes jogging but never knocked out.

That resilience deserves more attention than it gets. It hasn’t happened by accident.

For one, Uganda’s economy is far more diversified today than it was in the early 2000s. We’re no longer clinging desperately to coffee and copper. Agriculture still plays a major role, but now construction, services, ICT, and even oil and gas are in the mix. There are young Ugandans writing code, exporting crafts on Etsy, and building businesses in fields their parents never imagined. From Gulu to Mbarara, the quiet hum of commerce has spread.

And we’re more regionally plugged in than ever before. South Sudan is now one of our top export destinations. Congolese buyers are regulars in downtown Kampala. Our traders, manufacturers, and transporters are slowly embedding Uganda into the heart of the East African economic engine. This regional integration has created a cushion against global shocks. When the West sneezes, we no longer catch pneumonia quite as quickly.

Add to that the revolution in financial inclusion

. Mobile money has changed everything. What started as a basic platform to send and receive cash is now a full-blown ecosystem: payments, loans, savings, insurance, and even investment products all on a phone. People who’ve never seen the inside of a bank now manage their daily finances digitally. Informal traders, boda riders, market women—millions of Ugandans are now part of a financial system they were previously excluded from. That alone has unlocked trillions of shillings in dormant capital.

The growth in personal savings is also encouraging. The NSSF has grown exponentially, both in member numbers and assets under management. It is now one of the largest institutional investors in East Africa, helping fund roads, real estate, and industrial parks. And unlike many state agencies, it has—mostly stayed clean and efficient.

So yes, Uganda has made undeniable progress. The share of the population living below the poverty line has fallen, though stubborn regional inequalities remain. Life expectancy is over 63, up from 53 in 2010. More mothers give birth in health centres. More children survive to age five. More of them go to school. These are not statistics—they are lived improvements.

And yet. And yet.

Despite all the praise, all the ribbon-cuttings, all the budget increases, Uganda’s development journey still suffers from a deep malaise: corruption.

It doesn’t matter how good your policies are, how much money you allocate, or how clear your vision is—if the money leaks before it hits the ground, progress will remain stunted. And that is exactly what has plagued Uganda for the past two decades. From inflated contracts and ghost payments to endless project delays and shoddy workmanship, corruption has undermined nearly every sector meant to drive transformation.

Take roads, for example. Yes, we’ve built more roads in the last 15 years than in the previous 50. But how many of them are holding up? How many are still in warranty? How many feeder roads—essential for farmers to reach markets—are still impassable during the rainy season?

Health and education? Budgets have grown. So have the number of facilities. But too many schools still lack furniture. Too many teachers are underpaid. Too many health centres still run out of medicine. And somewhere in between the Ministry of Finance, the district engineers, and the contractor’s bank account—the money disappears.

We need to stop pretending that corruption is an unfortunate side effect of development. It is the primary reason we are not where we should be. Uganda could have done even better—much better if we were simply more honest with ourselves and our institutions.

That said, let’s thank God we are no longer in the 1980s.

Those were the years of price controls, ration queues, government monopolies, and empty shelves. Uganda back then was a textbook case of economic collapse. The liberalisation of the 1990s and early 2000s—controversial as it was freed the market, brought in private capital, and allowed enterprise to flourish. Without it, there would be no MTN, no Airtel, no mobile money, no supermarkets, no telecom towers. We would not be discussing AI, chip design, or e-commerce as part of Uganda’s future.

So yes, we’ve come far. We are stronger, more diversified, more regionally connected, more digitally savvy, and more economically active than we were fifteen years ago.

But we must now turn that growth into dignity.

Dignity for the mother who walks five kilometres to a health centre and finds no midwife. Dignity for the farmer whose road washes away each season. Dignity for the child sitting in a classroom with no desk, no books, and no teacher.

Growth is good. But dignity is better.

Because at the end of the day, progress isn’t a PowerPoint slide. It’s the borehole that works. The classroom with a roof. The hospital with medicine.

Uganda has shown it can grow. Now let’s prove we can grow well.