When Oxfam reported last week that one percent of Kenyans control 78 percent of the country’s wealth, there was a sharp intake of breath across the region.
Inequality is
not news, but such a naked statistic hits differently. Kenya—East Africa’s
economic powerhouse, with deeper capital markets, a broader tax base, a
stronger middle class, and a culture of data transparency still finds itself
staring into an abyss of wealth concentration. And if this is Kenya, what on
earth might Uganda’s distribution look like? Our guess, if we ever bothered to
measure it, is that the disparity would be even more dramatic.
Uganda’s structural foundations were laid in a way that almost guarantees a tight concentration of wealth at the top. Our economy still leans heavily on low-value agriculture and a vast informal sector, both of which struggle to accumulate capital.Infrastructure gaps from roads that dissolve every rainy season to electricity that flickers like a hesitant flame, more difficult than it should be. A farmer may produce, a trader may hustle, but reaching the customer remains a heroic enterprise.
Our business
environment does us no favours either.
The World
Bank’s past Doing Business reports have consistently shown how tortuous it can
be to start a company, secure permits, enforce contracts, or even understand
the tax code. Add to that a human capital
challenge skills mismatches, limited vocational training,
uneven education outcomes and you begin to see how productivity is throttled at
the source.
Then, of course, there is corruption: the ever-present shadow tax on everything. It quietly inflates costs, diverts resources, distorts incentives, and erodes trust. In such an environment, those with access to capital, networks, land, and privileged information inevitably pull ahead—and then accelerate. Once inside that circle, the compounding begins. Wealth grows faster than the economy itself, while the majority labour twice as hard only to remain pinned to subsistence.
But to blame
structure alone is to miss the full picture. There is a more intimate layer to
Uganda’s inequality one woven out of
personal financial behaviour. Give two Ugandans the same
income, and watch where they end up ten years later. One budgets, saves early,
invests regularly, keeps records, buys assets, steadily builds. The other
spends in the moment, postpones saving, dreads paperwork, relies on expensive
borrowing, and treats financial planning as something to attempt “when things
settle”. Over time, these behaviours carve out chasms that no government
programme can bridge.
This is where
the global lesson becomes clear: eliminating wealth
inequality is utopian. It does not exist anywhere, not even in
Scandinavia—the poster child for equality. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark boast
some of the world’s lowest income inequality numbers, with Gini coefficients in
the mid-20s to low-30s after taxes and transfers. But shift the lens to wealth,
and the picture sharpens in uncomfortable ways.
In Sweden,
the top 10 percent control between 60 and 70 percent of all wealth, while the
top 1 percent hold more than a third. Across Scandinavia, the top 0.01 percent
command nearly five percent of national wealth, numbers eerily similar to those
of unapologetically capitalist economies like the United States.
"The welfare state flattens incomes, yes, but accumulated capital continues to compound in the hands of those who started early, invested wisely, and stayed disciplined. Even the world’s most equal societies cannot iron out the wealth curve. Which brings us back home.
If we were to
hazard a breakdown, structural factors—poor infrastructure, weak business
environment, corruption, limited industrialisation, and lagging human capital might
explain 60 to 70 percent
of our disparity. But the remaining 30 to 40 percent?
That is personal. It is behaviour. It is habit. It is mindset. And unlike the
structural issues, this part can change today—without a parliamentary vote, a
budget allocation, or a donor conference.
Kenya’s 78
percent statistic is frightening, yes. But it is also clarifying. Inequality is
not exclusively a national problem to be solved in boardrooms and government
offices. It is a household problem, shaped by the roads we build and the habits we keep.
By the markets we regulate and the budgets we maintain. By the schools we run
and the savings we protect.
Uganda will never eliminate wealth inequality. No society ever has. But we can blunt its harshest edges. And the quickest lever available to us is not a new policy framework or an ambitious reform blueprint it is a quiet revolution in personal financial behaviour across millions of Ugandan homes.
