Fellow Ugandans, let me speak to you like a friend sitting under a shade tree. President Museveni has given us a clear direction for this term, 2026-2031. He calls it a ‘qualitative leap’ into higher middle-income status.
He wants every household to leave okukolera ekidda kyonka – working only for the stomach – and join the money economy. He is pushing agro-processing, tourism, minerals, and science. He has sent ministers house-to-house to teach ekibaro, the culture of calculating profit.
He even warned that this term will be one of ‘no more sleep and no corruption.’ I applaud this vision. It is about dignity.
On June 4, Band of Uganda announced a policy to ‘reduce cash dependence and enhance transaction traceability.’
On paper, it sounds modern. In practice, I think it is a hurried push toward a cashless society. You cannot force a mother into the money economy by taking away her cash. Imagine a widow in Nakasongola who sells tomatoes by the roadside. She has no smart phone, no Internet, and electricity is unreliable.
The nearest mobile money agent is a boda boda ride away. If you make cash hard to use before giving her alternatives, she will not magically start using a banking app. She will sell only to middlemen who exploit her, or go back to bartering. Instead of entering the money economy, she gets locked out.
Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga money will become useless if people fear touching it.
The PDM programme sends billions directly to Saccos. If cash is the enemy, members will see their PDM savings as a trap, fearing someone in Kampala watches every shilling.
People will flee the very system meant to catch thieves. Groups may withdraw funds and hide cash in tins. Agro-processing needs willing traders, not suspicious citizens. The ATMS strategy calls for value addition – processing coffee, dairy, and cotton locally. This requires willing traders and factory workers. Most learnt about mobile money slowly, by choice, because they saw its convenience.
Now, if cash is choked without explaining why, those moving toward digital will distrust the whole system. When policy arrives without patient explanation, investor confidence crumbles. Tourism cannot survive on traceability alone.
Many tourists carry cash, especially in remote areas. Shouting ‘cashless’ before reliable point-of-sale machines exist embarrasses us.
A tourist who can’t pay a sculptor due to a network outage leaves with a bitter story, telling others Uganda is not business-ready. Forced systems repel visitors. The mineral sector will go underground – literally.
Mineral-based industrialisation depends on formalising artisanal miners and small gold dealers. If you tell an artisanal miner in Busia that all payments will be tracked, he will sell gold across the border where cash speaks. We lose revenue, and domestic processing starves. This will create a black market, not transparency. Science and innovation need freedom, not fear.
Young innovators need policies tested and improved with users, not imposed. Most traders I spoke to in Kampala had not heard of it. This crushes the entrepreneurial spirit that science, technology and innovation depend on. Short-term confusion, long-term resistance. This circular will cause cash hoarding, price distortions, and payment quarrels.
Long-term, if people link cashlessness to hidden agendas – foreign control, surveillance, even biblical prophecy – resistance hardens. A fearful population won’t pay taxes, save, or borrow. The timing could not be worse. Oil is about to flow, promising double-digit growth. If the payment system managing that wealth is built on public mistrust, corruption will find smarter digital holes.
Forced digitalisation without buy-in breeds sophisticated thieves. The President has given us a beautiful vision. It is practical, home-grown, and grounded in mobilisation. But a rushed, cashless policy is like forcing bitter medicine without explanation – the patient will spit it out and lose faith in the doctor. I ask local leaders: How can you implement PDM if your people fear the digital shilling?
I ask the President to call Central Bank and inquire: Who did you consult? Where is the house-to-house sensitisation? Let us digitalise, but the Museveni way: by teaching ekibaro, winning hearts, not killing cash before the village is ready.