Category: Daily Monitor

The ruling National Resistance Movement has swept almost all LCII seats in Kampala and surrounding areas, extending its dominance from last week’s LCI elections.

In Lubaga Division, NRM candidates won all 12 parishes where voting was completed, according to the party registrar Mr Robert Kato.

‘The NRM has won 100 per cent of the LC II elections in the 12 parishes,’ Mr Kato said.

Among those declared winners are Fredrick Kalema of Nateete Parish, Richard Masaba of Rubaga Parish, Naava Matembe of Lungujja Parish, Mahad Kaweesa of Namirembe-Bakuli Parish, Richard Ssemakula of Libya Parish, Fred Kazibwe of Ndeeba Parish and Abudallah Kitata of Najjanankumbi II Parish.

Voting in Kisubi Parish was not completed after the exercise was marred by violence. Mr Kato said the chaos was allegedly triggered by opponents who ferried voters from other areas.

The Electoral Commission is expected to announce a new date for the Kisubi Parish election after reviewing the circumstances that led to the cancellation. Attempts to get a comment from EC officials in Rubaga were futile after journalists were blocked from accessing their offices.

In Kisenyi One Parish, Central Village, incumbent Adam Kassim Kyazze was unopposed and retained the position. In Buwanika Village, Kisenyi One Parish, elections did not take place after LC1 elections were suspended following violence over alleged malpractice.

‘The register was not followed. People from other villages came to vote for their candidates. The exercise turned violent forcing the security personnel to shoot in the air to disperse the rowdy crowds,’ said Mr Swaleh Tibamwenda, the current LC1 Chairperson for Buwanika Village, who has held the position for 40 years and is seeking re-election on the NRM ticket.

Mr Tibamwenda said the introduction of multiparty politics has changed how leaders are chosen. “Unlike in the past when people voted local leaders basing on their ability to lead, the introduction of multiparty politics has seen leaders elected on the basis of the party they subscribe, a decision that has given an opportunity to non-performers to take on leadership roles,” he said.

In other Kampala results, Mr Tampler Kaweesa, running as an independent in Nakasero III Parish, got 18 votes against NRM’s Hamis Kwesiga Balinda who got 42 votes. In Kololo IV Parish, NRM’s Alisen Alex Nyangabyaki was elected unopposed.

Wakiso goes NRM

In Nansana Municipality, Wakiso District, all six parish chairpersons were declared unopposed. Five of the six wards were won by NRM candidates, with the South Ward going to Democratic Party’s Ssematimba Kasanafu.

The winners include Mr Sulaiman Kajubi, Chairperson Kazo Ward, Ronald Ssemwaka, Chairperson Nansana North Ward, Mr Yusuf Nakibinge, Chairperson Nansana West Ward, Mr Kasanafu Ssematimba, Chairperson Nansana South Ward, and Mr Richard Kasenge, Chairperson Nansana East Ward.

Nansana Division Chairperson Mr Samuel Mugabi said the municipality had shifted politically. “We’ve got five chairpersons who have been unopposed, and they’re only waiting to be declared by the EC, meaning that Nansana has totally changed from opposition to NRM,’ he said.

He also warned outgoing chairpersons against withholding office stamps. ‘The issue of the stamps: in the previous elections, there was a problem that there were some LCs who never wanted to bring back the stamps. But this time round, I want to inform the outgoing chairpersons, please bring back the stamps to the incoming chairpersons, so that they serve their people,’ he added.

Close contests and disputes

In Nsambya, Makindye Division, Ibirot Walter was elected LCII chairperson at Nsambya Railway Primary School polling station after defeating incumbent Bashir Juma. Walter secured 26 votes against Juma’s 14.

‘The elections have been peaceful and I would like to commend the voter for turning up, and also thank the incumbent Chairman Mr Bashir Juma who’s also known as Chairman Bashir, he worked but now it is time for a new person to take on the role,’ Mr Ibirot said.

Juma, the NRM flagbearer, rejected the outcome. ‘I am not content with the outcome of the election because there are issues surrounding this polling station that need to be addressed,’ Juma said. He said he would seek clarification but did not specify the issues.

In Nakawa Division, voting for LC2 Chairperson of Naguru I Parish was delayed for several hours over claims involving serving police officers. Mr Emeritus Barigo Simon alleged that one LC1 committee member and another contestant, Mr Salim Latif Chebet, were serving officers. Mr Chebet has since withdrawn.

“We have a predicament of two police officers taking part in elective politics; one is contesting and yet he’s a serving Police officer while another was elected at the village committee and yet the law is clear a civil servant does not have to take part in elective politics,” said Mr Barigo.

Mr Gilbert Twesigye, the Electoral Commission Returning Officer for Nakawa Division, allowed voting to proceed, saying he had not received any communication from EC headquarters stopping the exercise.

“I have not received any communication from the headquarters stopping me from holding these elections today, meaning we’re going to hold the election as you proceed with your petition; the headquarters will give you feedback because the headquarters petitioned the headquarters and didn’t issue me a copy of your petition,” Twesigye said.

Mr Barigo and his supporters boycotted and left the polling station. The election proceeded and Ms Namwena Zaamu emerged winner with 12 votes.

The NRM, which has been in power for 40 years since the bush war that brought President Museveni to power, continues to use state structures to consolidate its position across the country since multiparty politics was reintroduced in 2005.

A former inmate at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has been sentenced to six years in prison for soliciting support for the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a terrorist organisation.

Justice Susan Okalany of the International Crimes Division of the High Court sentenced Mr Jamal Kiyemba, alias Abdallah, on August 4, after finding him guilty of soliciting support for the rebel group.

In sentencing him, Justice Okalany said she had considered the gravity of the offence, the need for deterrence and protection of society, as well as several mitigating factors.

These included Kiyemba being a first offender, the isolated nature of his conduct, the absence of evidence that he recruited, financed or participated in violence on behalf of the ADF, his personal and family circumstances, remorse and mental condition.

‘Having considered the gravity of the offence, the need for deterrence and societal protection, and the mitigating factors… I am convinced that a lengthy sentence is unwarranted,’ Justice Okalany ruled.

The judge also took into account the period Mr Kiyemba had already spent on remand at Luzira Prison.

‘In my view, the time already spent in custody, together with the sentence imposed… should be carefully balanced against the gravity of the offence and the need for deterrence and justice,’ she held.

Justice Okalany ordered that the six-year sentence run from the date of conviction. However, Mr Kiyemba had already spent four years, two months and 19 days on remand, he has about one year and nine months left to serve.

The judge also considered the period Mr Kiyemba had spent in detention, including about four years at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although he was never convicted of an offence there.

EXONERATED

Despite convicting Mr Kiyemba of soliciting support, the court acquitted him of belonging to a terrorist organisation, saying the prosecution had not provided sufficient evidence to establish that he was a member of the ADF.

The ADF support case

Mr Kiyemba was convicted on July 29 after the court found prosecution evidence sufficient to prove that he had solicited support for the ADF.

The prosecution’s key evidence came from a concerned civilian who told court that on January 29, 2022, at about 9:30am, he heard Mr Kiyemba at the Old Taxi Park in Kampala shouting, ‘Long live ADF’, while urging members of the public to support the rebel group.

The witness further said Mr Kiyemba warned that bloodshed would continue in Kampala if people failed to support the ADF.

The concerned civilian reported the matter to a military officer, who mobilised between 10 and 12 armed soldiers to arrest Mr Kiyemba.

Justice Okalany found the witness credible and said his evidence remained consistent and unshaken during cross-examination.

She added that the military officer had acted reasonably after receiving the report and that the prosecution had proved its case that Mr Kiyemba solicited support for the ADF.

‘Therefore, I find that the prosecution has convincingly proven that the accused solicited support for the terrorist organisation, specifically the ADF,’ she ruled.

Acquitted of belonging to ADF

Despite convicting Mr Kiyemba of soliciting support, the court acquitted him of the charge of belonging to a terrorist organisation, saying the prosecution had not provided sufficient evidence to establish that he was a member of the ADF.

Justice Okalany rejected the argument that Mr Kiyemba’s alleged declaration of support for the ADF automatically amounted to an admission of membership.

‘…In the present case, that affirmation or admission must be of belonging to, or being a member of, a terror organisation,’ she said.

The judge said merely expressing support for an organisation, without additional evidence, did not meet the legal threshold for proving membership.

The court also dismissed another charge of rendering support to a terrorist organisation, saying the relevant legal provision relied upon by the prosecution did not apply to the facts of the case because it concerned support rendered to natural persons rather than organisations.

Insanity defence rejected

During the trial, Mr Kiyemba raised a defence of insanity, saying he suffered from bipolar affective disorder and could not appreciate or remember what he allegedly did on the day of the incident.

The court, however, rejected the defence after finding that the evidence showed he was capable of making mental assessments and judgments at the time of the incident. Mr Kiyemba’s conviction and sentence, therefore, relate only to the offence of soliciting support for the ADF.

Authorities in Kabale District have launched a major operation aimed at restoring approximately 60 percent of the wetlands degraded over the last decade, warning that recalcitrant encroachers face forced eviction.

Speaking on Friday, the Kabale District Natural Resources Officer, Mr. Henry Tumwesigye, revealed that while officials have prioritized community sensitization on the dangers of wetland degradation and the benefits of restoration, forceful measures will be applied against those who resist voluntary vacation.

‘With the support from the Ministry of Water and Environment, we have embarked on wetland restoration activities and strict measures of protecting the intact wetlands in our district,’ Mr. Tumwesigye said. ‘It is estimated that about 60 percent of the wetlands have been degraded in Kabale District, and this has been as a result of the increasing population and the need for agricultural land.’

Mr. Tumwesigye requested special funding from the central government to establish physical boundary markers separating public wetland areas from private land to mitigate future encroachment risks. He further urged local residents to adopt climate-smart technologies on uplands rather than relying on wetland degradation for crop production and general farming practices.

The ongoing effort builds on enforcement measures undertaken earlier this year. In May, Mr. Tumwesigye, alongside environmental police officers, led an operation that destroyed a banana plantation belonging to St. Peter Kabasigaba Catholic Church in Kagarama Parish, Buhara Sub-County, after it was found planted inside the protected Kabanyonyi-Kyanamira wetland.

‘With support from the United Nations Development Program for mitigating climate-related threats like floods and soil erosion, we are targeting to first restore 19 wetlands that were recently degraded,’ Mr. Tumwesigye added. ‘The 24-hectare Kabanyonyi-Kyanamira wetland, which is the largest of these restoration projects, will be prioritized.’

However, the exercise faces potential legal and financial hurdles. The Kabale LCV Chairman, Mr. Denis Nzeirwe Ndyomugyenyi, called for a cautious approach to the restoration drive, noting that a section of encroachers possess valid legal titles issued by previous administrations.

‘Some time back, the government issued land titles to the farmers that had picked interest to carry out farming practices in wetlands before it accepted to have wetlands turned into arable land for agriculture,’ Mr. Ndyomugyenyi said. ‘Evicting some people from wetland use will require the government to compensate them because they own such pieces of land legally with land titles.’

Concerns over post-eviction economic stability have also been raised by local leadership. The LCIII Chairman for Maziba Sub-County, Mr. Onesmus Mutungye, noted that while farmers in his area voluntarily vacated the Upper Maziba Ikona wetland after receiving alternative livelihood support, additional state assistance is urgently needed.

‘After sensitization community meetings conducted by the government and its partners, farmers that used to have crop gardens in the Upper Maziba Ikona in Maziba Sub-County vacated after receiving livelihood items that included some heifers, goats, chicken, and pigs, among others,’ Mr. Mutungye explained. ‘After realizing that the alternative livelihood items received were not matching with the economic gains, a few individuals are being tempted to return to the restored wetland. Giving someone five chickens as an alternative livelihood to vacate the wetlands where they used to harvest crops worth millions of shillings is not realistic.’

Mr. Mutungye appealed to the government and development partners to provide matching economic projects or full monetary compensation to affected farmers, enabling them to purchase alternative land for sustainable agriculture, food security, and long-term income generation.

A growing coalition of African scientists is mounting a coordinated push to strip legacy pathogens of their geographical identifiers, arguing that place-based names for deadly viruses inflict lasting economic damage on communities.

The campaign gained momentum after the World Health Organisation dedicated the 2026 outbreak of Bundibugyo ebola as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

The virus affected both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo).

The virus, which can kill up to 50 percent of infected people, is named after Bundibugyo, a cocoa-growing district in Western Uganda, at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains. Although Uganda declared its outbreak over in July, some foreign travel advisories remain in place, while cases continue in neighbouring DR Congo.

“People of Bundibugyo feel stigmatised when they go somewhere with the disease,” the Health Minister, Dr Chris Baryomunsi, said at the weekend.

No infections have been reported in Bundibugyo during the latest outbreak. The virus was first isolated in the district during the 2007 outbreak, when scientists identified a genetically distinct Ebola strain.

Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said the concern had reached the highest levels of governance.

“It’s a concern we are hearing from the scientific world; we speak about it to avoid the stigma,” he said, adding: “I was told today by the vice president that there is someone from Bundibugyo who reacted to this.”

He added that discussions were underway with international scientific bodies to explore renaming pathogens that carry geographical labels.

“This is an ongoing conversation we have with the scientific community in the world to see how to approach that, especially as we know that some countries refused to be named after Covid-19,” he said.

How virus naming evolved

Prof Pontiano Kaleebu, director of the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), said the naming of viruses has long been debated because of its potential to stigmatise communities.

“So the name Bundibugyo, why is it called Bundibugyo? At one time, the naming/creation of viruses had decided to stop using these names which tend to profile, label countries and regional areas. But this still continues,” he said.

“We have Ebola Sudan, we have Ebola Zaire, now we have Ebola Bundibugyo. As you know, this virus was first described in the area of Bundibugyo, and the name was given so.”

Prof Kaleebu explained that the name Ebola itself comes from a place in what was then Zaire, near the Ebola River.

Dr Baryomunsi explained that when Ebola was first identified in 1976, different strains were named after the locations where they were detected.

“The strain in Sudan was different from the strain in Congo, Zaire as it was then,” he said.

“The one in Zaire was called Ebola Zaire. It was named after a country. Then the one in Sudan was named Ebola Sudan.”

As scientific understanding improved, naming conventions started moving away from country names to more local geographical locations.

“Now when we got the strain of Bundibugyo, it is a strain, the strain in Bundibugyo was different from the other one of Zaire and Congo. Genetically, they were different,” he said.

“So it was named Ebola Bundibugyo. And we had earlier discussed that the people of Bundibugyo feel stigmatised when they get associated with the disease.”

Bundibugyo Ebola virus has caused three known outbreaks: in Uganda in 2007, in DR Congo in 2012, and in 2020.

BACKGROUND

In 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted mpox as the preferred name for monkeypox to reduce racist, stigmatising, and misleading language.

The case for renaming

Prof Kaleebu said scientists are exploring how to address both existing virus names and those that may be assigned in the future.

“Change of names has been done, and for some viruses that were a little bit too stigmatising, the change was made,” he said.

“There are some viruses where a change was made, but I think there is more concern when you become a little bit more specific to a group, and that is being addressed. For this one of Bundibugyo and the rest, it’s also being addressed.”

He said virus names are assigned by international experts through a formal scientific process.

“We have what we call the nomenclature group,” he said. “When the viruses are discovered, there is a group that comes together to give them names, and that is where it’s an international nomenclature group that names these viruses.”

According to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), scientists have identified more than 17,500 viruses.

Uganda’s place in virus history

Uganda has contributed significantly to global virology, with several important pathogens first identified within its borders.

Besides Bundibugyo Ebola virus, the Zika virus was discovered in the Zika Forest near Entebbe. It became globally notorious after the 2015 outbreak in Brazil was linked to microcephaly and other congenital abnormalities. The WHO later declared the Zika-related birth defects emergency a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

West Nile virus, first isolated in Uganda’s West Nile region in 1937, remains a globally significant mosquito-borne disease capable of causing meningitis and encephalitis.

Other viruses named after Ugandan locations include Bwamba virus, Semliki Forest virus, and the Bunyamwera virus.

A broader global shift

The campaign to rename place-based pathogens reflects a wider change in global health communication.

In 2021, the WHO introduced the name Omicron for the coronavirus variant first reported from South Africa.

The agency said many people had begun referring to it as the “South African variant,” leading to stigma and economic consequences.

“As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatising and discriminatory,” the WHO said.

“To avoid this and to simplify public communications, WHO encourages national authorities, media outlets, and others to adopt these new labels.”

Kabale University on Tuesday handed over research findings supporting the conservation of papyrus endemic biodiversity in Kigezi and parts of Ankole to the Ministry of Water and Environment and the National Environment Management Authority for possible implementation.

The handover was done during a dissemination and handover workshop for proposed Key Biodiversity Areas on supporting Papyrus endemic biodiversity in Uganda, held in Kabale town and attended by local leaders from Rubanda, Kabale, Rukiga, Rwampara and Ntungamo districts.

Dr Julius Arinaitwe, Chief Directorate of Research and Grants at Kabale University, Dr Denis Okello, Head of Biological Sciences, and Dr Daniel Buyinza, Dean Faculty of Sciences, presented the findings to government officials.

The three-year research project cost about USD 420,000, according to Dr Arinaitwe.

Presenting the results, the Kabale University research team said papyrus wetlands in East Africa support bird species that depend on papyrus habitats for breeding, feeding and shelter, but the ecosystems are under threat.

‘Papyrus wetlands in East Africa support a unique assemblage of bird species that are highly dependent on papyrus habits for breeding, feeding and shelter. However these ecosystems are increasingly threatened by habitat degradation, agricultural expansion and unsustainable resource use,’ the team stated.

The study was conducted in Bukiro-Kibaale wetland, Nyamuriro wetland, and papyrus wetlands around Lake Bunyonyi, Lake Mutanda and Lake Murehe. ‘A total of 3,253 individual observations belonging to six papyrus specialist bird species were recorded across the wetlands,’ the team said.

The researchers noted that Rushebeya-Kanyabaha, Bukiro-Kibaale and Nyaruteme wetlands supported substantial populations of the vulnerable papyrus yellow warbler. ‘Two wetlands of Nyamuriro and Nyaruteme have been encroached upon and are increasingly under threat from agriculture and the establishment of cattle farms,’ they added.

They also reported that ‘sizable papyrus swamp areas still exist around Lake Bunyonyi and Lake Mutanda as well as Rushebeya-Kanyabaha and Bukiro-Kibaale wetlands. Small patches of papyrus vegetation remain around the fringes of Lake Mulehe.’

On wildlife, the team recorded ‘a total of 44 herpetofauna species that include 32 amphibian species and 12 reptile species.’

The research team recommended safeguarding globally threatened papyrus-dependent species, protecting the remaining high altitude wetland ecosystems in south western Uganda, supporting national and global biodiversity targets, and providing opportunities for restoration, monitoring and community conservation.

In his keynote address read by Ms Nakafeero, NEMA Executive Director Dr Barirega Akankwasah thanked Kabale University and its partners. ‘The vision of NBSAPIII is ‘rich biodiversity benefiting the present and future generations’ while its goal is to enhance biodiversity conservation, reduce biodiversity loss and ensure equitable sharing of benefits arising from utilization of genetic resources. I would like to thank Kabale University and its development partners for supporting the project development, implementation and dissemination of the research findings,’ Dr Barirega said.

He encouraged local authorities to mainstream the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan III 2025-2030 in their plans and programs.

Ms Lyango called on regional decision makers to use the evidence to secure legal protection for threatened habitats. ‘We all do recognize that piecemeal interventions do not halt or minimize environmental problems and that tackling the interlinked environmental and social challenges require holistic solutions, systemic and transformative changes. This requires the coordination of all stakeholders because the more we raise our voices together, the faster we will see positive changes in attitudes, practices and knowledge,’ Ms Lyango said.

More than 100 Uganda Police Force officers from different departments are undergoing Information and Communication Technology training aimed at strengthening their capacity to combat cybercrime and improve the collection, preservation and presentation of digital evidence.

The three-day training, facilitated by the National Information Technology Authority-Uganda (NITA-U) and the Uganda Digital Acceleration Project, started on Monday, August 10, 2026, at the Civil Service College Uganda in Jinja City.

The course has attracted senior and junior police officers, including detectives, crime scene officers, IT specialists, records officers and front-desk officers from various police stations.

The first group comprises officers from Mukono, Kampala Metropolitan, Wakiso and Mpigi districts. The programme mainly targets officers at the lower and middle levels who receive complaints and handle cases at police stations.

The Acting Commissioner in charge of Training at the Uganda Police Force, ACP Moses Byabagye, officially opened the training. Mr. Byabagye said there were gaps in the police system caused by inadequate information gathering and handling of cases involving technology.

‘Training builds capacity and improves performance. We all undergo initial courses, but continuous capacity building is essential to strengthen the institution,’ Mr Byabagye said.

He said the workshop would help officers translate theoretical knowledge into practical skills, particularly in investigating crimes involving ICT and enforcing ICT-related laws.

‘This programme will help officers use lawful investigative methods, properly document evidence and minimise contamination,’ he said.

Mr Byabagye said evidence collected during investigations was sometimes poorly preserved, resulting in cases being dismissed when they reached court.

He added that the training would also help bridge communication gaps between investigators and prosecutors, noting that the two sides need to work closely to ensure successful prosecution of cases.

Mr Dida Mulushid Sengendo, the Activity Manager for Capacity Building and ICT Law at NITA-U under the Uganda Digital Acceleration Project, said the programme was part of a wider initiative to strengthen ICT capacity among public servants.

Mr Sengendo said the programme had started with police officers and would later be extended to other government departments.

He said the increasing number of cybercrime cases reported to police had prompted NITA-U to collaborate with the Uganda Police Force to strengthen officers’ capacity to investigate and handle such cases. ‘Over the past years, there have been increasing cases of cybercrime reported to police, which are reflected every financial year. This caught our attention as the body responsible for regulating information and communication technology in government,’ Mr. Sengendo said.

He said officers would receive training in digital forensics, handling cybercrime cases, ICT-related investigations and general cyber investigations.

‘Many people report cases involving financial fraud, computer misuse and other cyber-related offences to police, but some cases are not properly investigated or do not meet the requirements for prosecution in court,’ he said.

‘We have brought in cyber, forensic and legal experts to train officers on cybercrime and computer misuse so that evidence is properly prepared for court,’ Mr. Sengendo said.

He said the training would strengthen the capacity of police officers to implement ICT laws and ultimately contribute to reducing cybercrime in Uganda.

At least thirteen people have been arrested by the Uganda People’s Defence Force recruitment team during the ongoing UPDF recruitment exercise in Jinja City.

The suspects were intercepted at Kakindu Stadium in Jinja South Division, where applicants seeking to join the UPDF had gathered, according to Brig Gen Peter Gaitano Emola, the UPDF recruitment overseer for the Busoga region.

‘We intercepted 13 people who attempted to infiltrate the recruitment exercise and join the group after screening,’ Brig Gen Emola said.

He explained that the suspects forged the cards issued to applicants after realising that some applicants had not turned up for the exercise.

‘As the list of screened applicants was being read, the suspects noted the names of those who were absent and used forged cards bearing their names to gain entry into the recruitment exercise,’ Brig Gen Emola said.

Brig Gen Emola disclosed that three of the suspects are women, while 10 are men. He said the suspects were handed over to police for further questioning.

He added that 126 people were recruited from Jinja City and Jinja District on the first day of the exercise.

The spokesperson for the recruitment exercise, Capt Ibrahim Kasule Ssekitto, said the exercise will end on August 19 in Buyende District. Capt Ssekitto said the exercise is proceeding smoothly, with applicants being recruited on merit.

He urged shortlisted candidates to remain disciplined and avoid forgery to prevent arrest.

While inflation is on the rise, your disposable income is shrinking.

If your income stays flat while the prices around you are doing the high jump, your real purchasing power drops.

Across Uganda’s markets, traders are reporting a similar trend of fewer customers, slower sales, and increasing difficulty moving stock.

Halimah Nabukenya, who sells ladies’ cosmetics says: ‘Previously, we could get about 30 walk-in customers a day, but now we get around five. I don’t know what explains the dramatic change, but people are not buying.’

At Nakasero Market, Richard Mukiibi, chairman of the fresh food traders, tells a similar story: ‘Because of high prices, we are getting fewer customers. Now we sell around 10 sacks compared to about 20 during the rainy season.’

The strange part is that this is happening in an economy projected to grow by more than 6 percent this year.

The Finance Ministry’s June 2026 Microeconomic Indicators and Developments (MIND) report shows that household spending reduced by 14 percent in quarter three of the financial year 2025/26.

Retail sales tracked via the Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing Solution (EFRIS) invoicing system dropped by 25 percent, and new business registrations dropped by 39 percent in a single month, from 2,749 in May to 1,675 in June.

But the low purchasing power turns out to have several distinct, compounding parts.

Seasonal supply shocks

Some of what traders are feeling is genuinely cyclical. Mr Mukiibi’s produce prices have spiked because the dry season has choked supply.

A sack of broccoli has risen from between Shs80,000 and Shs100,000 to Shs350,000, while cucumbers have risen from Shs50,000 to Shs80,000 a sack.

Research fellow at the Economic Policy Research Centre, Madina Guloba, frames this as a normal pattern: ‘Consumption patterns in Uganda often fluctuate with the seasons, leading to slower market activity during certain periods.’

She explains that during harvest periods, households rely more on home-produced food, reducing market purchases and creating the impression of weakened demand even when incomes remain stable.

But a harvest cycle does not explain a 39 percent collapse in new business registrations or a 25 percent drop in retail sales in the same month. Those numbers point past seasonality toward something structural.

Inflation is outrunning income

The explanation economists keep returning to is the gap between nominal income – money earned – and real income – what that money can buy.

Fred Muhumuza, a development economist, demonstrates that: ‘If I had Shs10,000 and fuel is Shs5,000 per litre… my real income is equivalent to 2 litres.’

As prices rise, the same shillings buy less: ‘If you divide by Shs6,500, you have less than 2 litres.’

His explanation is: ‘Your real income has reduced, but the prices went up.’

The MIND dashboard gives those hard numbers.

Liquid energy fuel inflation stood at 8.9 percent in June 2026. Diesel prices climbed from a 10.6 percent increase in May to 13.2 percent in June.

Energy, Fuels and Utilities inflation overall rose to 3.4 percent, and the domestic power tariff increased again, from Shs756.2 to Shs779.4 per unit for the July to September quarter.

Food inflation, by contrast, was flat at 0 percent in June, down from 0.6 percent in May, which looks like a relief on paper.

In practice, fuel is embedded in the price of transporting nearly everything from farm to stall.

Dr Muhumuza notes that even as global oil prices ease, domestic pump prices stay high because current stock was imported at the old, elevated rate, so relief arrives late.

Against an average monthly net salary of Shs628,611, this is the difference between a household covering transport, electricity and food, or cutting one of the three, usually the discretionary purchase of cosmetics or clothing trader was hoping to sell.

Households protecting essentials

This is Engel’s Law, an economic theory that holds that as real incomes tighten, households don’t cut spending evenly.

They protect food, rent, transport and school fees first, and cut discretionary categories like cosmetics, clothing, electronics, hardest.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) data shows food already consumes more than 44 percent of average household expenditure.

When fuel and utility costs rise on top of that, whatever is left for non-essentials shrinks fast, and it shrinks in exactly the shops now reporting the steepest customer drop-off.

Tightened government liquidity

Dr Julius Byaruhanga, director of policy and advocacy at Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU), points to a liquidity dimension the MIND data corroborates.

‘Government spending has not put much money into circulation,’ he says.

Government procurement accounts for an estimated 60 to 65 percent of the national budget, and its pace determines how much cash actually reaches contractors, suppliers, and eventually market stalls through wages and spending.

Every June, government accounting systems pause payments for year-end closure through the Integrated Financial Management System, a routine freeze that nonetheless drains liquidity just as fuel costs are spiking.

The MIND dashboard shows Public Investment Plan (PIP) budget absorption at 83.3 percent.

This dropped by 8.5 percent year-on-year, meaning even the money government plans to spend is moving more slowly through the economy than before.

Together, in the same quarter, they explain why Uganda can grow by 6 percent on paper while a cosmetics trader in Kampala counts five customers where she used to count thirty.

An uneven squeeze

Uganda’s poverty numbers are improving. The national poverty rate has fallen from 21.4 percent in 2016/17 to 16.1 percent in 2023/24, data from the Finance Ministry shows.

But averages flatten a country that is anything but uniform. Urban poverty sits at 10.3 percent against 19.4 percent in rural areas, and Karamoja’s 74.2 percent poverty rate belongs to an entirely different economy than Kampala’s 1.1 percent.

The Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index, which captures deprivation beyond income alone, actually rose 17 percent nationally between 2022 and 2024, even while the income-poverty rate was falling.

Two credible measures of the same country, moving in opposite directions, paint a picture of growth that is real but unevenly distributed, where a ‘shrinking purchasing power’ story and a ‘falling poverty rate’ story can both be statistically true at once.

Weaker exports

The squeeze isn’t only domestic. Uganda’s monthly trade deficit widened 7 percent between April and May 2026, to $115.69 million, as export receipts from both gold and coffee fell.

Weaker export earnings mean less foreign currency entering the economy, one more force, over time, pushing up the cost of the imported fuel that everything else depends on.

The feedback loop

Dr Muhumuza explains that the economy survives on demand.

‘If somebody used to get 20 customers and now gets seven or 13, it means demand has gone down,’ Dr Muhumuza says.

When households cut spending, businesses, and small and medium enterprises make up over 90 percent of all businesses in Uganda, cut production, delay expansion, and in some cases lay off workers.

Fewer jobs mean less household income, which further weakens demand. The 39 percent one-month drop in new business registrations looks more like an early sign of that loop taking hold.

Government’s response, like the Parish Development Model with about 3.7 million cumulative beneficiaries, Emyooga’s 7,148 SACCOs, the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE) cash transfers now reaching 489,673 older persons, expanded Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) capitation grants, is genuine, structural, and part of why the long-run poverty rate keeps falling.

But none of it was designed to offset a fuel-price spike hitting household budgets this month, or a June liquidity freeze draining cash from the market this quarter.

So, what explains it?

Not one cause, but six that arrive together.

This reflects the convergence of several pressures: a seasonal supply shock, a genuine erosion of household purchasing power, consumers retreating to essential spending, a poorly timed pause in government liquidity, the uneven distribution of the benefits of economic growth, and export earnings that remain too weak to offset pressure on the exchange rate.

Individually, each is manageable.

Together, in the same quarter, they explain why Uganda can grow by 6 percent on paper while a cosmetics trader in Kampala counts five customers where she used to count thirty.

Imagine owning one single share in a company; not one percent, not a tenth of one percent, just one share out of 200,000, and that one share is enough to freeze the entire company.

You don’t attend any meetings, make any resolutions, or make any decisions. And that means nothing moves, because you simply refuse to show up.

That is what happened at Medical Concierge Group Limited, the Ugandan company behind the telemedicine platform Rocket Health, in 2025. It took Uganda’s High Court to break the standoff in March 2026.

The one-share holdout

Medical Concierge Group had only two shareholders.

Rocket Health Africa Corporation, a Delaware-registered entity, held 199,999 shares. Dr Davis Musiimenta Musinguzi, the company’s co-founder and former managing director, held exactly one.

After his role was terminated by the Board in 2024, Dr Musinguzi filed a claim before the Labour Court and withheld participation in company affairs while that claim sat unresolved.

Under the company’s Articles of Association, a valid meeting needed both shareholders present to form a quorum.

Dr Musinguzi did not come; no vote, no objection, no paper trail, just an empty chair, again and again, while the company sat unable to pass a single resolution, including ones urgently needed to complete a Share Swap Agreement with a Mauritius-domiciled entity.

A share swap agreement lets shareholders trade their shares for shares in another company instead of cash, at an agreed ratio. It is used to merge or restructure companies without cash outlay, and to keep shareholders invested in the new entity’s future.

Because it changes ownership, it needs shareholder approval, which is why a missing vote can stall it entirely.

A director eventually applied to the High Court under Section 138 of the Companies Act for leave to hold a members’ meeting with the majority shareholder alone constituting quorum.

Dr Musinguzi’s lawyers objected twice, arguing the dispute belonged in London arbitration under the swap agreement’s London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) clause, and that a separate pending suit should be resolved first. The court dismissed both.

Justice Bonny Isaac Teko, ruling on March 3, 2026, ruled: ‘The present matter presents a case of deliberate minority shareholder obstruction that threatens the continuity, governance, and strategic functioning of the company,’ calling it ‘a classic case of arm-twisting the company to bend to his whims.’

In the line that should be printed on the wall of every start-up’s boardroom, he added: ‘A member holding a company hostage by deliberately denying it a quorum is denying the company the source of its existence.’

The court waived the usual 21-day notice period, which is Uganda’s statutory minimum warning before a shareholder meeting, since waiting longer wouldn’t have solved the quorum problem anyway.

In essence, Dr Musinguzi’s single share was mathematically negligible, yet it was enough to block every resolution the company needed to pass.

Side contracts, side-lined

The most interesting part of the ruling is the reasoning, according to the SMandCO. Advocates trio: Noah Edwin Mwesigwa, Partner, and Associates Barbra Tumuhairwe and Andrew Mugambe.

‘A company is a legal fiction; it has no physical will of its own. Its capacity to act is exercised exclusively through resolutions passed at properly constituted meetings. To deny a company its meetings is to deny it the source of its existence,’ the trio said in an expert analysis.

‘Without meetings, a company cannot pass any resolutions; without resolutions, its statutory obligations fall into default and its corporate machinery grinds to a halt,’ they added.

A shareholder’s rights are a matter of positive law.

These rights, however, are correlative with duties.

A shareholder does not hold the company or fellow shareholders hostage.

The ruling, the trio noted, ‘affirms that the right to vote at a meeting is not a mere option to be exercised at the shareholder’s pleasure.’

The Court relied on a basic principle of company law, that a company is legally separate from its parent or shareholders, to rule that Medical Concierge Group Limited hadn’t actually signed the Share Swap Agreement, and so couldn’t be forced into arbitration under it.

Just being named as a subsidiary in the agreement didn’t make the Company a party to it.

Since arbitration only binds those who agreed to it, it can’t be forced onto a non-signatory except in the clearest of cases.

A parent company can sign whatever contract it wants with an outside investor; it just can’t use that contract to gag its own subsidiary’s governance.

The court also separated the right to hold a meeting from what gets decided at it, treating the meeting itself as a standalone statutory right.

Even the notice-period objection failed, on the reasoning that notice exists ‘to facilitate, not obstruct’ company business, not to serve as ‘a shield behind which a shareholder may hide.’

The trio noted the ruling now sits alongside Uganda Clays Limited, Graceland Gardens Limited, and Patrick Batenze and Liberation Community Finance Limited, confirming Section 138 as ‘a robust and readily accessible remedy for corporate deadlock occasioned by minority shareholder obstruction.’

Their advice is: don’t wait for total paralysis before going to court.

The pattern hiding underneath

This case sits inside a bigger East African healthcare story. Rocket Health’s parent eventually merged into MYDAWA, the same Mauritius-linked group behind the swap deal.

MYDAWA had already acquired Guardian Health, one of Uganda’s leading pharmacy chains, from founder Anthony Natif in 2023, and Mr Natif has since spoken publicly about founder-investor power struggles in Uganda’s health-tech scene.

The same tension keeps resurfacing across this corporate family that whoever holds formal voting power on paper isn’t always the one who ends up controlling what actually happens.

Corporate law assumes owning more shares means having more control. Real disputes keep proving that assumption wrong, sometimes with a majority owner at the mercy of a tiny minority, sometimes the other way around.

Own isn’t control

Back in 1932, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means wrote a famous book pointing out something odd about big companies: the people who technically ‘owned’ them usually had almost no say in how they were run.

Managers ran the show; owners sat on the sidelines cashing dividend checks. Ownership and control, they said, had split apart.

Berle and Means were describing huge public companies with thousands of tiny shareholders, none powerful alone.

Dr Musinguzi’s case is the opposite: just two shareholders, one owning almost everything. Yet the same gap shows up.

This means owning doesn’t guarantee controlling. It just gives you a strong chance, one that depends on everyone else playing along.

Berle and Means themselves cited a case where roughly 14.5 percent ownership was enough to run an entire oil company, purely because of how the rest of the shares were scattered.

If 14.5 percent can be enough, it shouldn’t shock anyone that 199,999 out of 200,000 shares can, in the wrong situation, still not be enough.

Power hiding in a ‘no’

What makes Dr Musinguzi’s case sneaky is that he never voted against anything; he just didn’t sign and didn’t show up.

Daniel Nasasira, senior registration officer at Uganda’s Registration Services Bureau, has seen the same trick with the numbers flipped.

Speaking at a meeting organised by ALP East Africa, a regional corporate law firm, he said: ‘I own 90 shares and someone owns 10 shares. But they have refused to sign resolutions. The registrar is saying, I will not register any resolution if your colleague does not sign.’

‘The company needs to borrow money from the bank. They are not signing resolutions. But this person is the majority shareholder. So that sort of frustration can allow me, while you are the majority, to compel a share buyout to avoid such a deadlock,’ he added.

Same trick, different company: hold the pen, refuse to use it.

The stubborn ‘no’

Not every standoff needs a judge, or ends badly. Take East African Breweries Limited (EABL)’s 2024 bid to fully absorb Uganda Breweries Limited (UBL).

It already owned 98.19 percent and offered a rich premium for the rest, structured as a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ tender.

Only 7.9 percent tendered. A handful of holdouts, dubbed the ‘stubborn shareholders,’ declined to sell, nudging EABL’s stake to just 98.32 percent.

The tender offers run on consent, and no one could be forced to sell. It’s the mirror image of Dr Musinguzi’s obstruction, which is power not through absence, but through a plain, legal ‘no thanks.’

Then there is the version that barely makes news, because nothing went wrong. When MTN Uganda needed shareholder approval in July 2025 to spin off its mobile money business, a change ripe for a standoff, it spent the week before the vote running town halls countrywide instead.

Shareholders approved it at 99.9 percent. MTN simply earned the buy-in before the vote, rather than forcing it through after.

‘Minority’ might be the wrong word

Uganda’s own rulebook, Section 243 of the Companies Act, is built around the word ‘oppressed.’

People assume oppression flows one way where the big shareholder squashes the small one. Mr Nasasira’s own casework shows it is messier.

‘Minority oppression, simply put, is a shareholder who owns less in terms of numbers, but there are also quite several cases that have exemplified the context of minority not simply in terms of numbers,’ he said.

‘I could be a majority shareholder in a business, but in the context of oppression, we are not simply looking at voting. Any person who is generally frustrated by how the business is being run, in the context that they cannot exercise their membership rights, qualifies as a minority for purposes of Section 243,’ he added.

The rule does not require owning a small slice of the company. It requires showing you can’t exercise your rights as an owner.

Usually, those two line up. Dr Musinguzi’s case shows what happens when the majority owner is the one left frustrated instead.

Some legal scholars argue shareholder voting was never really about steering the company anyway, that it mostly works as a way to say ‘no,’ a brake pedal, not a steering wheel.

So, it makes sense that the shareholder with the smallest stake, and the least skin in the game, often holds the most stubborn ‘no’ of all.

This face-to-face seating arrangement, now standard in Primary One and Primary Two classes across parts of the district, is a small but telling example of a broader shift taking place in Nwoya’s government schools.

Alongside renewed efforts to pull parents back into their children’s education, it is beginning to move the needle on learning outcomes in a district that, 16 years after its creation, is still building the basic infrastructure of universal education from the ground up.

A young district, an old struggle

Nwoya was carved out of Amuru District in 2010. In the time since, its leadership has overseen the rollout of full desk coverage across 44 government-aided primary schools, which together enroll roughly 26,000 learners, according to data from the office of the District Education Officer.

Olwiyo Primary School, sitting just off the Karuma-Pakwach Highway, is one of them. Its 14 teachers – three of them women – serve 734 learners, 358 girls and 376 boys, against a staff ceiling of 15.

Head teacher Boniface Odong Ochan is honest about both the promise and the limits of what the school can do. “When we work and we commit ourselves as staff and the community, we can have close to around 1,000 learners in the next two years,” he says.

Getting there, he admits, means confronting parents who still see little value in sending children to school at all. “There are people who really don’t take interest in sending even the children to school. We have some organisations giving us support to mobilise and sensitise the community on the importance of education.”

Odong wants political leaders drawn more directly into that effort. “We want to engage politicians, to let them understand that education is key,” he says.

Where are the boys?

A visit to Olwiyo Primary School on August 7, 2026 turned up an attendance pattern that has become a quiet concern among the school’s staff: in several classes, boys were noticeably outnumbered by girls. Primary Five had 58 girls against 25 boys. Primary One recorded 65 girls to 64 boys. Primary Three had 45 girls and 43 boys. Only in Primary Four did boys hold a numerical edge, 57 to 53.

Odong links the imbalance to years of programming that, in his view, has centred girls’ education without an equivalent push for boys. “The focus has been on girl child education. And because they feel neglected, the boy children tend not to come to school,” he says.

“As teachers, we see this true reflection in their attendance and their commitment in classes. Before you came here, we were here for an assembly and close to 90% of learners who made presentations were girls.”

His prescription is balance, not a swing of the bob in the other direction. “Equal support should be given to all the children, irrespective of their sexes,” the head teacher of Olwiyo Primary School argues.

“If boys are not there to work with the girls, like to share experiences, definitely you will never see good results. They must be brought together at the same level and move as a team. When we leave our children behind, the dreams that we have made may not be able to be achieved.”

The numbers behind the optimism

District Education Officer Philip Oryema is careful not to overstate what has been achieved – 44 schools, he says plainly, are not enough to give the district’s population adequate access to primary education. But on the metric that matters most to families and policymakers alike, results are moving in the right direction.

“In 2025, we saw the pass rate of children hitting 70 percent. Three years ago, the pass rate was at 60 percent,” Oryema says of Primary Leaving Examination performance.

The DEO breaks the arithmetic down further: roughly 60 percent of candidates land in Divisions One through Division Three, with the remaining 40 percent falling into Division Four, Division U, or Division X. “But of late, we’ve seen there’s a gradual improvement in score in the national examinations.”

Twenty-eight community primary schools in the district have already received infrastructure support from partner organisations and are, in Oryema’s words, “ready for coding” – the government process that formally absorbs a community school into the public system. His appeal to the national government is direct: fund the coding process and extend access further.

Getting parents back into the room

If there is one intervention Oryema credits most for the district’s improving numbers, it is the revival of the Annual General Meeting – a once-dormant tradition of head teachers and School Management Committees convening parents to report on how their children, and their schools, are doing.

“The first year I became the DEO here, we sat and we saw community participation was minimal,” Oryema recalls of 2024. “Then we say, how do we bring this community participation up? We instituted a compulsory AGM. Even for schools that had never conducted one, we told head teachers and SMCs to call parents and account to them.”

The turnout has climbed steadily since. Around 7,000 parents attended AGMs in the first year of the push. That rose to roughly 12,000, and by last year had reached close to 17,000 parents across the district’s schools. “It means the parents are getting to learn how to support their children,” Oryema says. “Because when they meet at school, they have a lot of discussions. This year, we are expecting more parents to go to different schools to attend AGM.”

The effect, he says, is visible even in something as simple as what time children leave for school. “Those days, when I start moving from Kampala in the morning, at around 5am, you will find children in Kampala already on the street going to school. But I will arrive in Nwoya when I find children are still going to school. That has reduced. When you come to our town here at 6am, you’ll find children already moving to school.”

Local leadership is backing the push. Area LC5 chairman Patrick Okello Oryema says his administration is working with non-state actors to build a “conducive environment for children at home” that supports what happens in the classroom.

On the ground, parents describe a shift in mindset taking hold among their neighbours. Margaret Ajok, who is raising four grandchildren in Patira East Village, Purongo Sub-county, says the change is collective. “My neighbours and I have really gotten a lot engaged in monitoring and supporting the education of our children,” she says.

For the DEO, the logic runs deeper than attendance sheets. “The greatest learning takes place at home. The teachers only do final beating,” says Oryema, using a local turn of phrase for finishing touches. “When you train your child very well from home, that child cannot fail in this system of education. But if the home does not give very good training to the child, even when you take the child to the best school in the world, that child will fail from there and come back home.”

What still stands in the way

The district’s gains sit alongside a staffing shortfall that Oryema does not shy away from citing. Nwoya currently employs 416 teachers across its 44 government schools – just 50.3 percent of the 827 the district is meant to have on the government payroll. That leaves a gap of 411 positions.

“The government has given us some little money. Recruitment is ongoing. Very soon, we shall increase about 30 teachers. Then, slowly, we shall close the gap,” Oryema says.

Physical infrastructure tells a similar story of partial progress. Classrooms, latrine stances, and staff housing all remain in short supply – the district has only about 200 units of staff housing to date.

Taken together, the seating charts at Olwiyo, the swelling AGM attendance figures, and the ten-point climb in PLE pass rates point to a district finding traction after years of slow starts. But Oryema’s own framing keeps the achievement in perspective: Nwoya is not declaring victory, it is closing gaps – in staffing, in infrastructure, in access, and in the attention paid to boys who have begun slipping quietly out of the classroom.

What seems to be working, on the evidence gathered here, is not one dramatic reform but an accumulation of smaller ones – a desk turned to face another desk, a meeting parents actually show up to, a head teacher willing to name where his own school’s approach has fallen short. In a young district still building its schools brick by brick, that incremental, self-critical kind of progress may be exactly what sustainable change looks like.