DANGOTE’S REAL REFINERY IS CONFIDENCE

There is a reason Aliko Dangote is once again dominating Africa’s business conversation.

Yes, his 650,000 barrels-per-day refinery, the largest on the continent is reshaping Africa’s energy landscape. Yes, he is talking about another refinery of similar scale in East Africa and plans for a continent-wide share sale.

But the real significance of Dangote lies elsewhere.

He has de-risked African ambition.

For decades, Africa has suffered from a peculiar inferiority complex. We complain endlessly about poor infrastructure, unreliable power, weak transport systems and limited industrial capacity, yet many of us never truly believed projects of global scale could actually be built here by Africans.

Big refineries were for the Gulf. Industrial megaprojects were for China. Africa’s role was to export raw materials and import finished products at a premium.

Then Dangote built the world’s largest single-train refinery in Lagos.

And suddenly the impossible no longer looks impossible.

That matters because confidence is one of the most underrated forms of infrastructure.

The refinery itself is important, yes. But perhaps its greatest contribution is psychological. It has shown investors, governments and entrepreneurs that African industrial scale is not fantasy. It can be done. More importantly, it can make money.

That last point is critical.

Africans often talk about profit as though it is morally suspicious. Yet every prosperous society in history has been built by people pursuing profit through solving large societal problems. Dangote looked at Africa’s absurd dependence on imported refined fuel despite being rich in crude oil and saw an opportunity.

The result is a refinery capable of meeting Nigeria’s domestic fuel demand while exporting refined products across the continent.

This is capitalism functioning as it should: private ambition aligned with public utility.

Indeed, Dangote is yet another validation of perhaps the most important economic lesson of the last 40 years — the private sector creates wealth far more effectively than governments ever can.

The role of government is not to run businesses. It is to create an environment in which businesses can thrive — stable policy, predictable regulation, security, infrastructure and functioning public institutions.

Businesses then create wealth. Governments tax that wealth and use the revenues to provide public goods such as roads, hospitals, schools and security, which in turn improve the business environment further.

That is the virtuous cycle prosperous societies have mastered.

Dangote illustrates this perfectly. His companies are among the biggest taxpayers in Nigeria. In effect, private enterprise is helping finance the Nigerian state itself.

But perhaps the most fascinating part of the Dangote story is how he financed the refinery.

Africa has become accustomed to thinking of large projects through sovereign borrowing and donor support. Dangote approached financing differently. He raised commercial capital from international markets based on hard numbers, projected cashflows and bankable economics.

During a recent interview with Norwegian fund manager Nicolai Tangen, Dangote casually listed some of the international institutions backing his projects, among them Standard Bank and Standard Chartered.

That revealed something important: he has cracked the code of how to present African projects to global capital..

Not through emotional appeals about poverty or development.

But through commercially compelling proposals grounded in scale, demand and profitability.

The refinery reportedly cost about $20 billion — the kind of figure normally associated with sovereign states, not private individuals. Yet that is precisely the point. Dangote is operating at the scale African nations are supposed to play.

And now comes the next phase.

The planned continent-wide Initial Public Offering (IPO) is not merely about prestige. It is potentially a watershed moment for Africa’s capital markets themselves.

For years we have claimed Africa lacks financing for infrastructure. That is only partly true. Africa does not lack money. African pension funds, insurance pools, sovereign funds and private savings collectively hold billions of dollars. The volume of transactions on mobile money are proof enough.

What Africa lacks is the infrastructure  and often the confidence in existing market infrastructure  to mobilise and aggregate those savings into transformational projects.

Dangote’s listing could help change that.

By going to continental bourses, he is helping energise Africa’s own capacity to fund its development agenda. African pension funds and ordinary investors could directly participate in financing infrastructure that benefits them.

The likely objective of the IPO will also be to pay down part of the refinery’s debt burden, freeing up capital for further expansion into refining, fertiliser, petrochemicals and power generation.

That is how industrial ecosystems are built.

Success creates confidence. Confidence attracts capital. Capital finances expansion. Expansion creates scale.

During the interview with the Norwegian fund manager Dangote made the argument this column has long argued, that businessmen attract businessmen more effectively than smooth-tongued officials pitching investment opportunities abroad.

Success markets itself.

When investors see a refinery operating at that scale in Africa, they begin to imagine what else is possible — fertiliser plants, steel mills, logistics corridors and regional rail systems.

Yet predictably, Dangote has also created enemies. Import cartels, middlemen and corrupt bureaucracies thrive in systems built around scarcity and inefficiency. Large transformational projects threaten existing rent-seeking networks.

Which is why Africa needs more Dangotes.

Not because billionaires are saints. But because the continent desperately needs businessmen with enough ambition, scale and risk appetite to drag development forward faster than bureaucracies can delay it.

But for Africa to produce more Dangotes, it must finally confront one of its biggest economic failures: fragmentation.

We cannot build continental industrial giants while operating as 54 disconnected economies.

A refinery producing 650,000 barrels per day only makes sense within a large integrated market. The same applies to railways, fertiliser plants and manufacturing hubs.

Scale matters.

Dangote’s story ultimately is not about oil.

It is about belief.

Belief that African capital can build globally competitive infrastructure. Belief that African businessmen can think at continental scale. Belief that profit and public good are not enemies.

Most importantly, it is proof that Africa’s vast bounty will not be unlocked by rhetoric.

It will be unlocked by Africans bold enough to build.

THE FALL OF AMONG WAS NOT ABOUT CORRUPTION

After perhaps the most intense weekend of her life, Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Anita Among announced that she would not put herself up for re-election as leader of the country’s legislature in the next Parliament.

The decision came after days of extraordinary political drama: armed security personnel surrounding her home, reports of billions of shillings discovered in dollars, euros and pounds, and mounting public outrage over her newly acquired Rolls Royce.

"In the end, it was the Rolls Royce that finally shifted Anita Among from controversial politician into symbol of elite excess...

The luxury vehicle, reportedly flown into Uganda brand new in January rather than imported second-hand like most luxury vehicles in the country, instantly became politically toxic. Depending on specification, a new Rolls-Royce Cullinan or comparable Rolls Royce model can retail between £350,000 and £450,000 before shipping, taxes and customisation — roughly Shs1.7 billion to Shs2.2 billion at current exchange rates, and potentially much higher once fully imported into Uganda.

In a country where many civil servants struggle to survive on monthly salaries below Shs1 million, the symbolism was devastating.

The subsequent raid merely completed the picture in the public mind.

And in politics, once the public mind settles, recovery becomes almost impossible.

Ironically, she seemed politically untouchable only weeks ago

What makes Among’s apparent fall even more startling is that she emerged from the recent election cycle looking politically stronger than almost anyone in the system except President Yoweri Museveni himself.

Unlike many senior politicians who spent months fighting for survival in their constituencies, Among appeared liberated from ordinary political anxieties. She was elected virtually unopposed and therefore free to crisscross the country shepherding Museveni’s campaign effort and consolidating influence inside the ruling establishment.

At the height of the campaign season, she projected the aura of a politician whose future looked secure, expansive and perhaps even ascendant.

Which is why the speed of her apparent political collapse has caught nearly everyone by surprise.

From indebted MPs to dangerously wealthy politicians

Back on September 9, 2012, in a Shillings & Cents commentary titled “Uganda: MP indebtedness compromising Parliament?” Shillings & Cents — Uganda: MP indebtedness compromising Parliament? (September 9, 2012), I argued that financial vulnerability weakens independent political judgement because politicians trapped by debt become captives of survival rather than servants of principle.

But there is an opposite side to that same coin: excessive accumulation can be just as politically dangerous as indebtedness.

Because wealth changes political incentives.

Ironically, the two realities may now have collided in spectacular fashion inside Parliament itself. For years, quiet whispers around Kampala’s political corridors have suggested that many MPs are indebted up to their eyeballs, not just to banks, but directly to powerful parliamentary figures including Anita Among and Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa, who allegedly evolved into major lenders to legislators.

That matters politically.

Because debt creates dependency. A financially desperate MP is easier to influence, easier to mobilise and easier to discipline. In such an environment, political authority stops being purely institutional and increasingly becomes financial. Patronage then evolves from campaign support into a parallel credit system operating within the legislature itself.

Seen this way, the wealth allegations against Among are not just about personal excess. They potentially point to the emergence of an alternative internal power structure rooted not merely in constitutional office but in financial leverage over fellow politicians...

The coalition that may now be unravelling

But power built through financial patronage rarely operates alone. It inevitably creates a coalition — beneficiaries, loyalists, fixers and opportunists tied together not necessarily by ideology but by access, favours and mutual vulnerability.

Among appears to have cobbled together precisely such a coalition.

Many within it may never have fully understood what her ultimate political endgame was. Some may simply have been responding to immediate incentives: campaign financing, loans, committee influence, parliamentary protection or proximity to power. But once a system begins to suspect that such a coalition is evolving beyond patronage into an independent political centre of gravity, alarm bells inevitably begin ringing.

Which is why this process may still be in its early stages.

It would not be surprising if more politicians, brokers and parliamentary actors are quietly summoned by security agencies in the coming weeks — at best to explain their role within the broader network, at worst to help stitch Among up politically and legally...

Because elite political takedowns are rarely clean or isolated affairs. They often involve carefully dismantling the ecosystem around the principal target.

Yet therein also lies the regime’s dilemma.

The system must manage the process carefully because a genuinely unconstrained anti-corruption campaign could end up bringing down far more than a single political figure. Too many interests are interconnected. Too many careers, alliances and financial relationships overlap.

A serious, uncontrolled excavation of corruption at the highest levels could destabilise the very political edifice the state is trying to preserve.

And that carries potentially damning political consequences.

“Rich men get into politics to protect their wealth”

My father once told me something that sounded cynical at the time but has proved remarkably accurate over the years: “Rich men get into politics to protect their wealth.”

Not necessarily to create wealth. To protect it.

The moment wealth reaches a certain scale, politics stops being an arena of service and becomes a form of insurance. A shield. A guarantee against investigation, prosecution, confiscation or political extinction. That is why across the world, from oligarchies to fragile democracies, wealth and political power eventually begin circling each other like magnets.

In Uganda’s case, this intersection has become increasingly delicate because of the country’s unresolved succession question.

That is why the Anita Among story cannot simply be understood as an anti-corruption story. Corruption is merely the surface layer. The deeper issue is political consequence...

When an individual accumulates wealth at the scale now being alleged, especially while occupying the third most powerful office in the land, it inevitably creates political possibilities. Wealth brings networks. Networks bring influence. Influence breeds ambition, whether stated openly or quietly nurtured behind closed doors.

It would not be far-fetched to conclude that at some point, if she felt politically threatened or isolated, Among’s resources could eventually become the foundation for a play for higher office or, at the very least, a destabilising political faction.

The system gave her enough rope

Power in politics is rarely surrendered voluntarily. It is managed pre-emptively.

That is why the current developments feel less like spontaneous accountability and more like controlled political surgery.

The system appears to have given her enough rope to hang herself. The Rolls Royce became symbolic excess at a time when ordinary Ugandans are struggling with school fees, rent and taxes. The foreign currency allegations then transformed public irritation into moral outrage. She is now politically indefensible in the court of public opinion, which is perhaps the most important battlefield of all.

Was the Sovereignty Bill really about foreign influence?

But there is another intriguing layer to this story that may explain the hurried and controversial introduction of the Protection of Sovereignty Bill earlier this month, and the insistence that the 11th Parliament pass it as virtually its last order of business.

It seems inconceivable that such vast quantities of dollars, euros and pounds could have been accumulated purely through domestic circulation. Hard currency at that scale immediately raises uncomfortable questions about external linkages, foreign financial networks and possible international political interests. Whether those suspicions are true or not almost becomes secondary because in statecraft perception often matters as much as fact.

If the security establishment had reason to believe that foreign actors were cultivating relationships with ambitious political elites during a sensitive succession moment, then the Sovereignty Bill begins to look less random and more strategic.

Suddenly the urgency makes sense.

Suddenly the procedural flaws, the haste and the political pressure to pass it before the end of the parliamentary term begin to appear less like legislative incompetence and more like elite panic...

The state may have concluded that Uganda is entering the dangerous phase many countries face during leadership transitions: the point where internal elite competition starts attracting foreign interest and external influence operations.

History is full of such moments.

Foreign governments and interests rarely wait for transitions to happen before positioning themselves. They cultivate networks early, identify emerging centres of power and quietly build leverage. In fragile political environments, money often becomes the first instrument of influence.

Seen through that lens, the move against Among may not simply have been about corruption or even succession management. It may also have been about shutting down what the system perceived as an emerging node of political and possibly foreign-backed power before it fully matured.

Norbert Mao’s curious role

There is also the curious role played by Norbert Mao in recent weeks. His increasingly public positioning around the Speakership now looks less accidental and more tactical. In hindsight, Mao may have been deployed as a political red herring — a deliberate irritant designed to ruffle Among’s feathers, unsettle her camp and pressure her into strategic mistakes.

Politics often works this way. Direct confrontation is avoided until the target has been psychologically isolated, politically cornered and emotionally destabilised.

One suspects there may initially have been efforts to engineer a quiet exit — a negotiated stepping aside in exchange for dignity, protection and preservation of some political relevance. But if Among resisted such overtures, believing perhaps that her networks, resources and institutional position still gave her leverage, then the escalation we are now witnessing becomes easier to understand...

The result has been a political sideshow that increasingly feels choreographed but is far from over.

Because once elite conflicts spill into public view, they develop their own momentum. Rival factions emerge. Old grudges resurface. Opportunists circle. The public becomes emotionally invested. And institutions themselves can become theatres of political signalling.

The transition question lurking beneath everything

And timing matters.

These developments are unfolding immediately after Museveni’s swearing-in on May 12 and just before new cabinet and political appointments are expected. That cannot be accidental. Political transitions, especially long-managed ones, are rarely dramatic events announced in a single speech. They are often quiet processes involving the careful elimination of obstacles, rivals, uncertainties and centres of independent power.

In many ways, Among may have become the last major obstacle to what appears to be an attempt at constructing an orderly transition architecture behind closed doors...

Uganda’s political history teaches us that transitions are feared precisely because they can easily descend into elite fragmentation. The governing system therefore has every incentive to tightly control the process, neutralise unpredictable actors and ensure that succession happens within a carefully supervised framework.

Seen through that lens, the move against Among begins to make strategic sense.

Why nations fail

The irony, however, is that this entire saga also validates another warning I wrote about recently on August 18, 2024, in a Shillings & Cents commentary titled “Uganda, beware of Why Nations Fail” Shillings & Cents — Uganda, beware of Why Nations Fail (August 18, 2024), discussing Why Nations Fail.

Nations fail not simply because leaders steal. Many countries survive corruption for decades. Nations fail when institutions become too weak to regulate the ambitions of powerful individuals and when political systems become overly personalised.

When wealth accumulation becomes inseparable from state power, politics itself becomes a high-stakes survival game. Public office stops being about governance and becomes access to protection. Losing office then becomes existential.

That is where danger begins.

Because once political competition is no longer about ideas, competence or ideology but about protection of accumulated wealth, transitions become harder, more suspicious and potentially more unstable.

The real lesson

Ironically, the Among saga may therefore reveal both the strength and weakness of the current system simultaneously.

Its strength lies in demonstrating that no political figure, however powerful, is untouchable if the system decides otherwise.

Its weakness lies in the uncomfortable public realisation that wealth accumulation at the highest levels may have proceeded unchecked until political calculations shifted.

Ugandans should therefore resist the temptation to see this merely as entertainment or palace intrigue. It is actually a revealing window into how power is organised, managed and contested in modern Uganda.

And perhaps the biggest lesson is this: in political systems where wealth and power become too intertwined, the fall of powerful individuals is rarely about morality alone.

It is usually about timing.

FORTY YEARS ON: ARE WE FORGETTING HOW WE GOT HERE?

Tomorrow, President Yoweri Museveni takes his seventh oath of office.

Politics aside, the last forty years represent the longest period of sustained economic growth in our country's recorded history. And if you ask observers to name the two biggest achievements of the NRM era, the answers converge quickly: the restoration of security, and the revitalisation of the economy. What is less often appreciated is how deeply the two fed off each other.

In 1986, Uganda was not merely poor. It was dangerous. Investors do not build factories in war zones. Farmers do not plant crops they cannot be sure of harvesting. Security was not just a political achievement — it was the precondition for everything that followed. And as stability returned, the economy began to breathe. And as the economy grew, it gave the state resources to consolidate security further. Growth and stability became mutually reinforcing — a virtuous cycle now so established that we have forgotten it was ever built.

In 1986, the economy was worth roughly $3.5–4 billion. Today it stands at over $50 billion. Exports have grown from under $500 million to nearly $14 billion. VAT alone now contributes Shs8–10 trillion annually — more than the entire tax take of 2006. That is not a footnote. That is a transformation.

But transformations have authors. When VAT was introduced, Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) shut down shops in protest across Kampala for a week. The reform held anyway.

When Nile Breweries was privatised — after fierce, protracted debates the President presided over personally it was producing 2,000 crates a month. Today that output disappears over a long weekend on Bandali Rise.

When agricultural liberalisation came, farmers began earning 70–80 percent of world prices instead of the fraction they had received under state monopolies.

Behind all of it the government forced discipline at a time when indiscipline would have been far easier, and far more popular. And we have begun, rather dangerously, to take what was built for granted.

But here is the part the numbers do not tell you.

The gains have not been shared equally. Uganda remains one of the more unequal economies in East Africa, and the gap between those who have benefited from four decades of growth and those still waiting is wide and, in some places, widening.

The answer starts in agriculture, where the majority of Ugandans still earn their living. Better incentives for farmers, investment in rural infrastructure, access to inputs and markets — these are not new ideas. They are ideas that have not been implemented with the seriousness they deserve. An economy growing at 6 percent while most farmers operate at subsistence level is an economy running on one engine.

The business environment matters too. Corruption — at the counter, in the procurement office, at the border remains a tax on ambition. Every shilling lost to a bribe is a shilling that does not become a job or an export. Fighting corruption is not a moral exercise. It is an economic one.

And then there is oil.

Uganda is edging toward first oil, and the temptation will be to treat the revenues as a solution — a cushion against fiscal pressures, a substitute for the harder work of broadening the tax base and improving the investment climate. That would be a mistake.

Oil revenues, without extraordinary discipline, concentrate wealth rather than distribute it. The resource curse is not a myth. Rents flow upward. Politics become more transactional. And there is a deeper risk — that oil money disrupts the very virtuous cycle that sustained Uganda for forty years, funding patronage rather than institutions, rewarding loyalty rather than productivity, and quietly hollowing out the foundations that made growth possible.

Uganda cannot afford to let oil scuttle four decades of hard-won progress. The revenues must serve the economy, not replace it.

Forty years is long enough for an entire generation to grow up knowing only stability. The battles that produced it — over VAT, privatisation, liberalisation — are ancient history to a 25-year-old in Kikoni. The architecture of the economy is taken for granted, like electricity that only becomes remarkable when it goes off.

The restoration of security and the revitalisation of the economy is a genuine achievement. It should be acknowledged clearly and without embarrassment.

But the next forty years will be defined by whether those gains reach the farmer in Kapchorwa, the trader in Arua, the graduate in Lira who is talented, ambitious, and running out of patience.

That is the real measure of the milestone. And it remains unfinished business.

MTN PROFITS MARGINALLY DOWN, BUT MOMO TRANSACTION VALUE RACES AHEAD

MTN Uganda’s first quarter results reflect a business that absorbed a political and operational shock—but still kept its core engines running.

Profit after tax fell 3.8 percent to Shs174 billion, while margins softened under pressure from higher costs, increased depreciation from heavy network investment, and rising finance charges. Yet EBITDA still rose 4.3 percent to Shs462.9 billion, signalling underlying operational resilience.

The defining event of the quarter was the January internet shutdown during the general elections. The disruption curtailed both data services and mobile money access, affecting usage, transaction flows and new customer onboarding.

That impact is evident in the numbers: revenue growth slowed to 7.8 percent, while fintech performance—though positive—was uneven. In a normal operating environment, these segments would likely have posted stronger gains.

Even so, mobile money delivered the standout metric of the quarter.

Transaction values surged 31.2 percent to Shs55.1 trillion, far outpacing the 7.0 percent growth in volumes to 1.25 billion transactions.

This divergence points to a deeper shift: users are increasingly transacting larger amounts on the platform, signalling growing trust and the migration of more substantive economic activity onto mobile money rails.

Fintech revenue rose 7.4 percent to Shs274.5 billion, suggesting monetisation is still lagging usage growth. Data revenue grew 13.6 percent to Shs267.6 billion, supported by a 16.4 percent rise in users—though even here, growth was tempered by the shutdown.

Meanwhile, MTN ramped up investment, with capex (ex-leases) jumping nearly 70 percent to Shs201.5 billion, reinforcing its long-term digital infrastructure play.

Summary of results

Metric	Q1 2026	Q1 2025	% Change
Total Revenue (Shs bn)	914.5	848.0	+7.8%
Service Revenue (Shs bn)	905.9	841.4	+7.7%
Data Revenue (Shs bn)	267.6	235.6	+13.6%
Fintech Revenue (Shs bn)	274.5	255.6	+7.4%
EBITDA (Shs bn)	462.9	444.0	+4.3%
Profit After Tax (Shs bn)	174.0	180.9	-3.8%
Capex ex-leases (Shs bn)	201.5	118.7	+69.8%
MoMo Value (Shs tn)	55.1	42.0	+31.2%

The takeaway is straightforward: the shutdown dented momentum, but did not derail it. If anything, the surge in mobile money values suggests that once normal conditions resume, MTN’s growth story—anchored on data and fintech—remains firmly intact.

THE SOVEREIGNITY BILL & THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIVER

Believe it or not, there was a time when foreign aid accounted for as much as 70 percent of Uganda’s national budget.

It is a statistic that sounds almost implausible today. Yet for those who lived through the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the lived reality of a country on its knees—fiscally constrained, policy-dependent, and negotiating its priorities as much as defining them.

That reality has been decisively reversed.

And it did not happen by accident.

It happened because Uganda made a series of bold, often unpopular decisions to liberalise its economy—opening up to foreign direct investment, incentivising production, and, perhaps most importantly, unleashing the initiative of its own citizens. The shift from state control to market orientation was not ideological fashion; it was economic necessity...

Today, the numbers tell the story.

In the early 1990s, donor support financed roughly half of Uganda’s national budget. In some sectors, particularly recurrent expenditure and debt servicing, dependence was even more acute. Fast forward to the 2024/25 financial year, and total external support has fallen to about 15.2 percent of the Shs 72.1 trillion budget. Direct budget support accounts for just 1.9 percent (Shs 1.39 trillion), while project support contributes another 13.3 percent (Shs 9.58 trillion). Domestic revenue now finances 44.3 percent of the budget, with the balance coming from domestic borrowing and refinancing.

That is not just a statistical shift.

It is a structural transformation.

And it is the context within which the current debate on the sovereignty bill must be understood.

As Mwesigwa Rukutana—who served as State Minister for Finance during those years of peak dependency reflected last week, Uganda’s policy autonomy was once severely constrained. Budgets and development plans were subject to approval by institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The path out required not just compliance, but conviction: increase production, expand exports, manage inflation, and fully liberalise capital flows.

Uganda chose that path.

And we were fortunate in the calibre of minds that guided it. The steadying hands and intellectual conviction of Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, Chris Kassami and Keith Muhakanizi were central to the reforms that brought us to this point. They were not just technocrats; they were custodians of discipline in a period when indiscipline would have been politically easier...

We miss them.

And perhaps more importantly, we have begun to take what they built for granted.

That is the double-edged sword of success. On the one hand, it is a sign that sound policy has become so embedded in our daily lives that it feels natural. On the other, it breeds complacency—the dangerous illusion that progress was inevitable, automatic.

Only the other day, an armchair pundit on radio made precisely that claim.

It was not inevitable.

We had come from such a deep hole that even Lee Kuan Yew, the man who led Singapore from a third-world backwater to a first-world economy remarked in 1988, that Uganda would not recover in a hundred years. That was the scale of the collapse. That was the depth of the scepticism.

And yet, here we are.

Not perfect. Not finished. But undeniably transformed.

There was, at the time, a chorus of dissent. Armchair socialists warned against “kowtowing” to Bretton Woods institutions, advocating instead for a more insular, state-controlled model. In hindsight, that would have been a grave mistake. 

Had Uganda chosen that route, we would likely still be grappling with shortages, rationing essentials, and navigating an economy where access depended more on connections than on markets. The indignity of needing a minister’s chit to access basic goods would not be a distant memory—it would be current affairs.

That was not sovereignty.

That was stagnation.

The growth of the last four decades—exports rising from about $711 million in the mid-1990s to over $13 billion today, inflation largely stabilised, and a vibrant private sector taking root, was neither inevitable nor accidental. It was earned.

"Which is why the sovereignty bill should give us pause.

Because what has been built is not irreversible...

And because some of the signals emerging from this debate suggest that its framers may not fully appreciate the journey that got us here. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they do not know, rather than have forgotten, what it took to pull Uganda back from the abyss. It is the only explanation for why we would contemplate legislation that risks incinerating decades of progress without a clear appreciation of the consequences...

Take the concerns raised by central bank governor Michael Atingi-Ego in his representation to Parliament last week. His warning was not ideological; it was technical—pointing to the risk that broadly framed provisions could disrupt financial flows, unsettle investor confidence, and complicate macroeconomic management.

The danger lies in the detail.

Clauses that seek to tightly control or pre-approve foreign funding, impose sweeping disclosure requirements, or grant wide discretionary powers to restrict external partnerships may appear politically appealing. But economically, they risk undermining the very foundations of Uganda’s liberalised economy.

This economy runs on predictability.

Foreign direct investment, portfolio flows, and development financing all depend on a regulatory environment that is transparent and consistent. Introduce uncertainty, whether through discretionary approvals or ambiguous restrictions and capital responds accordingly. It hesitates. It retreats. It demands higher returns to compensate for higher risk.

The consequences are not abstract: a weaker shilling, higher borrowing costs, reduced investment, and ultimately slower growth.

Money, as they say, goes where it is treated best—and stays where it is predictable.

Disrupt that, and you undermine not just foreign inflows, but domestic confidence as well.

To be clear, the ambition to reduce reliance on foreign funding is both legitimate and, indeed, already underway. Donor support has declined in recent years, partly due to geopolitical shifts and policy disagreements. Uganda has responded by strengthening domestic revenue mobilisation and expanding its reliance on domestic borrowing.

This is progress.

But it also comes with pressures—higher interest costs, tighter fiscal space, and a more delicate balancing act for policymakers.

As Rukutana cautioned, the transition to self-reliance must be gradual and deliberate. Not a shock. Not a statement. But a strategy.

There is a cautionary tale in Eritrea, which, after independence from Ethiopia, pursued a more insular economic path. Three decades later, the result is an economy that has struggled to grow or attract investment. Isolation, even when framed as sovereignty, has come at a cost.

Uganda’s success has been built on balance, opening where necessary, regulating where prudent, and learning from its mistakes.

The sovereignty bill must be approached in that same spirit.

Yes, insulate—but do not isolate. Regulate—but do not repel. Assert sovereignty—but do not undermine credibility.

Because if the last 40 years have taught us anything, it is this: sovereignty is not declared.

It is earned.

And it can just as easily be squandered, because as they say the importance of the river was not known until it dried up

MTN VS AIRTEL: SCALE VERSUS RETURNS IN UGANDA'S MOBILE MONEY WARS

There was a time when telecom companies in Uganda fought over voice minutes and, later, data bundles. Today, the real battle is being waged in something far more lucrative: the movement of money. And if the latest 2025 numbers are anything to go by, the contest between Airtel Money and MTN MoMo is no longer about who has the biggest network—but who makes the most from the flows that ride on it.

Start with the headline numbers. MTN Mobile Money Uganda grew revenue by a robust 20.2% to Ushs 1.2 trillion, with profit after tax jumping 23.5% to Ushs 308.9 billion . Airtel Money, on the other hand, posted Ushs 334.1 billion in profit, ahead of MTN in absolute terms, but on a smaller revenue base of Ushs 1.02 trillion, growing at a slower 14.4%.

At first glance, MTN looks like the runaway winner. But look a little closer, and a more interesting story begins to emerge.

MTN is clearly winning the scale game. Its ecosystem now boasts 14.7 million subscribers, 241,000 agents and 115,000 merchants, with transaction values hitting a staggering Ushs 195.5 trillion . These are not just big numbers—they are the building blocks of a platform. The more users, agents and merchants you have, the harder it becomes for anyone else to dislodge you. In fintech, scale is not just an advantage; it is a moat.

But scale, as any seasoned investor will tell you, does not always translate into superior returns—at least not immediately.

That is where Airtel Money’s numbers begin to turn heads. Generating higher profits than MTN on lower revenue suggests a business that is squeezing more out of every shilling that passes through its system. In other words, Airtel may not yet match MTN in breadth, but it is arguably ahead on efficiency.

Part of the explanation lies in strategy. MTN is playing the long game. Its own disclosures show that advanced services now contribute over 30% of revenue, driven by lending, savings and payment innovations . It is investing heavily to turn MoMo from a payments pipe into a full-service financial supermarket.

Airtel, by contrast, appears more disciplined—less flashy, perhaps, but highly focused on the core business of transactions and fee extraction. That discipline shows up in the bottom line.

The balance sheet tells a similar story. MTN’s total assets surged 30% to Ushs 1.87 trillion , compared to Airtel’s 13.1% growth to Ushs 1.16 trillion. MTN is building muscle; Airtel is building margins.

---

Summary Comparison

Metric	Airtel Money (2025)	MTN MoMo (2025)
Revenue	Ushs 1.02 tn	Ushs 1.2 tn
Revenue Growth	+14.4%	+20.2%
Profit After Tax	Ushs 334.1 bn	Ushs 308.9 bn
Profit Growth	+7.4%	+23.5%
Total Assets	Ushs 1.16 tn	Ushs 1.87 tn
Asset Growth	+13.1%	+30.0%
Subscribers	Not disclosed	14.7m (+6.5%)
Agents	Not disclosed	241k (+13.5%)
Merchants	Not disclosed	115k (+33.6%)
Transaction Value	Not disclosed	Ushs 195.5 tn (+23.3%)

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In the end, this is shaping up to be a classic market contest. MTN is building the rails of Uganda’s digital financial system—wide, deep and increasingly indispensable. Airtel is running a leaner operation, extracting more profit per transaction.

If history is any guide, both strategies can win. But rarely do they win equally. The real question is whether, over time, scale will swallow efficiency—or efficiency will force scale to behave.

AIRTEL MOBILE MONEY PROFIT UP 7.4 PCT

The company reported a 7.4% increase in profit after tax to Ushs 334.1 billion for the year ended 2025, up from Ushs 311.0 billion in 2024, underpinned by strong growth in mobile money transactions and sustained operating efficiency.

Total income grew by 14.4% to Ushs 1.02 trillion, compared to Ushs 893.0 billion the previous year, reflecting increased uptake of digital financial services and higher transaction volumes across its platform. The performance reinforces the company’s positioning as a key player in Uganda’s fast-expanding fintech ecosystem.

Operating profit rose by 7.4% to Ushs 477.3 billion from Ushs 444.3 billion, supported by scale efficiencies, although cost pressures were evident. Total expenditure increased by 21.0% to Ushs 549.2 billion, largely driven by higher sales and marketing spend, which climbed to Ushs 459.0 billion as the company invested in customer acquisition and retention.

Despite the rise in costs, margins remained strong, highlighting the resilience of the company’s platform model.

On the balance sheet, total assets expanded by 13.1% to Ushs 1.16 trillion, driven primarily by growth in mobile money trust balances, which rose 14.0% to Ushs 969.5 billion. Equity remained largely flat at Ushs 114.4 billion, underscoring the firm’s asset-light structure, where customer balances fund a significant portion of operations.

Analysts note that the results demonstrate the scalability of digital financial services, with revenue growth continuing to outpace profit expansion, suggesting a period of strategic reinvestment.

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Summary of Key Results

Metric	2025 (Ushs bn)	2024 (Ushs bn)	% Change
Total Income	1,021.2	893.0	+14.4%
Operating Profit	477.3	444.3	+7.4%
Profit After Tax	334.1	311.0	+7.4%
Total Expenditure	549.2	454.0	+21.0%
Total Assets	1,155.8	1,022.0	+13.1%
Mobile Money Balances	969.5	850.4	+14.0%
Equity	114.4	113.4	+0.9%

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The results point to a business leveraging scale in digital payments to drive growth, even as rising costs signal an increasingly competitive push for market share.

FINANCIAL LITERACY, INSURANCE AGAINST POVERTY

How does a man like Floyd Mayweather—arguably the most successful prizefighter of his generation, with career earnings said to exceed $1 billion, find himself dogged by tax liens, lawsuits and whispers of cash flow strain? And yet, that is precisely the narrative emerging: vast wealth tied up in property, but pressure on liquidity; assets in abundance, but cash in short supply.

It is easy to dismiss such accounts as the excesses of celebrity life. But to do so is to miss the more useful lesson. Strip away the scale the private jets, the Manhattan duplex, the Las Vegas real estate, and what remains is a problem that is far more familiar, even mundane.

It is the gap between earning money and understanding it.

That gap is where fortunes are made—and lost.

We tend to frame poverty as an income problem. Raise incomes, the thinking goes, and poverty recedes. There is truth in that, of course. But it is an incomplete truth.

"Because across income levels—from the salaried professional to the trader in Owino you encounter the same pattern: money comes in, but very little stays...

The issue is not just how much is earned. It is what is done with what is earned.

Money, left unmanaged, has a way of evaporating.

This is why financial literacy is not a luxury. It is not something to be acquired after one has “made it.” It is, quite simply, the only reliable insurance against poverty. Not because it guarantees wealth, but because it reduces the probability of losing it.

The distinction matters.

Consider the difference between income and wealth. Income is a flow—a salary, a fee, a profit margin. Wealth is a stock—the accumulation of assets that continue to generate income even when the primary source of earnings slows or stops. Too often, a rising salary is taken as evidence of rising wealth. It is not.

Without deliberate allocation, income turns into consumption.

And consumption, however justified, does not compound.

This is where many high earners come unstuck. The trappings of success—houses, cars, lifestyle upgrades arrive early. The discipline of asset building arrives late, if at all. The result is a life that looks prosperous on the surface but is structurally fragile underneath.

A single disruption—a job loss, a business downturn, a delayed payment, exposes the fragility.

Seen through this lens, the Mayweather story is less an outlier and more an exaggerated version of a common reality. Assets that cannot easily be converted into cash. Obligations that demand immediate settlement. The uncomfortable space in between.

Liquidity, it turns out, matters as much as net worth.

For the ordinary Ugandan, the numbers are smaller but the dynamics are identical. The teacher who builds a house over 20 years but has no savings to fall back on. The entrepreneur whose capital is locked up in stock that cannot move. The professional whose lifestyle expands in line with income, leaving no room for investment.

Different circumstances, same outcome.

Financial literacy is about three disciplines.

The first is allocation—deciding, in advance, how income will be split between consumption, saving and investment. This is less about theory and more about habit. A standing instruction that channels a portion of income into treasury bonds or a collective investment scheme each month does more for long-term wealth than any sporadic investment inspired by market chatter.many of the assets we celebrate—land held indefinitely, high-end consumption goods are either illiquid or non-productive. They may preserve value. They rarely grow it.

The second is asset selection—understanding what constitutes a productive asset. In Uganda’s context, this increasingly includes government securities offering double-digit yields, dividend-paying equities on the USE, and well-run businesses. These are assets that generate cash flow. They work, quietly and consistently.

By contrast, The third is reinvestment. This is where compounding, often described but rarely experienced, does its work. Returns, whether in the form of bond coupons or dividends, must be redeployed. Over time, the effect is transformative. Modest sums, consistently invested and reinvested, begin to scale in ways that defy intuition.

Miss one of these disciplines, and the system begins to falter.

What makes the absence of financial literacy particularly dangerous is that it does not announce itself early. In the initial stages, everything appears to be working. Income is rising. Consumption is improving. The outward indicators are positive. It is only later, when obligations accumulate and income becomes uncertain, that the underlying weakness becomes visible.

By then, adjustment is difficult.

Uganda today is at an interesting inflection point. Financial instruments that were once the preserve of institutions are increasingly accessible to individuals. Treasury bonds can be purchased in relatively small denominations. The stock market, while still shallow, offers entry points. Digital platforms are lowering transaction costs.

In principle, the architecture for broad-based wealth creation is taking shape.

But access without understanding is a risk.

Without financial literacy, participation in these markets tends to veer towards speculation. Investors chase price movements rather than underlying value. Entry and exit decisions are driven by sentiment rather than analysis. Losses, when they come, are attributed to the market rather than the method.

In such an environment, the market performs a different function. It transfers wealth—not from the rich to the poor, but from the uninformed to the informed...

Which is why the conversation on financial literacy needs to move from the margins to the centre. Not as an abstract concept, but as a practical toolkit. How to allocate income. How to identify productive assets. How to reinvest returns. How to think about risk.

In the end, the most valuable asset an individual can possess is not a piece of land or a portfolio of properties. It is the capacity to manage money—consistently, rationally, over time.

Because incomes fluctuate. Markets move. Opportunities come and go.

But financial literacy endures.

And in a world where the line between comfort and crisis can be thinner than it appears, it remains the only insurance that reliably holds.

MOMO PROFIT UP 23.5% TO SH308.9BN ON TRANSATION GROWTH

MTN Mobile Money Uganda (MoMo) delivered a strong set of results for 2025, with profit after tax rising 23.5% to sh308.9 billion, up from sh250.2 billion in 2024, but the real story lies beneath the headline numbers — in the rapid expansion of its lending business, which is beginning to redefine the platform’s economics.

At the heart of MoMo’s growth is a sharp surge in its loan book. Loans disbursed through the platform jumped 86.2% to sh2.7 trillion, reflecting accelerating uptake of digital credit products under its Pay, Borrow, Invest ecosystem.

This matters because lending changes everything.

For years, mobile money has largely been a transaction-driven business — dependent on fees from transfers, withdrawals, and payments. That model, while scalable, is inherently limited by pricing pressure and the cost of maintaining agent networks. Lending, by contrast, introduces a high-margin revenue stream that is less dependent on transaction volume and more on balance sheet utilisation and risk pricing.

In simple terms:

Payments bring volume. Lending brings margins.

The significance of the sh2.7 trillion in loans disbursed is not just its size, but what it signals — that MoMo is successfully leveraging its data, distribution, and customer base to move into financial intermediation. With over 14.7 million active wallets, the platform has a unique advantage in assessing creditworthiness through transaction histories, enabling it to scale credit faster than traditional banks.

Over time, this could become the single most important driver of profitability.

Revenue growth anchored on scale and service diversification

Against this backdrop, total revenue grew 20.2% to sh1.2 trillion, up from sh981.9 billion, supported by increased usage across the ecosystem.

Transaction activity remained robust:

• Transaction volumes rose 16.8% to 5.0 billion

• Transaction value increased 23.3% to sh195.5 trillion

• Active wallets grew 6.5% to 14.7 million

More importantly, MoMo is beginning to shift its revenue mix. Advanced services — including payments, lending, and savings — now contribute 30.6% of total revenue, up from 28.7% in 2024.

This shift is subtle but critical. It signals a move away from reliance on basic transfer fees toward a more diversified, and potentially more profitable, fintech model.

Operating leverage begins to emerge

Operating profit rose 26.2% to sh454.1 billion, outpacing revenue growth and indicating early signs of operating leverage.

However, the cost base remains heavy:

• Selling and distribution costs climbed to sh502.7 billion from sh425.5 billion

• Agent commissions and marketing expenses continue to absorb a significant portion of revenue

This reflects the structural reality of mobile money — scale comes at a cost. But as lending and other digital services grow, they offer a pathway to decouple revenue growth from distribution costs, improving margins over time.

Deposits grow to sh1.47 trillion, strengthening funding base

MoMo’s balance sheet tells an equally important story.

Customer deposits — the mobile wallet balances — rose to sh1.47 trillion, up from sh1.37 trillion, a 7.4% increase.

This growth provides the foundation for its lending ambitions.

In traditional banking, deposits fund loans. In MoMo’s case, while regulatory structures differ, the accumulation of customer balances creates a stable liquidity base and opens opportunities for partnerships in credit provision.

The implication is clear:

As deposits grow, the capacity to support lending — directly or through partners — expands.

At the same time, cash and bank balances surged to sh214.2 billion, up from sh78.4 billion, reflecting strong liquidity and improved cash generation.

Assets expand as platform deepens

Total assets increased 14.6% to sh1.87 trillion, driven largely by higher trust balances and cash holdings.

The balance sheet remains highly liquid, but its composition increasingly reflects a financial services platform rather than a pure payments business.

Equity and cash flows signal maturity

Equity rose sharply to sh152.2 billion, up from sh42.2 billion, despite dividend payments of sh198.9 billion during the year.

Meanwhile, operating cash flow rebounded strongly to sh190.9 billion, from a negative sh9.9 billion in 2024 — a clear sign that the business is now generating sustainable cash from its operations.

Why lending is the future of MoMo

The surge in digital lending is not just another growth metric — it is the pivot point for MoMo’s next phase.

If sustained, it could:

• Lift margins, as credit products typically yield higher returns than transaction fees

• Increase customer stickiness, as borrowers are more likely to remain active users

• Unlock cross-selling opportunities, including savings and investment products

• Position MoMo as a financial intermediary, not just a payments platform

But it also introduces new risks:

• Credit risk and potential defaults

• Regulatory scrutiny as the business moves closer to banking

• The need for more sophisticated risk management systems

The bigger picture

The 2025 results show a business at an inflection point.

MoMo is still driven by transaction growth — sh195.5 trillion in annual value processed — but it is increasingly being defined by what sits on top of that infrastructure: lending, savings, and digital financial services.

The expansion of the loan book to sh2.7 trillion in disbursements is the clearest indication yet of that shift.

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Summary of Key Financial Results

Metric	2025 (Ushs)	2024 (Ushs)	Change (%)
Total Revenue	1.2 trillion	981.9 billion	+20.2%
Operating Profit	454.1 billion	359.8 billion	+26.2%
Profit After Tax	308.9 billion	250.2 billion	+23.5%
Total Assets	1.87 trillion	1.63 trillion	+14.6%
Customer Deposits (Float)	1.47 trillion	1.37 trillion	+7.4%
Cash & Bank Balances	214.2 billion	78.4 billion	+173%
Total Equity	152.2 billion	42.2 billion	+260%+
Net Operating Cash Flow	190.9 billion	(9.9 billion)	Turnaround
Loans Disbursed	2.7 trillion	~1.45 trillion	+86.2%

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Bottom line:
MoMo’s 2025 results are not just about profit growth — they mark the emergence of a new business model. The surge in digital lending, backed by a growing deposit base and vast transaction data, positions MoMo to evolve into a high-margin financial platform. If executed well, lending could become the engine that transforms scale into sustained profitability.

WHEN COFFEE RULED THE UGANDA SHILLING

There was a time, not too long ago, when you could tell the direction of Uganda’s exchange rate by simply looking at the coffee calendar.

As a young reporter filing for Reuters in the late 1990s, I learnt this early. Come September, as the coffee season peaked, the Uganda shilling would firm almost on cue. Exporters, flush with dollar earnings, would crowd the market converting proceeds. The greenback would soften, the shilling would strengthen. Then, as the season tapered off, the reverse would happen. The currency would weaken, liquidity would tighten, and the cycle would repeat itself the following year.

It was neat. Predictable. And deeply revealing.

So predictable, in fact, that speculators began to play the cycle—betting against the shilling as the coffee season wound down. It got to the point where the then central bank governor, Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, famously warned that anyone trying to game the market would have their “fingers burnt.”

That warning captured the moment: a shallow foreign exchange market, dominated by a single commodity, and prone to seasonal swings that could be read like a script.

"Uganda was, in effect, a one-crop economy with a currency that danced to the rhythm of a single harvest...

That rhythm has largely faded.

The newly released Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) export statistics tell the story—not loudly, but unmistakably. In 1996, Uganda’s total exports stood at $711 million, and coffee alone brought in about $410 million—a commanding 58% of total exports. Everything else—fish, cotton, tea—was a distant supporting cast.

Gold, at the time, was almost an afterthought—bringing in just $52 million, or about 7% of exports.

Fast forward to 2025, and the scale—and structure—of exports has changed dramatically. Total exports have surged to about $13.7 billion. Coffee earnings have risen to roughly $2.5 billion, but their share has declined to about 18% of total exports.

And gold?

Gold has gone from the margins to the centre. Export earnings have jumped to about $6.4 billion, accounting for roughly 47% of total exports.

That single shift explains much of what has happened.

What this has done, quietly, is to change the character of the foreign exchange market. Export inflows no longer arrive in one seasonal surge tied to coffee. They come in waves—gold, agriculture, regional trade—smoothing what was once a highly predictable cycle.

The old September effect on the shilling has been diluted, if not entirely erased.

In short, Uganda has moved from a single harvest economy to a portfolio of exports—albeit one still heavily tilted in a different direction...

Back in 2014, when Ricardo Hausmann and his co-authors released their study How Should Uganda Grow?, it did not remain confined to academic circles. Hausmann himself came to Kampala soon after, making the case that Uganda’s future lay not in producing more coffee, but in producing new things altogether.

The diagnosis was stark. Uganda’s export basket was dominated by primary commodities—coffee, fish, tobacco—accounting for roughly 85% of exports. The country produced what many others produced, with little in the way of sophistication.

Even then, there were early signs of movement. The study pointed to diversification into fish, flowers, and construction materials for neighbouring markets. Uganda, in Hausmann’s “product space,” was beginning to shift—tentatively, but perceptibly.

A decade later, that shift has broadened—and deepened.

And nowhere is this more evident than in something that barely featured in the export conversation back then: power.

In the 1990s, Uganda was a power-deficit economy. Load shedding was routine, industrial growth constrained, and the idea of exporting electricity would have seemed fanciful. Today, Uganda exports power to Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and eastern DRC. What began as surplus from new generation capacity—Bujagali, Isimba, Karuma has evolved into a modest but growing regional trade.

It may not yet rival coffee or gold in value, but it is qualitatively different.

Power exports are not about what lies in the ground or grows on trees. They are about infrastructure, planning, and coordination. They require transmission lines, cross-border agreements, and regulatory frameworks. In Hausmann’s language, they represent a thicker set of capabilities—more letters in the scrabble set.

And they point to something else: the rise of regional opportunity.

The study hinted at this when it noted that regional markets, South Sudan in particular, were beginning to demand not just food, but construction materials and basic manufactures. That demand has since expanded. Uganda is now exporting cement, steel, processed foods—and increasingly, electricity into a region that is urbanising, rebuilding, and growing.

In effect, Uganda has become not just a producer, but a regional economic platform...

But before we get carried away, a note of caution.

This is diversification, yes—but of a particular kind.

Coffee’s dominance has been diluted, but replaced more decisively than we often admit, by gold. And gold, as Hausmann would remind us, is not complex. Its value lies in geology, not in accumulated knowledge. In that sense, Uganda has traded one form of dependence for another—arguably a larger and more volatile one.

Similarly, much of the export expansion remains in what economists call the “periphery”—agriculture, food processing, and basic manufacturing. The study was clear: Uganda had made limited inroads into more complex sectors such as machinery and chemicals. That observation still largely holds.

And yet, something important has changed.

Uganda is accumulating capabilities. The ability to produce cement, export electricity, or serve regional markets reflects learning—incremental, but real. And in the Hausmann world, learning is everything. What a country produces today determines what it can produce tomorrow.

That is why this moment matters.

"Uganda has moved beyond dependence, but it has not yet reached complexity. It sits somewhere in between—diversified, but not transformed...

The study outlined two paths forward. One was “parsimonious transformation”—building on existing strengths like agro-processing. The other was “strategic bets”—pushing into more complex industries.

Power exports sit neatly between the two—an extension of existing capability, but also a gateway to more complex regional integration.

And then there is oil.

A decade ago, Hausmann warned that oil could finance diversification or undermine it. As Uganda edges closer to first oil, that warning feels less theoretical and more immediate.

Because if there is one lesson from the journey from 1996 to today, it is this: diversification is not an event; it is a process.

The disappearance of the coffee-driven exchange rate cycle is one signal.

The rise of gold is another—more dominant than we expected.

The emergence of power exports is perhaps the most telling.

Small shifts, individually. But together, they suggest an economy that is learning to stand on more than one leg.

The question now is whether it can learn to run.