In her own words, she is still ‘earning her school uniform.’ It is a light-hearted metaphor, but it reveals something profound about Juliana Kagwa’s entry into one of the most demanding public roles in Uganda.
She laughs when she recalls how, within days of her appointment as chief executive officer (CEO) of the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), a colleague teased her, saying she had not got her uniform yet, ‘Maybe a shirt and tie, but the socks and shoes; not yet’. Yet beneath that humour lies a quiet truth; even after two decades of marketing some of the biggest brands in East Africa, branding a nation is a different assignment altogether.
Starting out
‘I have spent most of my life marketing and selling fast-moving consumer goods,’ she says. ‘Uganda Breweries, Heineken, GlaxoSmithKline; I have sold everything from ActiFed to beer. But now I carry the onus of selling a destination called Uganda to the rest of the world. I am now working for a purpose bigger than myself, bigger than any company. You start to understand that when you work for Uganda, you’re working for 45 million people. And that changes everything.’
Marketing beer and medicines might seem far removed from tourism, but Juliana sees it differently.
‘Marketing,’ she says, ‘is not about products. It is about emotion. It is about pride. If I could make Ugandans believe in a beverage, how much more powerful if I can make them believe in their country?’
At Uganda Breweries, she climbed through the ranks, overseeing some of the most ambitious and successful brand campaigns in the market. Then came Heineken, where she started the brand’s Uganda presence from scratch, from market mapping to retail execution. Later, at Uganda Breweries again, she evolved into corporate affairs, and that shift proved catalytic.
She explains: ‘I started to understand the machinery of public institutions. I worked closely with Uganda Revenue Authority, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Trade, and even Agriculture. In that time, I got a taste of public purpose. I saw men and women who had been in the public service for years, not for personal gain but because they believed in what a country could become. That stayed with me.’
Vision for UTB
So, when the UTB CEO role came into view, she threw her hat in the ring. And as she closes in on her first 90 days, she already knows precisely where she wants to lead the tourism sector. She does not romanticise tourism, she quantifies it.
‘Tourism already employs more than 800,000 Ugandans. We are earning close to $3b, contributing about six percent to GDP, and this is without full optimisation,’ she says. ‘When we talk about Uganda reaching middle-income status, there is one sector that can lead that charge decisively. And that is tourism.’
Her eyes light up, with optimism and a sense of duty.
‘Uganda has set an audacious tenfold growth plan, from $50b to $500b GDP by 2040. Within that, tourism is expected to grow 25-fold. That means we cannot continue business as usual. We must spark participation from within, from Ugandans themselves, while building aggressive private sector alliances.’
Tourism, she argues, is not just an economic pillar. ‘It is an ecosystem of identity, hospitality, connectivity, storytelling, investment, and pride,’ she says. ‘If we treat it as a luxury, we will miss the opportunity of a lifetime.’
Kagwa says:’We keep talking about the Big Five. In Uganda, we talk about the Big Seven, because we add chimpanzees and gorillas. But I say, there is a Big Eight- the Ugandan.’
She laughs lightly. ‘Honestly, you cannot find another Ugandan anywhere else in Africa. If you ask someone for directions in Kampala, they will not point you, they will walk with you. That warmth, that humour, that willingness to help, that is not a tourism cliché. That is a national asset.’
She pauses, then adds with conviction: ‘The eighth tourism product we are offering to the world is our people.’ Her redefinition of Uganda’s ‘product’ is subtle yet radical; to make hospitality itself a currency of identity.
‘The world can replicate hotels and safaris, but it cannot replicate the Ugandan spirit,’ she says.
She is adamant that no tourism economy can thrive on foreign visitors alone. ‘In social theory, there is something called critical mass, the bare minimum number of people required for an idea to gain unstoppable momentum. That is what we need in tourism,’ she explains.
‘There are 45 million Ugandans. If even half of us – say 20 million, travel within Uganda twice a year, do you know what that does?’ She answers herself with the precision of a strategist.
‘It creates an internal market. It lowers costs through economies of scale. It attracts serious investment, in air travel, accommodation, and infrastructure. Money follows money.’
To her, domestic tourism is not leisure; it is economic activism.
‘When we visit our own Sipi Falls, Ngamba Island, Wanale in the east, Murchison, Bwindi, we are not just sightseeing. We are building an economy. International tourism will only explode once Ugandans themselves become the early adopters.’
She adds: ‘A vibrant domestic market makes the destination self-sustaining. Every Ugandan who explores their country becomes an ambassador.’
But her strategy is not limited to inspiration.
She is technical, pragmatic, and persistent about one major structural need: private sector investment.
‘We need MTN and Airtel to see themselves not just as telecommunication companies but as tourism partners,’ she says.
‘Connectivity is part of the tourism experience. At the airport in Dubai or Singapore, your SIM card is ready, loaded with data and voice. Uganda tourism cannot deliver a global experience if a tourist lands and goes offline.’
She extends this logic to banks and insurers.
‘Tourism cannot grow without financing,’ she insists. ‘Agriculture did not take off until the banks built specific financial products to support farmers, whether they had two acres or 20. We need banks to now do that for tourism value chain players, from tour guides to safari lodge owners.’
She speaks with the assertive calm of someone who has spent decades rallying distributors and market partners. Now, she seeks to rally a nation.
‘It is not about begging for support but about showing the private sector the opportunity they have been missing,’ she says.
Leadership philosophy
In her first weeks at UTB, she made a symbolic move, she kept her office door open.
‘It is physical and emotional,’ she explains. ‘An open door means you are accessible. It encourages ideation. It tells your team, I am here not as a boss but as a collaborator. And when ideas flow freely, even if only a few stick, they are stronger because they have been refined in conversation, not dictated from above.’
Her leadership philosophy, she says, is built around three values: visibility, humility, and velocity, ‘but all calibrated.’ ‘I have learned that moving fast does not mean rushing people,’ she adds. ‘It means bringing them along.’
Looking back, it has been velocity, patience and purpose. When she reflects on her own career, her voice softens.
‘If I met 25-year-old Juliana, I would tell her; be patient. Adjust your personal velocity. I have always moved fast, graduate, work, marry, children, promotions. But sometimes, in chasing everything, you do not enjoy the moment. Now I am learning to breathe, to be present. We all get there eventually.’
She says this on the eve of her child’s graduation, another personal milestone in a life now defined by public service. ‘It reminds me that every season has its rhythm,’ she says.
‘You just have to listen to it.’ When asked who she would choose to share a cup of tea with, she chooses her mother and former US First Lady Michelle Obama.
‘My mother died early in my career. She wanted me to be a doctor, she had all but bought the lab coat,’ she says, smiling wistfully. ‘I wish she had seen how life turned out. I would sit with her and say, not too bad, hey?’ Then, Michelle Obama because she is a black woman who has endured racism, sexism, scrutiny, and still walks with grace, intelligence, balance. She is everything many of us aspire to. I would love to ask her how she manages to keep it all together and still look that effortless.
Motivation
‘We say ‘Explore Uganda’, but we do not mean it as a tagline. We mean come and immerse yourself. Do not just drive through Queen Elizabeth National Park, stop, taste, listen, laugh with a local, hear the drums, and smell the rain on the soil. Tourism is not a view, it is a feeling. And Uganda has every feeling worth experiencing.’
She says the branding, the partnerships, the numbers, all of that matters. But at the heart of it, tourism is love. Love for home. And when you love something deeply, you want the world to see it.
‘Yes, I am still earning my uniform. But the journey is beautiful.’ And perhaps that is the real story; a marketer who once sold brands now sells belonging, one lake, one gorilla trail, handshake, and smile at a time.
Despite the demanding nature of her role, which involves extensive travel and political nuance, Kagwa derives resilience from her personal relationships.
“Being an extrovert, I am energised by my husband, my children, and my grandmother,” she notes. “When the burden feels heavy, I find my reset at home. For me, it is not about spa days or escaping on a trip; it is about the grounding power of family.”
Her grounding in family, she says, helps her see the bigger picture. ‘Tourism is not just about landscapes; it is about livelihoods. Every trip, every photo, every traveller creates an income for a Ugandan household. That is why I have to stay motivated.’ Kagwa now considers selling the nation through pride, narrative and participation in her life’s work.