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.