Uganda likes to think of itself as an electricity exporter. It sells power to Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, and has begun trickling it into South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Its new national energy compact, which sets out how the country will meet the goals of Mission 300, a scheme backed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank to connect 300 million Africans to power by 2030, opens on a confident note.
With 2.1 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity against peak demand of 1.35GW, it says Uganda begins the plan’s five-year run, from 2026 to 2030, ‘from a position of supply surplus.’ A few pages later, the same document concedes that the sector begins ‘not with comfortable surplus, but with a fleet whose effective firm capacity is materially below nameplate’.
‘We are living on a thin line,’ says Mr Julius Wamala, who oversees generation at the Energy ministry.
His forecast shows Uganda running short by about 130 megawatts (MW) in 2027, a gap that widens to 270MW in 2028, nearly 500MW in 2029 and almost a gigawatt by 2030.
‘Initially, they used to tell me tenfold. Then last week they told me it is twentyfold,’ says Sidronius Okasai Opolot, the Minister of State for Energy, of demand forecasts. ‘Actually, I don’t have excess energy.’
Nameplate and reality
When you run the numbers, you notice that Uganda’s excess power exists only on paper. The confusion stems from which number you count. Uganda’s installed capacity is 2,099MW, the most its power plants could produce if everyone ran flat out at the same time. But a grid must be judged by its firm capacity, meaning what it can rely on in the worst hour of a dry season with a unit or two out of service.
On that measure, Uganda has about 1,650MW. Peak demand reached 1,400MW in June, according to the Energy ministry. That leaves a reserve of 250MW, or 18 percent. But a grid must be able to lose its largest generating unit (in Uganda’s case a 100MW turbine at Karuma) without the lights going out. And demand is growing by around 13 percent a year, adding about 180MW of peak load annually.
One more year of that leaves spare firm capacity of about 70MW, less than a single turbine. That is why the Energy ministry’s forecast turns red in 2027. The gap between installed and firm capacity has three causes. The first is water. Nearly all Uganda’s big plants sit on the same stretch of the Nile, so a dry spell hits them together.
The second is age. Nalubaale, a dam at Jinja commissioned in 1954, produces well below its rated 180MW. Money to refurbish it has been found (about $110m (Shs444.18b) from French and European lenders), but the deadline for settling the financing, mid-2026, has passed without works starting.
The third is weeds. Upstream of Karuma, Uganda’s newest and biggest dam, lies Lake Kyoga, a shallow lake prone to ‘floating islands’ of papyrus and water hyacinth. These break loose and clog the dam’s intakes. Karuma has six turbines, or ‘units’, each producing up to 100MW.
‘Last year… we lost about 4,800 hours of generation,’ says Mr Isaac Arinaitwe, the acting chief executive of Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL), the State generator. ‘That is equivalent to losing a unit throughout the whole year. Or you could say putting out the plant for a whole month.’
If those are hours per turbine, the weeds cost about 480GW-hours of electricity: enough to power the whole of Uganda for three weeks. The UEGCL wants the weeds treated as a matter of national water policy, ‘because this is something slightly beyond us who are just a power generator.’
Karuma’s paradox
Official government records show that Karuma’s load factor (actual output as a share of the maximum possible) was just 21 percent in 2025, and promises to lift it above 50 percent by the end of 2027. It is nothing of the sort. Karuma is the plant that absorbs each new increment of demand, so its low load factor reflects slack in the system as a whole. Its operator says average output has climbed from about 65MW in its first year to nearly 300MW now, implying a load factor already approaching 50 percent.
‘Karuma is taking most of that demand,’ says Mr Arinaitwe. ‘Within a couple of years, we’ll probably need another Karuma.’
A busier Karuma leaves less in reserve, and the only extra output Karuma can offer is what the floating islands take away.
On paper, the government plans 8.3GW of new power, but the number splits in two. Only ‘Category A’ projects must actually be producing electricity by the end of 2030. ‘Category B’ projects need only have their financing signed by then; their power arrives ‘from 2031 onward’.
Category A takes installed capacity to about 2,500MW by 2030, only around 400MW more than today. Most of that comes from about 200MW of small hydro plants already licensed and 200MW of big solar farms, the first not due until 2029.
Demand is growing far faster. Peak demand rose from 988MW in 2023 to 1,351MW in 2025, almost 13 percent a year, according to the Energy ministry. If it keeps that pace, it will reach about 2,480MW in 2030, about everything the plan will have installed.
When you add the usual 15 percent safety margin, Uganda needs some 2,850MW of dependable power. It will fall well short. The official investment plan includes 200MW of solar, which produces nothing after sunset, when demand peaks, unless paired with batteries.
Counting only dependable power, the new plants add perhaps 250-350MW, taking Uganda to 1,900-2,000MW. That leaves a gap of 850-950MW in 2030, matching the Energy Ministry’s warning of almost a gigawatt. Official government records find ‘comfortable headroom’ only by setting installed capacity against the slowest demand forecast.
It’s ironic that the government’s plan promises the same power twice, aiming to lift export earnings from about $50m (Shs201.9b) in 2025 to $200m (Shs807.6b) – $300m (Shs1.2 trillion) a year by 2030. At the 2025 export price of about 8.5 American cents per kilowatt-hour, that means selling some 3,500GWh a year, as much as 400MW of plant running day and night. That is all the new capacity the plan adds by 2030. Power meant for Ugandan homes and factories is being counted again as exports. The Energy Ministry’s own rule forbids that.
‘We must ensure that our exports are largely hinged on firm available capacity once the domestic demand and the required reserves have been met,’ says Mr Edward Baleke, the Energy ministry’s assistant commissioner for transmission.
On the government’s own figures, nothing will be left to export. When two of Karuma’s turbines developed problems this year, Uganda had to stop selling to Kenya.
‘We are failing to export now to Kenya, given that two units were a bit having an issue,’ concedes Mr Geoffrey Okoboi, the director of economic regulation at the Electricity Regulatory Authority.
Slow water, fast fixes
New dams will come too late. The next large projects (Kiba, about 510MW; Oriang, roughly 400MW; and Ayago, 840MW) take five to eight years to go from study to power. None will produce electricity before the early 2030s. Red tape adds delay because each project must be approved by the Ministry of Finance, then the Cabinet, then Parliament.
Mr Wamala says finance officials do not ‘look at opportunity cost, risks and the impact of these projects. If these lights go off right now, that’s a direct impact to an industry employing someone.’
Until then, Uganda must rely on fixes that take one to three years. The cheapest is to waste less. About 17 percent of Uganda’s electricity is lost in the wires before it reaches customers. Cutting that to 12 percent would free up about 70MW at peak times.
Next come small upgrades. This requires better substations for small hydro plants in the west (14MW), getting more out of existing small plants (30MW), paying sugar mills to sell the spare power they make from cane waste (up to 100MW), and a power line to connect stranded hydro on Mount Elgon (50-80MW). Together, these add about 220MW on paper, and less that can be relied on. That covers about one year of demand growth.
Then there is buying power from neighbours. Finishing a high-voltage line from Bujagali to Tororo, on the Kenyan border, would make it easier to import. The Energy ministry now treats imports as part of the plan, not just an emergency. It even backs a line to Congo partly so that, in the junior minister’s words, ‘Tomorrow, we shall turn it around to get the power that we need.’ But imports are only reliable if firm contracts back them.
Batteries could store solar power for the evening, but Uganda does not yet pay power producers for storage. That leaves gas turbines and diesel engines. They are quick to build and run whenever needed, but are costly and dirty.
This is the choice the government is making without saying so. Today about 95 percent of Uganda’s electricity is renewable, mostly hydropower. But the government’s cost modelling shows that share falling to 78 percent by 2030 and 56 percent by 2040, as gas, diesel engines and eventually nuclear plants fill the gap that dams cannot fill in time.
Officially, Uganda still promises to keep renewables above 90 percent. The plan does not explain how it can do both. This does not suggest that Uganda’s power sector is badly run. But its plan assumes spare power that does not exist, so it will do sensible things at the wrong time. It will sign export deals it cannot honour and promise cement and steel plants power it cannot deliver. And it will leave fossil-fuel plants to be built in a rush, at emergency prices.
Many of the energy officials and investors want Nalubaale repaired now and the line to Kenya finished, so that Uganda can import power before shortages bite in 2027. Fewer mention what the government’s modelling implies: that gas and diesel plants will fill part of the gap, because they can be built quickly while new dams take five to eight years.