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Amudat District, in the Karamoja region, is facing a serious health crisis. Many mothers and babies are dying from problems that can be prevented. Even though efforts have been made to improve healthcare, the situation is still bad.

Poor roads, lack of ambulances, faraway health centres, and harmful cultural practices make it hard for pregnant women to get the help they need. In the financial year 2024/2025, the district recorded four mothers who died during childbirth, and 34 babies died before or shortly after birth.

Out of more than 20,000 women who went for antenatal care, only about 4,000 gave birth in health facilities. Most mothers still rely on traditional birth attendants, who often don’t have the tools or training to handle emergencies. Mr Peter Lobot, a retired health worker, said the number of deaths is worrying.

‘Every month, mothers die during childbirth, and many babies don’t survive their first week. If we had more health centres and a district hospital, many of these lives could be saved,’ he said. Many pregnant women do not finish all the recommended antenatal visits. This means problems during pregnancy or childbirth are often discovered too late.

Mothers share their struggles

Ms Pauline Chelain, a 37-year-old mother from Kataboko, said it’s hard to decide where to give birth. ‘Sometimes we have to choose between giving birth at home with a traditional birth attendant or walking many kilometres to the nearest clinic. The roads are bad, there’s no transport, and we suffer a lot,’ she said.

She added that many health centres are far, and some women have to walk over 70 kilometres. By the time they arrive, they’re tired or already in serious condition. The district also has very few health facilities. Most parishes that are supposed to have health centre IIs do not have them, and the sub-counties that should have health centre IIIs also don’t possess them.

Similarly, constituencies that are meant to be served by health centre IVs have none, and the district does not even have a government hospital. Monitor has learnt that the only hospital in the district is owned by the Church of Uganda.

The locals made the remarks during a mobile health clinic organised on Tuesday by ActionAid Uganda with funding from the European Union at Ding-Dinga Village, Kataboko Sub-county in Amudat District. Some relief came through a mobile health clinic run by ActionAid Uganda with support from the European Union.

The clinic visited Ding-Dinga Village in Kataboko to offer health services and raise awareness against harmful practices like early marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).

The goal is to help communities protect young girls and support women’s health. But local health experts say more government help is needed. They are calling for more health centres, more trained staff, and regular health outreach programmes.

According to the District Health Office, Amudat has a population of over 203,000 people, but with only 11 small health centres, most of which lack enough equipment and staff.

Ms Juliet Chepar, who is six months pregnant, said: ‘The nearest hospital is over 100 kilometres away.

When labour starts, there’s no time. The roads are bad and there’s no transport.’ She explained that many women turn to traditional birth attendants. ‘They try their best, but they don’t have the skills or tools to help when there are problems,’ she said.

Health officials speak out

Ms Esther Acheng, the district official in charge of maternal and child health, said the poor state of health services is putting mothers and babies in danger.

‘People walk long distances to reach a health centre. Some child deaths are never reported,’ she said. Only 46 percent of women give birth in health facilities, and only 14 percent use family planning services in the district.

Ms Daisy Awilo Omech from ActionAid Uganda said they are working with the district to help women and girls in hard-to-reach areas. ‘We have shelters in Amudat for girls facing problems like early marriage or FGM. We provide first aid, legal help, and counselling,’ she said.

The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets (PPDA) Appeals Tribunal has raised concerns over persistent delays by accounting officers in making administrative review decisions on bidder complaints.

Speaking to the media during an engagement with officials from government ministries, departments, and agencies in Kampala on Friday, PPDA Registrar Mansour Atiku said such conduct violates the law and undermines confidence in Uganda’s procurement system.

“An accounting officer who receives a complaint is required to suspend the procurement process immediately and issue a written decision within 10 working days. However, many officers go beyond this stipulated time, frustrating bidders and casting doubt on the fairness of public contracting,” he said.

Atiku added that the authority has recorded repeated cases where accounting officers deliberately delay, mishandle, or completely ignore complaints raised by aggrieved bidders.

“The law is very clear. Once a complaint is received, the procurement must issue a decision communicated within 10 days, and going beyond this period is not only unlawful but also weakens the credibility of our procurement processes,” he emphasised.

Such delays deny bidders timely redress, create room for corruption, and undermine the principles of transparency and accountability.

“Procurement is about fairness and safeguarding public funds. When complaints are mishandled, service providers lose trust in the system, and the quality of competition suffers,” Atiku noted.

The PPDA Act requires that, upon request, a bidder who lodges a complaint must receive a report from the procuring entity detailing the reasons for rejection and the stage at which rejection occurred. Paul Kalumba, a member of the tribunal, warned that PPDA will not hesitate to sanction officers who fail to comply with the law. “Accountability starts with the accounting officer, and there will be consequences for negligence and non-compliance will attract personal liability,” he said.

Kalumba also urged officers to guide bidders properly on how to file complaints, including the payment of prescribed administrative review fees, instead of using technicalities to frustrate them.

Common complaints

PPDA data shows that bidders regularly raise grievances about irregularities in how procuring entities handle administrative reviews. These practices, Kalumba said, are damaging not only to bidders but also to the government’s bid to deliver services through credible contractors.

“The tendency to sabotage bid submissions, delay decisions, or cancel processes midway erodes trust. We urge all accounting officers to respect the timelines and procedures provided by law,” he emphasised.

Executives often hash out the same words to their reports , ‘let us create value.’ And it has become a standard language across the C-suite, value creation, and value propositions.

Everyone is looking for ways of creating more value for the consumer. It could be through better packaging, accessible pricing or even improving the product-service surrounding.

As a result, the customer or consumer is walking away with more value. And then organisations keep wondering – but we are creating all this value yet it’s not reflecting in both the top-line. In fact, it could be eroding the bottom-line as value creation often comes at a cost impact to the company.

What then is the challenge? Why is it that an organisation could create so much value yet not reap benefits of this endeavour? It comes down to the second thing – value capture. It is one thing to create value, it is another thing to capture it. Value creation is like energy generation, it is hard to capture every unit generated. It gets lost somewhere or somebody else captures it.

It then presents the famous two by two matrix, four-quadrant scenario. In the first quadrant are organisations that create low value, capture low value. No one wishes to be in this space. It’s the whisper before total annihilation. In the second quadrant are companies that create high value but capture low value.

So much so little

This is another miserable step. Because it means you are doing so much for so little. Then you have the third quadrant of creating low value but capture high value. It is the dream state, they are the kind of organisations that even sell their breadcrumbs, convert their waste into revenue. And finally, the ideal state of high value creation and high value capture.

One of the FMCG companies in Uganda pulled off the fourth state with one of their brands. They engaged in premiurisation, gave life to the label and the bottle.

Thereafter, they transitioned the new brand from a gin to a liqueur, and this meant a lower alcohol by volume (thus more savings). But because of this remiurisation (adding flavours to the original brand), they were able to sell it at a higher price and sell more volumes.

This was the ultimate signature example of high value creation, and high value capture. Such an endeavour requires a fully integrated innovation team. That is to say, an innovation team with an end-to-end approach around the product.

They can study the entire value chain of the product, create value at every line of the chain, and capture value at every stage of the chain. These are teams with a commercial outlook and financial sensitivity. You could call it strategic innovation that results in competitive advantage. It requires looking within what an organization already has and giving it a whole new approach. That could mean rethinking a process, rethinking a product, rethinking a structure. You could also think of when banks digitised and got many services on the phone. By creating value (convenience), they also captured it (more transactions volume, and thus more charging avenues).

The bottom line here is that organisations must take the conversation of value creation to its natural conclusion – value capture. It is no use creating value that will not be captured. There is no point throwing resources at immature markets, or markets that have not yet hit a critical mass that serves as a precursor to some innovations.

Sometimes, we call this high value creation, low value capture as organisations that were so ahead of themselves. They gave consumers more than what they could pay for at the moment. It is comparable to a technology startup releasing more features than what a user currently requires, rather than saving those features for later releases. Think of it as avoiding over-engineering or gold-plating.

The trap

Most organisations are caught up in the trap of gold-plating and over-engineering. Take the example of restaurants on an online food delivery platform. It is a beautiful thing to have branded paper bags. But does it translate to repeated purchases? Is it worth the cost to currently brand one’s packaging bags? Or would that effort rather translate into improving the quality and taste of the food which will enable one to command higher prices and lead to repeat purchases. The branded paper bag is high value creation, low value capture. The better food is high value creation, high value capture.

Again, it is back to what really matters to a consumer in each industry, as they make a purchase decision. For the food industry, one cares that their food arrives in one piece, it arrives hot and fresh, and it arrives tasty. All else is gold-plating. And the consumer won’t pay for that gold, but it will reflect on the operational cost-line of the organization.

As executives drive conversations in the C-suite, it is also time they drive the conversation of value creation is a futile attempt if it is not followed by value capture. If you do not capture the value that you create, you will be just an example of a company that was ahead of its time but did not survive to see the future. And those examples are endless.

Kabarole District

Kabarole District currently comprises a single county-Burahya-with a population of 230,368, according to the 2024 National Housing Census. Since 2010, it has remained a stronghold of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), consistently voting for the party.

In the 2021 presidential election, Mr Museveni secured a landslide victory in the district, garnering 49,491 votes (80.4 percent), while his closest rival, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine), received 9,830 votes (15.98 percent).

A major concern in Kabarole is the government’s failure to deliver on infrastructure pledges. The Fort Portal-Kijura-Kabende-Katooke road, an 81-kilometre stretch linking Kabarole to Kyenjojo District, was promised for tarmacking in 2013 but remains incomplete. Similarly, the Kasisi-Rwakenzi-Kyanga road, a 45-kilometre route intended to connect Kabarole to Rwimi in Bunyangabu District, was also pledged in 2013 and has yet to materialise.

Another unfulfilled commitment is the Kabarole Industrial Park, earmarked for Rwebita ZARDI in Rweganju Sub-County. Announced in 2018 under the Agri-Led Industrialisation Programme, the project aimed to boost economic growth and job creation, but no tangible progress has been made.

Cultural and political issues persist. In 2019, the government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with King Oyo of the Tooro Kingdom to return the kingdom’s assets. However, the process has stalled. During his 30th coronation anniversary, Omukama Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV urged the central government to prioritise the return of the kingdom’s properties.

Declining tea prices

Tea farming, the district’s economic backbone, has suffered a sharp decline in prices over the past three years. Many farmers have uprooted their plantations or abandoned their gardens due to inadequate government support. Mr Joshua Tusiime from Kiko Town Council expressed the frustration of many locals.

‘Many people, including eligible voters, are not happy with the government because their main source of income has been neglected. Some of us are not happy. I don’t see why we should vote again. This time, we need to vote for people who will listen to our problems as tea farmers,’ he said.

The issue has become a political flashpoint, raising doubts about whether NRM’s dominance will hold in 2026. On September 12, Agriculture Minister Frank Tumwebaze stated that President Museveni had met tea farmers in Bushenyi and directed Finance Minister Matia Kasaija to secure Shs312 billion to revamp the struggling industry.

Fort Portal City

Elevated from a municipality in 2020, Fort Portal City has a population of 137,549, according to the 2024 census. Historically, Fort Portal has strongly supported the NRM in both presidential and parliamentary elections. Long-serving MPs such as Alex Ruhunda, who has represented Central Division for three terms, exemplify this trend. All current legislators (2021-2026) subscribe to NRM.

In the 2021 presidential race, Mr Museveni received 25,753 votes, while Mr Kyagulanyi garnered 8,440. Despite NRM’s dominance, several unfulfilled pledges remain central to voter concerns.

Chief among them is Buhinga Stadium, promised in 2018 as a modern sports tourism facility. Six years later, the project is yet to begin. Other pressing issues include chronic underfunding of the city budget, the stalled City Administration Block-under construction since 2010-and the long-promised tarmacking of Kabudaire-Ssaak Road.

Bunyangabu District

Carved out of Kabarole in 2017, Bunyangabu District comprises one constituency-Bunyangabu County-and has remained a firm NRM stronghold for two decades. Its County MP seat has consistently been held by an NRM legislator. The 2024 census places the district’s population at 219,012. As an agricultural district, Bunyangabu faces persistent challenges with poor road networks, limiting market access for farmers. Additionally, frequent disasters in the hilly areas bordering Mt Rwenzori National Park-such as mudslides and landslides-have claimed lives and displaced households. These issues are expected to weigh heavily on voters’ minds in 2026.

Kamwenge District

Kamwenge District, with a population of 337,167, comprises two counties: Kibale and Kibale East. In the 2021 elections, both MPs-Mr Frank Tumwebaze (Kibale East) and Mr Abigaba Mirembe Cuthbert (Kibale)-were elected unopposed on the NRM ticket. They have again won NRM primaries and await nomination.

Since its creation from Kabarole 25 years ago, Kamwenge has remained a steadfast NRM stronghold. In 2021, Mr Museveni secured 85,241 votes out of 117,466 registered voters, while Mr Kyagulanyi received 3,969. A total of 91,749 voters participated.

District chairperson Joseph Karungi highlighted the long-standing presidential pledge to tarmac the 105-kilometer road connecting Kamwenge, Kyenjojo, and Kyegegwa. Work began in May 2025, covering Kihura-Bwizi-Rwamwanja-Kahunge (68km), Mpara-Bwizi (38km), and 20 kilometres of town roads. Progress on this project will likely influence voter sentiment in 2026.

Kitagwenda District

Carved out of Kamwenge in 2019, Kitagwenda District has a population of 184,947 and one constituency. Unlike neighbouring districts, Kitagwenda saw a tight race-Mr Museveni polled 4,417 votes, while Mr Kyagulanyi edged ahead with 4,488. Despite this, both the Kitagwenda County MP and Woman MP are from the NRM, and party primary winners-Robert Mugabe (Kitagwenda County) and Ms Nyakato Dorothy Nzibonera (Woman MP)-await nomination. The district’s most pressing issue is poor road infrastructure. Apart from the Kamwenge-Ibanda highway, Kitagwenda lacks any tarmacked roads. Residents say this isolation hampers development and market access for farmers, making it a likely campaign issue in 2026.

Kyenjojo District

Kyenjojo District comprises three constituencies: Mwenge North, Mwenge South, and Mwenge Central. All current MPs (2021-2026) are from the NRM, despite competition from NUP, FDC, and ANT in 2021. As the 2026 elections approach, key concerns include road infrastructure, youth employment, and agricultural support. The district’s agrarian nature makes these issues particularly salient. While NRM maintains a strong grip, opposition parties may leverage voter frustration over unfulfilled pledges.

NRM parliamentary candidates await nomination, alongside Opposition contenders. Notably, long-serving Mwenge Central MP Tom Butime will not seek re-election. His departure is expected to reshape the race, with Ms Doreen Nyanjura of the PFF party among those vying for the seat. Kyenjojo continues to grapple with unresolved issues. Residents cite land grabbing, poor infrastructure, and unfulfilled presidential pledges-especially the 2011 commitment to tarmac the 34-kilometer road linking Kyenjojo to Kamwenge via Kahunge Town Council.

Dear Diary,

Yesterday, I had a look-what-the-cat-dragged-in moment. There I was in the café, finishing a client pitch. In walked the ex, complete in his short glory with a swagger of deficits. And in that instant, it hit me: I cried over that! (Yes, before I was a baddie, I was capable of tears over a man). I walked out of that café, perched my endless legs at the bar, ordered a whiskey neat, and let out a ‘Pheeew! I would have shared a last name with that deeply unstable human being.’

Let me say it loud for the girls at the back; that breakup saved you. Listen up, your relationship ending was not a tragedy, it was an intervention. God looked at you trying to build a future with someone who eats day-old leftovers over the sink at 3am and said, ‘Absolutely not on my watch.’ That was not your soulmate. That was a walking red flag convention. He probably would have eaten your soul for breakfast while you made excuses for his shortcomings.

And let us address it. Short men. When God made them, He said, ‘I have run out of skeleton material, but let me pack all this drama into a tiny frame.’ And what did we get? A nuclear bomb with feelings. Small issue and they explode. But that’s a topic for another day. Back to breakups. You were not in love, you were in denial with a good playlist. You were out here giving unlimited chances to someone who treated loyalty like a part-time hobby. That breakup bailed you out of a lifetime subscription to disappointment.

Heartbreak feels like death at first but then you remember the breakup lines. Let us translate them real quick:

‘I think we should take a break’: ‘There is someone else, and it ain’t you. But keep the line open.’

‘Can we still be friends?’: ‘I want to keep you on standby in case I regret this.’

‘It is not what it used to be’: ‘Every day, I find you less attractive.’

‘There is a lot going on in my life right now’: ‘There are a lot of other people I am really interested in right now.’

‘It is not you, it is me’: ‘I am a liar, but I do not want to say it outright.’

‘You are the right person, it is just the wrong time’: ‘Wrong person. Wrong time.’

‘You deserve better’: ‘I’m a piece of sh*t and I plan to stay that way.’

If you’ve been fed these lines, or worse, gaslighted, realise this; that was not a heartbreak, it was a search-and-rescue mission coordinated by Mother Nature herself.

Here is the thing they do not tell you; women glow after breakups because nothing holds a woman back like the wrong man. Want to know why many 40-something women are not in a rush to date? They are still recovering from Steve who gave good head and nothing else. You gave grace because you are not perfect. You stayed because you are loyal. He stayed because you were convenient. Sis, he was not the man you prayed for, he was the man you settled for. And babe? He belongs to the streets, the avenues, and every highway in between.

Your sense of self did not die in that relationship, it waited for you to remember who you were before ‘sorry’ became a love language. Look at you now. Thriving. Healed. Drinking whiskey as the expensive problem you have become. Girlie, wear your freedom like a designer coat and your standards like stilettos, high and non-negotiable. Because being a baddie means realising what felt like the end of your world was trash taking itself out.