Category: Daily Monitor

The State has strongly opposed a bail application filed by the former Butambala County Member of Parliament, Mr. Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi, and 24 co-accused individuals who are currently facing grave charges of terrorism.

The prosecution team arguments-delivered via a sworn affidavit-asserted that criminal investigations into the matter are still active, warning that the applicants are highly likely to interfere with state witnesses and jeopardise the judicial process if they are released back into the public.

The high-stakes bail hearing proceeded on Monday before Justice Susan Okalany at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of the High Court in Kampala.

The session was marked by an unusual turn of events when state attorneys failed to appear on time. The court learned that the prosecutors were tied up attending separate, high-profile proceedings in a treason case involving veteran opposition politician, Dr. Kizza Besigye, at the main division of the High Court.

Although the prosecution had communicated that they would arrive by 11:00 am, the courtroom clock struck midday without any sign of the state representatives. Refusing to let the judicial machinery grind to a halt, Justice Okalany chose to forge ahead.

‘We can proceed. They will find us along the way,’ Justice Okalany ruled, allowing the defense team to formally present their submissions.

Despite the physical absence of the state attorneys, the court provided the defence team with a copy of the State’s affidavit opposing the bail. The document was sworn by Detective Assistant Superintendent of Police (DASP) Johnmary Luwebuga, an investigating officer attached to Butambala Police Station.

Leading the defence team, prominent lawyer and Member of Parliament Medard Sseggona launched a scathing attack on the State’s written response, characterising it as lazy, generic, and completely detached from reality.

‘Mr. Luwebuga’s response is a mere ‘cut-and-paste’ job that is the exact same for all the applicants,’ Mr. Sseggona told the court, arguing that the omnibus rejection failed to address the unique circumstances of each individual suspect.

Mr. Sseggona further pointed out glaring contradictions in the prosecution’s paperwork regarding the residence of the accused persons.

‘The State claims that the applicants lack fixed places of abode, yet those very residential places are explicitly indicated on the state’s own charge sheet. That position is fundamentally contradictory and self-defeating,’ Sseggona submitted.

The defence stalwart also challenged the assertion that the accused persons would intimidate or compromise witnesses. He argued that the investigating officer had failed to lay even a shred of empirical evidence before the court to prove that any of the applicants had a history or intent of witness tampering.

In his affidavit, DASP Luwebuga implored the court to throw out the application, insisting it entirely lacked merit. He maintained that the volatile nature of the Butambala criminal case required the suspects to remain under lock and key.

‘The applicants will interfere with ongoing investigations and witnesses if this application is granted,’ Luwebuga’s affidavit read in part.

The investigating officer further contended that the applicants had failed to prove they owned established businesses or fixed residences, despite what they swore in their own affidavits. He also took issue with the sureties presented by the defense, labeling them “unsuitable” and warning that the accused persons are heavy flight risks who would likely abscond from justice.

In a highly personal twist, the State explicitly disputed Mr Kivumbi’s self-description as a law-abiding citizen and statesman.

‘It is not true that the applicant is a statesman,’ Luwebuga’s affidavit stated, adding that the former legislator is no longer the sitting MP for Butambala County, nor does he still chair Parliament’s influential Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE).

The State concluded that the heavy criminal charges strictly arose from the applicants’ alleged direct participation in lawless activities, urging the court to deny them freedom in the interest of public safety.

The applicants, who have been languishing on remand at Kitalya Mini Max Prison, Naguru Remand Home, and Luzira Women’s Prison, are seeking temporary freedom pending their trial.

Through their lawyers, they argue that they possess deep community ties, have substantial sureties, and have already spent months on remand without the prosecution formally committing their file to the High Court for trial.

The group was arrested following a wave of post-election violence that rocked Butambala District in January 2026. According to the prosecution, Kivumbi and his co-accused allegedly orchestrated coordinated, bloody attacks on Kibibi Police Station and the Butambala Electoral Commission tally centre between January 11 and January 17, 2026.

The state alleges the attacks were designed to intimidate the government for political or economic motives, resulting in the tragic deaths of seven people.

Hearing of the bail application continues.

A high-stakes land dispute has erupted in eastern Uganda, pitting a high-ranking law enforcement official against a fearful community.

Senior Commissioner of Police (SCP) Timothy Halango is under intense scrutiny in Kamuli District over allegations of attempting to aggressively seize a disputed 66-acre piece of land in Mawembe Zone, Kagumba Sub-county, reportedly under the guise of a legitimate legal purchase.

Mr Halango, a prominent figure who previously served as a member of the police disciplinary standby tribunal, currently holds the influential position of Deputy Director of the Directorate of Welfare, Production, and Sports within the Uganda Police Force. He is also well-known publicly as the Chairman of Police Football Club. Local residents, who comprise both sitting tenants and customary landlords, accuse the top officer of using his immense influence to evict them from the contested property.

The standoff reached a boiling point recently when angry residents and local leaders physically blocked a tractor hired by the Police Commissioner from ploughing the disputed fields, narrowly averting a violent confrontation.

The heart of the bitter dispute lies in the authenticity of the land ownership documents. Locals accuse Mr Halango of systematically destroying their crop gardens and orchestrating the forgery of land sale agreements over time to legitimize his occupation.

According to a resident who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, Mr Halango initially arrived in the area as an ordinary tenant, leasing land to engage in commercial sugarcane cultivation. The resident alleged that the Commissioner later colluded with a local council official to fabricate ownership documents.

‘The land sale agreement was fraudulently made by him together with the LCII chairperson. It is shocking that the document bears an official government stamp dated 2019, yet such official local government stamps were only introduced by the ministry in 2022. This is outright theft by trickery and is completely unacceptable,’ the anonymous resident alleged.

Furthermore, community members point out glaring anomalies in the paperwork, claiming that several individuals listed as witnesses on the disputed land sale agreement had actually passed away well before the death of the land’s original owner, Philip Oboi.

The controversy has already drawn casualties. On April 14, 2026, authorities in Kamuli detained George Batambule, the LCII chairperson of Kibuye Parish in Kagumba Sub-county. Batambule was arrested on the direct orders of the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) following a preliminary investigation into the alleged forgery of the 2019 land agreements.

Appearing before Kamuli Deputy Resident District Commissioner (RDC) Mr Adonia Muguwa to defend his actions, SCP Halango vehemently denied any wrongdoing, maintaining that his acquisition of the land was entirely lawful and transparent.

Mr Halango explained to the district security committee that his relationship with the land began purely as a commercial tenancy agreement with the late Oboi. However, he claimed that before the lease expired, a cash-strapped Oboi offered to sell him portions of the estate across separate transactions.

According to Mr Halango’s timeline, the late Oboi sold him an initial 45 acres. Following Oboi’s death, his sons allegedly approached the commissioner for financial assistance.

“I do not have the mandate to resolve internal family disputes, but the same person who rented me the land is the one who later sold me the initial 45 acres,” Mr Halango defended. He added that when Oboi passed away, his sons requested an additional Shs 5 million to cater for burial expenses, promising him more land in return. In total, Halango claims he paid Shs 1.6 million per acre for 56.6 acres, leaving the family with just over 10 acres.

The late Oboi’s family strongly rejects the Commissioner’s narrative. Robinah Nakitende, an 80-year-old surviving widow who has lived on and cultivated the land since time immemorial, claimed that if any transaction occurred, it was an illegal inside job. She pointed fingers at her co-wife’s son, identified as Kasiba, accusing him of clandestinely conspiring with Halango to sell off the ancestral estate without the family’s consent.

“We received our designated shares from our husband during his lifetime. I am certain they concocted this fraudulent land sale agreement with the other side of the family. We shall pursue this matter to the very end,” Ms Nakitende stated firmly.

Political leaders have voiced deep concerns over the escalating situation, with Ms Justine Mpindi, the District Female Councillor for Kagumba Sub-county, noting that during Mzee Oboi’s public funeral, his children openly stated that their father had only leased the land to the officer for six years starting in 2019.

“Questions heavily remain about how a deceased man could suddenly return to sell him the very same land,” Mpindi noted, calling for urgent state intervention.

The involvement of a high-ranking police chief has reportedly compromised local law enforcement neutrality.

Mr Bernard Kempaka, the LCIII chairperson of Kagumba Sub-county, raised the alarm over what he described as institutional intimidation, revealing that residents are currently living in absolute terror.

“We find ourselves in direct conflict with district police officers who are threatening to arrest local tenants and leaders simply to appease their big boss in Kampala. This is a gross display of impunity. We are determined to resist this illegal intimidation, as mandated by the law,” Kempaka stated.

Mr Kempaka warned that if the harassment of locals by junior police officers does not cease immediately, leadership will bypass the regional command and escalate the petition directly to the Inspector General of Police (IGP).

In an attempt to defuse the volatile situation, Mr Muguwa has called for calm, reassuring terrified residents that the district security committee will convene an all-inclusive mediation meeting with all aggrieved parties, surveying surveyors, and legal representatives to ensure justice is served transparently.

In the last four years, Uganda’s housing deficit has averaged around or over two million units, a figure that has barely budged, even as the population grows by more than a million people annually.

It is not that nobody is building. Drive through Naguru, Kololo, or Nakasero, the emerging elite areas, on any given morning, and the cranes are hard to miss.

But the homes popping up are rarely for the 80 percent of Ugandans economists call lower- and middle-income earners, which is to say, most people.

We examine the demand side: why those who need homes most cannot access the financing to get one, and what is beginning to change.

The second will tackle the supply side: why developers are not building enough for them, and what it would take to make them.

The arithmetic of exclusion

Uganda’s median urban worker earns between Shs220,000 and Shs230,000 a month. Rural incomes are lower still, at around Shs168,000.

To house someone at that level, the National Planning Authority estimates a home would need to cost between Shs14m and Shs24m. Nobody is building there.

What the market calls ‘affordable housing’ starts at around Shs90m and stretches to Shs350m and beyond, a label that, as the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Deputy Managing Director Gerald Kasaato says, is ‘always going to be a very, very difficult thing to achieve against those kinds of numbers.’

Bridging that gap, therefore, requires a functioning mortgage market, patient capital, and a government willing to act on policy levers it has long left untouched.

Mortgages require payslips, documented salaries, and formal credit histories, things that most Ugandans have none of. Of 9.3 million workers, only about one million qualify for mainstream lending because their income is known monthly.

Broll Managing Director Moses Lutalo describes a mortgage market that is ‘almost comically thin.’

‘Fewer than 40,000 mortgages exist in a country of over 50 million people. Mortgage debt accounts for less than 1 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to 65 percent in Britain, numbers that mirror much of sub-Saharan Africa,’ he says.

The price of borrowing

For the minority who qualify for a mortgage, the terms are punishing. Rates sit at between 16 and 18 percent per annum, roughly double the single-digit threshold at which housing finance specialists consider mortgages genuinely affordable.

Uganda Bankers Association Executive Director Wilbroad Owor blames this on the absence of patient capital.

‘Commercial banks are short-term funded institutions. The mismatch between the short-term deposits they hold and the long-term loans housing requires is inherently costly, and that cost is passed directly to borrowers,’ he says.

It is a structural problem that even Uganda’s largest institutional investor cannot easily solve alone.

NSSF manages assets worth over Shs26 trillion and holds what the industry calls patient capital, yet its real estate portfolio manager Matthew Rukaari is measured in his optimism: ‘We fully recognise that it’s difficult.’

The Mortgage Refinancing Act

The Mortgage Refinancing Act, signed in February and now awaiting a regulatory framework, is designed to fix the structural mismatch that hobbles both banks and the pension scheme approach.

The logic is that mortgage refinancing companies, regulated by Bank of Uganda, would sit between commercial banks and long-term capital markets.

Instead of a bank funding a 20-year mortgage out of short-term deposits, the refinancing company steps in with long-term capital, absorbs a portion of the default risk, and allows banks to price mortgages more competitively.

‘Banks will sell that mortgage to the refinance company. The refinance company can wait much longer. Initial capital would come from government, supplemented by concessional finance from institutions like the World Bank and the African Development Bank,’ Owor explains.

It is a model Kenya has used to develop its mortgage market. Lutalo argues that cheaper credit would send a signal to developers that real customers, with real financing behind them, are waiting at the affordable end of the market, a signal that has been absent until now.

But Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA)’s investment and risk analyst Eric Mugisha cautions that you ‘might have all these refinancing entities, but you will find that the capacity is restricted to a few. It may not be helping the low-income earners.’

His concern is that without deliberate design choices about who the institution is meant to serve, the benefits will again flow to borrowers who are already close to bankable, leaving the majority behind.

Owor is measured but less pessimistic, pointing to Bank of Uganda’s involvement as a sound foundation.

The caveat, he acknowledges, is that the Mortgage Refinancing Act is still just an Act. The regulations that would create and capitalise the actual refinancing institutions have not yet been gazetted.

A failed experiment

Before the Mortgage Refinancing Act, Uganda tried something else. Regulations under URBRA allowed pension scheme members to use up to half of their accrued benefits as collateral for a home loan.

Its logic was rational, but it barely moved the needle in practice. Mugisha explains that the 50 percent rule meant a member could pledge whichever was lower: half their accrued benefits, or the property’s market value. The problem was the underlying numbers.

‘The biggest portion of members have money that is less than Shs10m,’ Mugisha notes, adding that: ‘Against a market where the average house costs upwards of Shs250m, someone would need benefits worth at least Shs500m to make the facility work’.

‘The regulation, in effect, reached exactly the people who already had options and missed entirely those who did not,’ he says.

Banks ran into a deeper problem, too. Uganda’s pension laws protect member contributions from attachment, meaning lenders have no clean enforcement mechanism in the event of default.

‘There is nothing that gives comfort to bankers. With collateral they could not legally seize, lenders walked away. Uptake was negligible,’ Mugisha notes. The lesson here is that structural solutions that ignore the legal landscape and the actual asset levels of their intended beneficiaries will not work, however elegantly designed.

Patient capital

Another pool of capital could transform Uganda’s housing market, and it has been sitting largely on the sidelines.

Pension funds, Saccos, insurance companies, and asset managers collectively hold assets that are half the commercial banking system’s Shs61.3 trillion. NSSF alone manages over Shs26 trillion.

In Kenya, pension funds allocate up to 30 percent of their portfolios to real estate. In Uganda, the figure is under 5 percent.

The gap is about returns. A pension fund earning 12 to 15 percent on government bonds, with near-zero risk and minimal effort, has little incentive to take on the complexity of a housing development for a similar yield.

As Lutalo puts it, ‘the market has simply not brought them a product which is de-risked and makes business sense to them.’

A functioning mortgage refinancing framework changes that calculus. Lower risk makes housing more competitive as an asset class, which attracts institutional capital, which funds more mortgage lending and more development.

It is a virtuous cycle that the developed world has already taken advantage of.

Rent-to-own: A bridge or a bandage?

In the absence of a functioning mortgage market, NSSF has been developing a Rent-to-Own policy. A household moves into a unit and pays rent, a portion of which accumulates toward eventual ownership.

‘Your payments will be going towards the ownership of the home. There will be an effective interest rate, obviously, but the hope is that the effective interest rate will be less than the current mortgage rates,’ Rukaari says.

It is a genuinely innovative attempt to meet people where they are. However, Rukaari is also honest about its limits: ‘One hundred million is one hundred million. How you decide to finance one hundred million doesn’t change the fact that one hundred million is very expensive for so many people.’

Kasaato frames the challenge in regional terms, referencing a seminar at an International Social Security Association meeting in the Ivory Coast in 2024.

Sierra Leone, with a GDP per capita of just $521 (Shs1.9m), defines an affordable home at around $30,000, roughly Shs112m. Uganda is richer, yet its institutions have not yet built a product at that price point, let alone below it.

Demand that cannot yet speak

Uganda is urbanising at 5 percent annually, according to the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, one of the fastest rates in Africa.

Kampala and its satellite towns absorb hundreds of thousands of new residents every year.

The desire to own is not a middle-class aspiration, but a universal one. What is missing is the financial infrastructure to convert want into effective demand: the kind that developers can see, price against, and build for.

The Mortgage Refinancing Act, if properly operationalised and deliberately designed to reach beyond the already-bankable, is the single most important near-term intervention available.

Paired with serious engagement from pension funds and complemented by innovative products like rent-to-own, Uganda has the pieces of a solution.

What has been lacking is the will to assemble them in the right order, at the right speed, and the honesty, as Mugisha’s warning about capacity makes clear, to confront what a given tool cannot do.

Beyond this, there is also need to examine why fixing demand is necessary but not sufficient (we are working on an article).

Even if every Ugandan who needs a home could suddenly access affordable financing, there would still not be enough homes to buy.

The supply side of the housing crisis is, if anything, an even more complex problem.

The latest appointments has pushed the number of MPs to 555 from 529, with the 26 ex-officio members named in the Cabinet.

The number of members in the 12th Parliament has risen to 555 following President Museveni’s appointment of 26 ex-officio members in the new Cabinet.

On Tuesday, President Museveni unveiled an 83-member Cabinet comprising ministers and ministers of state drawn from different parts of the country. While most of the appointees are elected Members of Parliament (MPs), several do not hold elective parliamentary seats and automatically qualify as ex-officio members.

Therefore, when a person who is not an elected legislator is appointed minister or vice president, they automatically become an ex-officio Member of Parliament. The latest appointments mean that the number of MPs has now increased to 555 from 529, with the addition of the 26 ex-officio members named in the Cabinet.

Although ex-officio members can participate in parliamentary business, the Constitution bars them from voting on matters that require a formal vote in the House. Their role in Parliament includes attending plenary sittings, debating issues, presenting government business, defending policies and statements, and responding to questions raised by legislators. Ex-officio members also participate in committee proceedings where they defend ministerial budgets, government programmes, and Bills tabled before Parliament. The expanded size of Parliament comes amid continued public debate over the cost of maintaining one of the largest legislatures in the region, with critics often questioning whether the increasing number of legislators and political appointees is sustainable.

In every modern economy, governments and businesses interact with two broad categories of persons: individuals and non-individuals. An individual is a natural person, a citizen, taxpayer, teacher, doctor, trader, employee, or landowner.

A non-individual, on the other hand, refers to entities such as companies, partnerships, trusts, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), cooperatives, associations, foundations, schools, hospitals, clubs and government bodies.

Behind every non-individual are real people: directors, shareholders, trustees, beneficial owners, managers, accountants, lawyers, and agents.

Every company contract, bank transaction, procurement process, or tax obligation ultimately connects back to individuals who own, manage, or benefit from that entity.

For any modern State to function efficiently, it must clearly answer two questions: Who is this individual? And what is this non-individual? Uganda has made major progress in identifying individuals through the National Identification Number (NIN) managed by the National Identification and Registration Authority.

The next critical step is creating the same certainty for non-individuals. Today, one entity may appear differently across multiple systems.

A company can have one number at registration, another for tax, another in procurement systems, another in licensing databases, and yet another in banking records. In many cases, names are abbreviated, misspelled, duplicated, or changed across institutions.

This fragmentation creates confusion, increases the cost of doing business, slows service delivery, and weakens regulation and accountability. It also creates opportunities for fraud, tax evasion, conflict of interest, and misuse of legal entities.

Under the Tax Procedures Code framework, the Uganda Registration Services Bureau has been mandated to establish and maintain the Non-Individual Register (NIR). The register will assign one trusted and unique number to every non-individual operating in Uganda. This number will serve as the common reference across government and private sector systems, including taxation, licensing, procurement, banking, and regulatory services.

Names alone are not enough. They can change, be duplicated or inconsistently recorded. However, a unique and well-governed number creates certainty, consistency, and trust across systems. For private sector, this reform will reduce duplication and simplify compliance.

Entities should not repeatedly submit the same information to different agencies. A shared and trusted identifier means faster verification, easier access to services, and lower administrative costs.

For the government, the benefits are greater. A common identifier allows agencies to link information across registration, taxation, licensing, procurement, land administration, and financial regulation systems.

Authorities can more easily identify active, dormant, dissolved, compliant, or non-compliant entities. The register will also strengthen transparency by linking non-individuals to the people behind them, such as directors, shareholders, trustees, beneficial owners, and authorised signatories. The purpose of the Non-Individual Register is build trust and certainty in Uganda’s economy.

The Non-Individual Register should not be viewed as merely a URSB project. It is part of Uganda’s broader digital public infrastructure and a foundation for modern governance, digital commerce, and efficient public service delivery.

The principle is simple: identify every non-individual once, assign one trusted number and use it everywhere.

Health experts are warning that poor eating habits, unsafe food handling, and the consumption of contaminated foods are putting students’ health at risk.

This follows reports that teenagers in many schools are facing serious nutritional challenges said to be behind increasing cases of stomach ulcers, upsets and other food-borne illnesses, such as brucellosis. Many students skip breakfast before going to school and later depend on cheap street foods, sugary snacks, and poorly prepared meals sold around school compounds.

Medical experts say that irregular eating patterns and excessive intake of spicy, oily, or unhygienic foods can irritate the stomach lining and lead to ulcers and other digestive complications. According to Dr Isma Tamale Mugerwa, a health nutritionist, parents play a major role in the nutritional problems affecting children. ‘Parents pack a lot of unsafe products for children, prompting them to ignore the healthy foods provided at school and instead depend on junk foods around school premises,’ Dr Mugerwa said.

Unsafe dairy products have also become a growing concern.

Dr Mugerwa explained that brucellosis is a bacterial disease commonly spread through unpasteurized milk and dairy products from infected animals.

He noted that contaminated dairy products cause fever, stomach discomfort, and other health complications. Health experts are also concerned about food additives and local delicacies such as ‘oddi’ (derived from peanut butter) and ‘appeta,’ (a derivative of several cooking fat, and spices), which are sometimes mixed into food. While some communities consider them harmless, health officials warn that the unhygienic conditions products in which they are prepared or sold without proper regulation may expose consumers to harmful bacteria and chemicals.

Dr Mugerwa explained that many teenagers unknowingly consume unsafe foods because of limited awareness and poor supervision. ‘Students often buy food from roadside vendors without checking how the food is prepared or stored,’ he said. ‘Some of these foods may contain contaminated milk, unsafe water, or additives that can cause stomach infections and long-term health complications.’ However, the students blame their eating conditions at home for their persistent stomach problems. ‘My mum doesn’t give me any pocket money for breakfast, and I end up waiting for lunch provided by the school, which is also little. I remain hungry the whole day, and this may trigger ulcers,’ said John Mbowa, a student.

Dr Mugerwa emphasised that although there are several factors responsible for their nutritional challenges, learners should also understand the food types suitable for their bodies. He added that nutrition experts can guide people on healthy feeding habits after carrying out health assessments. ‘We test the blood through different phases and recommend food to people according to their body needs because what is important for one person’s body may not be suitable for another,’ he explained.

Sensitisation

Education experts are now calling for stronger food safety inspections in schools, improved nutrition education, and regular health screening for students.

Parents have also been encouraged to provide balanced meals and teach children about the dangers of consuming unsafe food products.

Dr Mugerwa is now urging parents to take their children to nutrition experts before returning them to school in order to understand what foods are safe and healthy for them. He believes that with proper awareness, hygiene, and healthy eating habits, many of these preventable illnesses among teenagers can be reduced or prevented.

To understand Uganda Clays Ltd (UCL) as an investment, you must first understand its relationship with the National Social Security Fund (NSSF); not as a shareholder, although NSSF is that too, holding 32 percent of the company’s shares, but as a lender.

The two roles are inseparable, and the tension between them has defined the company’s financial story for 15 years.

In December 2010, UCL borrowed Shs11.05b from NSSF to fund its day-to-day operations at an interest rate of 15 percent per year.

By July 2015, the loan had grown to Shs20.6b, and the company simply could not keep up. NSSF agreed to press pause, freezing both interest and repayments indefinitely.

For the next eight years, the debt sat in the background like a bill stuffed in a drawer. During those frozen years, UCL did well. In 2021, it earned Shs36.7b in revenue, made a profit of Shs5.9b, and paid dividends. The NSSF loan was invisible in all of it because it had been parked.

‘Initially, we had cash reserves of about Shs20b in 2021. We decided to purchase a plant from Italy using our own funds. The assumption was we would easily get money, cheaper capital from a bank like the Uganda Development Bank,’ Managing Director Jones Muhumuza says.

That cheaper capital never came through. The savings were spent. The Italian plant caused disruptions to existing machinery. And the frozen debt was about to wake up.

In May 2023, both boards of NSSF and UCL signed a restructuring agreement-essentially a renegotiation of the old bill. The Shs20.6b debt was cancelled and replaced with a new loan of Shs15.81b, with repayments due to begin in January 2025.

The Shs4.79b difference was recorded as a one-time boost to the balance sheet. But the business was struggling badly that year, recording a loss of Shs2.85b.

And for the first time since 2015, interest started ticking again, Shs1.61b in 2023 alone, instantly the company’s single biggest expense.

Then January 2025 arrived and UCL could not begin repayments as agreed. It went back to NSSF and negotiated yet another delay, a three-year pause running to January 2028, with interest continuing to accumulate the entire time.

Because NSSF is not an ordinary lender, but also a part-owner, accounting rules required the company to record a loss of Shs468m in the net worth section of the balance sheet, chipping away at part of the gain booked in 2023.

The trajectory of the loan tells the story plainly. From Shs11b at inception, frozen at Shs20.6b in 2015, restructured down to Shs15.81b in 2023, grown back through interest to Shs17.42b by the end of 2023, Shs20.13b by the end of 2024, and Shs23.58b by the end of 2025. Not one shilling of the original loan was repaid in 15 years.

Interest charge

Before 2023, the frozen NSSF loan did not appear in UCL’s profit calculations at all. In 2021, the company made Shs7.47b in operating profit, paid NSSF nothing, and shareholders received Shs6.6 profit per share plus a dividend worth Shs1.35b.

Then interest switched back on. By 2025, the company generated Shs4.59b in operating profit, a decent number, but Shs2.98b went straight to NSSF as interest before shareholders saw anything. Operating profit shows what a business actually earns from running itself, before taxes, interest, or one-off events distort the picture.

What remained after all other costs and taxes was Shs142m in net profit on Shs34.8b of revenue. Shareholders’ profit per share slid to Shs0.16. The interest charge alone was twenty-one times larger than the profit left for shareholders.

The trend across years shows something. In 2022, despite machinery breakdowns, shareholders still earned Shs2.71 profit per share, because the loan was still frozen. In 2023, the moment interest resumed at Shs1.61b, the company recorded a loss of Shs2.85b.

In 2024, interest rose to Shs2.71b, and the loss widened to Shs4.95b. In 2025, margins nearly doubled, and revenue grew, yet shareholders received Shs0.16 profit per share.

The business is genuinely improving. The debt is simply consuming the improvement faster than management can generate it.

Cash flow, structural gap

Across all five years from 2021 to 2025, UCL has not generated positive free cash flow after capital expenditure in a single year. The best year was 2021, when the company brought in Shs9.28b from operations. But that same year it spent Shs9.07b on equipment. Almost every shilling that came in went straight back out.

Since NSSF’s interest started being charged in 2023, the cash situation has gotten significantly worse. The company generated Shs1.42b in operating cash flow in 2023 and Shs1.53b in 2025, the actual cash its core operations produced after meeting day-to-day costs.

Unlike accounting profit, which can look healthy even when a business is cash-starved, this figure captures what the company truly collected and held from running itself. It is the most honest test of operational self-sufficiency.

Buried inside those numbers is Shs3.93b of interest owed to NSSF but not actually paid in cash, instead being added onto the loan balance every year.

Mr Muhumuza says the production problems are resolved. ‘The challenges or bottlenecks that we had were on production. That has been resolved.’

His focus now is revenue growth. ‘For any company to grow, obviously, you manage costs but that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is growth, which is the top line.’

The growth plan is wide-ranging-five new products in 2026, including bricks to compete directly with concrete blocks, a ten-year vision of ceramics, tiles, bathroom fittings and kitchenware, and export markets in Sudan, DRC and Kenya.

On the debt, Mr Muhumuza says the company will start setting aside between Shs500m and Shs800m monthly from next year in interest-earning accounts ahead of January 2028.

He is confident about this. ‘With the projections that we’ve done, NSSF gave us a period of five years from 2028 in which to pay that money. But in about 2.5 years or two years, we should have paid off that loan.’ That would mean clearing a debt approaching Shs30b in roughly half the time NSSF has allowed.

2028 reckoning

The pause ends January 1, 2028, by which point the loan will have grown to roughly Shs30.7b. Repayments then run over five years, with the annual bill, principal plus interest, exceeding Shs6b every year, against operating cash generation of just Shs1.53b in 2025.

The total eventually owed to NSSF is Shs49.5b by December 2025, more than the company’s entire net worth of Shs37.96b. Bridging that gap would require a level of cash generation UCL has never achieved, even in its best years, even when NSSF was charging nothing. Its debt-to-equity ratio nearly doubled from 0.36 in 2021 to 0.73 in 2025.

NSSF sits at the centre of every decision that matters, as both the largest creditor and a major shareholder.

Asked whether that dual role creates a conflict of interest, NSSF Head of Corporate Affairs Barbra Teddy Arimi said: ‘The NSSF representatives on the Uganda Clays Board are not part of the investment committee that approved the loan restructuring.’

On recoverability, she added: ‘The NSSF formal assessment is that Uganda Clays has the ability to meet its financial obligations over time. This is largely due to positive operational results and prospects that will continue to strengthen its ability to meet obligations.’

Assets have been pledged as collateral, and UCL cannot borrow further during the moratorium without NSSF’s approval.

When pressed on what happens if the company cannot pay again in January 2028, the answer returned to collateral and covenants. That reassurance has been independently scrutinised.

The Auditor General’s report for the year to June 2025 found the pledged properties, land in Budaka, Pallisa, and Bulambuli in rural eastern Uganda, had a market value of just Shs15.4b, 25 percent below the loan amount at restructuring.

The legal mortgage registered against them was only Shs11b, leaving Shs9.6b entirely unsecured.

The properties had not been revalued since January 2022, before two consecutive years of losses, and the Auditor General recommended that NSSF obtain additional collateral. NSSF responded that UCL indicated some properties were being developed, increasing their value.

When Ms Arimi says the loan is secured, she is technically correct, but the legal mortgage covers only Shs11b of a loan now at Shs22b and still growing, on rural land last valued three years ago, on a company that spent much of the intervening period losing money.

A third restructuring, which is the fourth major renegotiation of a loan now fifteen years old, remains possible.

The 2025 results are genuinely encouraging: margins improved dramatically, revenue grew, and the company returned to profit after two painful loss-making years. The Italian plant, once fully running, could push performance further still. But the loan that started at Shs11b in 2010 now stands at Shs23.6b.

The moratorium buys three years. The only question that matters is whether UCL uses that time to build a business strong enough to finally face this debt, or simply delays a bill that gets bigger every month it goes unpaid.

ABOUT UCL

Uganda Clays Limited (UCL) is a leading manufacturer of quality baked clay building products in Uganda. It uses Hoffman kilns to currently provide the building materials in a brick-red color. The company’s products are categorized into roofing tiles, bricks, maxpans, quarry floor tiles and others. The company was established on July 10, 1950.

Without revealing figures, National Council of Sports (NCS) general secretary Bernard Ogwel revealed they are considering more support towards clubs.

Ogwel was speaking during a press briefing in Lugogo, where he was sharing updates of the current status of compliance by sports federations and associations under the 2023 National Sports Acts.

‘We now know that in some sports disciplines, clubs are more serious than federations,’ Ogwel said.

‘Last year we had Shs300m to support clubs that had continental engagements and for most of them, we came in to help in a small way to complement their efforts especially by buying air tickets.

‘We should support clubs more and we will start that by piloting with football then move to other sports disciplines. No federation owns an athlete. It is the clubs doing the work and that is why I am shocked that some federations now want to start academies.

‘Federations can support clubs with academies instead of competing with them. In my view, federations can have centres of excellence where they can have capacity building for technical staff, support clubs, scout players.’ Daily Monitor understands that some basketball and hockey clubs were beneficiaries of this subsidy.

Ogwel was highlighting the waste and lack of accountability in federations, where some leaders take on duplicated or more roles to keep government support to themselves.

‘Conduct proper research on what these federations do with the money we give them,’ Ogwel urged the media.

‘They organize national team engagements where the president also goes as a coach. Maybe they do not see eye to eye with their general secretary so they are also the ones doing the accountability. Then after they say they do not have funds (to complete the compliance process).

‘If we did a proper audit of the money federations have received from the government in the last five years, you will realize that they are just not good planners.

‘In Public Service, an accountant earns about Shs700,000 to Shs1m. Why would a federation that gets over Shs100m fail to employ an accountant to do proper accountability. It would cost them about Shs12m a year.

‘The compliance process has been affected by a lot of these internal federation wrangles because you need a fully-fledged executive committee to submit applications. We also want sports organizations to streamline their activities (have administrators, technical directors too) but we can only guide them, not force them,’ Ogwel added.

Residents of Busia District have been urged to embrace commercial agriculture and take advantage of the area’s strategic position on the Uganda-Kenya border to access wider markets across East Africa.

Speaking at the inaugural Busia District Agriculture Expo at Masafu Playground, National Resistance Movement (NRM) National Treasurer Barbara Nekesa said the district’s location offered farmers significant opportunities to expand beyond subsistence production.

“We are a border district, and this comes with opportunities of market access both locally and internationally,” Nekesa said on Saturday .

She noted that Busia hosts one of East and Central Africa’s largest cereal trading hubs but said much of the produce sold there originates from other districts.

“This is one of the biggest export markets for cereals and other agricultural produce, which we must take advantage of,” she added.

Nekesa urged farmers to transition to commercial agriculture, citing growing demand from Uganda’s urban centres and the wider East African market.

She also cautioned against continued subdivision of land, describing it as a major obstacle to agricultural productivity.

“We need to move away from rampant land fragmentation because it is a hindering factor to commercial agriculture,” she said.

According to Nekesa, farmers can substantially increase household incomes by investing in high-value crops such as coffee.

“If you grow one acre of coffee, you can earn not less than Shs27 million per season,” she said.

Former tourism minister Godfrey Kiwanda Ssuubi used the event to train farmers on coffee agronomy, including proper land preparation and recommended spacing of 10 by 10 feet, which accommodates about 450 seedlings per acre.

He said a well-managed coffee tree can generate about Shs50,000 per season, translating into more than Shs22 million per acre annually.

“To earn such money from maize, you would need at least 10 acres. Farmers must join the cash economy,” Kiwanda said.

The May 28-30, 2026 expo also highlighted success stories from beneficiaries of the government’s Parish Development Model (PDM).

Adikinyi Wanyama from Majanji Sub-county said she invested a Shs1 million PDM loan in piggery two years ago and now sells about 16 piglets annually at Shs250,000 each.

Another beneficiary, Hadija Musana, said her poultry enterprise had expanded from 100 birds to 3,000 birds over three years with support from the programme.

Busia District LC5 Chairperson John Charles Namayindi said the expo had provided farmers with practical knowledge and pledged to make it an annual event.

“As a district, we commit that this agriculture expo will be annual because farmers have learnt a lot from the experts,” he said.

District Production Head Patrick Barasa said the exhibition was intended to provide a platform for farmers to showcase their enterprises and engage directly with agricultural specialists.

In June 2024, I wrote an article for this publication with the headline: ‘Always laugh at people who think NRM can fight corruption.’ President Museveni had delivered his State-of-the-Nation Address and reiterated his ‘commitment’ to fighting corruption. That was the same year when former Speaker Anita Among was grabbing headlines, as she is now, over corruption allegations. My article mentioned corruption in the army decades before Ms Among became a politician and asked a pertinent question: How can we have prison wards with hardly anyone convicted of high-level corruption, yet there is large-scale evidence of high-level corruption?

Two years later, Uganda is dealing with corruption allegations involving the same person. This time, the government has launched a probe into how she acquired her assets. But many Ugandans – at least those who know how governments genuinely committed to fighting corruption behave – are not impressed. They are calling it a big joke. Many are even laughing, not least because the so-called crackdown on Ms Among has ‘politics’ written all over it in red capital letters. Unless she is prosecuted and jailed, if found guilty, there is little to suggest that the government is seriously fighting corruption.

One of the reasons many Ugandans have dismissed the crackdown as a joke is that it does not appear to target corruption impartially. Consider this: Ms Among was not working alone at Parliament. She is not the only official there who has faced corruption allegations. A dossier from intelligence organisations cited by this newspaper last week mentioned people linked to Ms Among who should, by now, be on forced leave as investigations continue. There is no evidence that this has happened or that it will happen.

Ms Among’s deputy, Thomas Tayebwa, has been re-elected to a new five-year term and publicly apologised on behalf of Parliament, although he stopped short of using the word ‘corruption’. Video clips of the apology are circulating on social media. People do not apologise when there is zero evidence of wrongdoing. Mr Tayebwa did not resign when allegations of corruption were first levelled against Parliament. If he is keeping his job, how can the government convince sceptical Ugandans that the investigation is impartial?

Even if evidence is found that Ms Among has a case to answer, the government would still need to investigate everyone in and outside Parliament to reassure Ugandans that the anti-corruption campaign is serious and not selective. Otherwise, as things stand, the government has armed Ms Among with a powerful argument. If the government is truly against corruption, she can rightly ask, why is it targeting only her? Another reason why the probe has been derisively dismissed is the manner in which it has been conducted. Those behind it had time to plan. They had time to discuss what works and what does not.

And if they are indeed investigators, as the media describes them, they should understand the importance of searching suspected crime scenes simultaneously. Instead, searches have been conducted sequentially, potentially giving those under investigation time to move, conceal, destroy or tamper with evidence. Many Ugandans are asking a simple question: why would anyone serious about uncovering wrongdoing conduct investigations in this manner? The last reason is perhaps the most important. It is an open secret that Ms Among had become politically powerful – perhaps too powerful for some people eyeing Uganda’s top job after Mr Museveni.

One of them is army chief, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is widely seen as the force behind the crackdown. His Patriotic League of Uganda, a nascent political outfit presented as a pressure group, endorsed the new Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Marksons Oboth-Oboth. Many Ugandans now suspect that even if Ms Among has a case to answer, the timing and intensity of the crackdown may also be about eliminating a political obstacle.