Last week, President Museveni officially unveiled the Shs135b Busoga Kingdom Headquarters plan. The project is one of the government’s most significant investments in the sub-region and is expected to transform the kingdom’s cultural and administrative landscape.
It is a welcome investment in the kingdom, which occupies a sub-region often used as a reference point for poverty and teenage pregnancies in Uganda. The headquarters will house the official Busoga Kingdom offices, the Busoga Lukiiko, the Inhebantu Foundation Tower, a 1,000-seater conference centre, a commercial block, landscaped gardens, and ceremonial grounds.
The National Housing and Construction Corporation (NHCC), Uganda’s leading government real-estate development agency, is slated to execute the project starting in early 2026.
Busoga Kingdom had long relied on aging buildings constructed decades ago, which no longer met the demands of the expanding administrative and cultural functions. Like many sectors and individuals in Uganda, survival is largely dependent on receiving a generous handout from the government. While this works in favour of the current government to gain support, it is clearly not sustainable. It’s time to design some sort of masterplan on how to support cultural institutions.
Earlier this year, during an event at the Kololo ceremonial grounds, the ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development handed over cars to cultural leaders. In the immediate aftermath, we learnt that Buganda Kingdom had ‘turned down’ the gift, saying it was against their norms. While the government argued that the value of the cars had been paid in cash to the Buganda treasury, this too was not confirmed by the recipient.
These are just miniature examples. There are several cultural institutions and most of them have similar challenges. While their primary responsibility is preserving culture and heritage plus promotion of unity for a common goal, they lack resources to entrench their visions. Historically, kings constituted the government and therefore had the power to collect taxes and any other obligations citizens owed the State. Many have argued that since this responsibility was taken over by the State, cultural institutions now live on the goodwill of their subjects.
The government support for cultural institutions includes financial assistance, empowerment programmes for cultural leaders, and support for heritage preservation. Recent initiatives in Uganda include a monthly grant of Shs60m to cultural institutions (also publicly rejected by Buganda) to help with their operations and a programme to provide cultural leaders with vehicles to mobilise communities. Legal frameworks also mandate support, such as the Local Government Act that assigns responsibility for culture to local authorities.
The government also contributes to the rehabilitation of official residences for cultural leaders and covers the maintenance of gazetted cultural sites. There are not enough reference points to these relationships to create a clear document on what cultural leaders are entitled to. This has to change.