To this moment, the revealing number is the exchange rate: the Uganda shilling has moved from around Shs.3,634 in June to Shs4,140 in October, against the US dollar. In simple language, we are paying more for the same imported commodity because our currency has become weaker. And therein lies the real story, not the oil barrel price of $106.

Fuel is not mere fuel; it is an input into almost every productive activity. Diesel moves trucks, powers factories, supports construction, drives agricultural machinery and transports food from the village to the market. When diesel becomes more expensive, the farmer pays more to transport produce, the manufacturer pays more to run machinery, the trader pays more to move goods and ultimately the consumer pays more at the supermarket.

As economists put it, the fuel shock has a multiplier effect. As Milton Friedman reminded us, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” but in an open economy like Uganda’s, imported inflation and exchange-rate movements can rapidly transmit external pressures into domestic prices.

Yet the most vulnerable participant in this chain remains the farmer. Our coffee farmer does not experience economics through narratives; he experiences it through the length of the dry spell, the price of fertiliser, the cost of transport and the price offered at the farm gate. A prolonged dry spell can reduce yields precisely when the cost of producing and transporting those yields is rising.

Less output, higher costs and uncertain prices- a perfect economic squeeze. If we genuinely want to transform agriculture, climate resilience cannot remain an environmental conversation; it must become an economic policy priority through irrigation, water harvesting, climate-smart farming, storage and value addition.

But there is another dimension to the equation that deserves greater attention: confidence. Uganda’s sovereignty legislation generated concerns among some development partners and foreign-funded organisations about the operating environment and the treatment of externally financed activities. Although the legislation was subsequently narrowed, perceptions matter in economics.

Capital is usually quiet and shy. Investors do not only look at returns; they look at predictability, policy consistency and institutional confidence. A country can be fully sovereign while remaining open, predictable and attractive to capital. Indeed, sovereignty without economic confidence can become an expensive luxury.

This is where Uganda must think beyond the immediate fuel-price debate. We need to ask a more fundamental question: how do we make the Ugandan economy less vulnerable to shocks that originate outside Uganda? The answer lies in increasing export earnings, deepening tourism, strengthening manufacturing, accelerating agro-processing, attracting quality foreign direct investment, expanding renewable energy, improving domestic production of strategic inputs and building sufficient strategic fuel reserves.

As Dambisa Moyo argues in her work on development, sustainable economic progress requires countries to think carefully about how they mobilise and deploy capital rather than simply depending on external financing.

Tourism provides another important piece of the puzzle. The Ebola outbreak created a significant disruption to international travel perceptions, with some tourists cancelling or postponing trips to Uganda. Although the country was eventually declared Ebola-free, the economic effects of such a shock do not disappear the day the medical emergency ends.

Well, Tourism is an invisible exporter: the visitor arrives with dollars, spends them locally and leaves the foreign exchange behind. When visitors stay away, the country loses not only hotel revenues but also foreign exchange, jobs, taxes, transport income and demand for local products. A tourist who does not arrive is, economically speaking, an export that never happened.

This is why Uganda’s response must be bigger than attempting to control the price displayed at the fuel station. We need an integrated economic response that protects the shilling, expands foreign-exchange earnings, supports productive sectors, rebuilds international confidence and reduces our dependence on imported energy and other strategic inputs. The debate should move from “How do we make fuel cheaper?” to “How do we make the entire economy cheaper and more productive?”

John Maynard Keynes highlighted that “When the facts change, I change my mind.” The facts before Uganda are changing rapidly. Global energy markets are volatile. Climate change is affecting agricultural productivity. The dollar is strengthening against the shilling. Development financing is becoming more cautious. Tourism is recovering from sensitivity to perceptions of safety (Kenya and DRC still with Ebola cases). At the same time, Uganda is pursuing an ambitious economic transformation agenda.

The answer, therefore, cannot be to fight every fire separately. Fuel is expensive. The dollar is expensive. Transport is expensive. Food is expensive. Capital is becoming more expensive. These are not five unrelated problems; they are different windows into the same economic house.

As Peter Drucker stated, effectiveness is not about doing more things; it is about doing the right things. Uganda therefore needs to focus relentlessly on the fundamentals: produce more, export more, attract more dollars, add more value locally, waste less and create greater confidence in the economy.

In conclusion, a dollar earned is often cheaper than a dollar borrowed. And that may be the most important lesson from the fuel price at the pump: Uganda does not simply need cheaper fuel. Uganda needs a cheaper, more productive and more resilient way of producing Uganda.

 Michael Jjingo is the General Manager of Commercial Banking at Centenary Bank.

By Michael Jjingo

The ambition is audacious: grow the economy from roughly US$53 billion to US$500 billion by 2040, effectively doubling GDP every five years. The Strategy targets higher savings and investment, rapid export growth, stronger human and physical capital and a dramatic increase in value-added exports.

Uganda has reason for optimism. Real GDP grew by 6.3% in FY2024/25, while agriculture, industry and services all contributed to expansion. Yet the World Bank cautions that too much economic activity remains concentrated in low-productivity and climate-vulnerable agriculture and informal employment. The next leap must therefore be qualitative, not merely quantitative.

The ATMS architecture: Agro-industrialisation, Tourism, Mineral-based industrial development including oil and gas and Science, Technology and Innovation is therefore exactly the right direction. But ATMS must become more than a policy acronym. It must become Uganda’s economic operating system. The most important question is implementation.

As the Secretary to the Treasury, Dr. Ramathan Ggoobi rightly observed, Uganda has developed many good policies, but the missing policy is often the policy on implementation, the machinery that ensures that an approved policy becomes a funded programme, a completed project, a functioning factory, an export contract or a measurable improvement in household income. Government technocrats deserve considerable appreciation for the quality of policy architecture already developed. The task now is to match that intellectual capital with an equally powerful execution culture.

This requires a national delivery compact. Every ATMS intervention should have a clear owner, funding source, implementation timetable, measurable KPI, independent monitoring and consequence management. We should stop measuring development primarily by money allocated and start measuring it by capital absorbed, projects completed, exports generated, jobs created, productivity increased and taxes collected.

Agriculture cannot remain a producer of raw commodities while others capture the value through processing, branding, logistics and distribution. Coffee must become roasted and branded coffee, milk must become cheese, yoghurt and specialised dairy products, fruits must become concentrates and minerals must feed manufacturing.

The private sector must be central to this transformation. NDP IV anticipates approximately 30.4% of its Shs593.6 trillion resource requirement from the private sector. That capital will not arrive through appeals; it will follow bankable opportunities, predictable regulation, credible projects and appropriate risk-sharing instruments. Government must crowd in, not crowd out, private capital through Public Private Partnerships, blended finance, development finance, patient capital, targeted tax incentives where genuine strategic public-interest projects require risk mitigation. Guarantees must have strict fiscal guardrails, transparent contingent-liability reporting and value-for-money tests.

Uganda must also dramatically improve capital absorption. An unspent development budget is not prudence if a critical road, irrigation scheme, industrial park or digital infrastructure remains unfinished. Externally funded project absorption is explicitly identified as an implementation priority in the Tenfold Strategy.

The tax base must expand alongside the economy. Uganda cannot finance a US$500 billion economy on a narrow formal tax base. Digitalisation, e-invoicing, formalisation, better property and land information, customs intelligence and AI-enabled compliance can broaden the base without simply increasing the burden on compliant taxpayers. Current revenue mobilisation remains constrained, making domestic revenue expansion indispensable to fiscal sustainability.

AI will be a force multiplier. Uganda should embrace open-source AI models where appropriate, build national data capabilities and deploy AI in agriculture, tax administration, health, education, tourism, credit, logistics and public-service delivery. But innovation requires guardrails and therefore cybersecurity, data protection, ethical standards, human oversight, responsible procurement and clear accountability should be in place.

Our chambers of commerce, industry associations, banks, universities and professional bodies should become economic mobilisation platforms, not merely advocacy institutions. Each should own measurable contributions to exports, investment, innovation, skills and formalisation.

As Peter Drucker observed, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Jim Collins reminds us that great organisations confront brutal facts while retaining faith in the future. That is the mindset Uganda now needs.

We need to think through value chains and ecosystems, not individual borrowers. That is how Uganda moves from economic activity to economic multiplication. The ambition must be to create an Uganda where capital circulates faster, businesses transact more efficiently, local suppliers participate more deeply and more of the value created from Ugandan resources is captured within Uganda. As Michael Porter taught us, competitive advantage is increasingly created through clusters and interconnected activities, not isolated firms. Are we building bigger sectors, or are we building bigger economic ecosystems?

In a nutshell, the Tenfold Strategy is achievable, but only if policy becomes execution, capital becomes productive investment, agriculture becomes industry, commodities become brands, technology becomes productivity and growth becomes prosperity. The economic question before Uganda is no longer whether we have the potential. It is whether we have the discipline to execute it. The next fifteen years must therefore be Uganda’s era of execution.

The writer is the General Manager, Commercial Banking at Centenary Bank

The assertion, attributed to PLU Member of Parliament David Kabanda, would be extraordinary enough even if it concerned an ordinary political transition. It becomes considerably more consequential because Muhoozi is the serving Commander of the Defence Forces and has himself publicly confirmed his intention to contest for the presidency in 2031.

Whether the President intends to leave office in favour of his son, whether Kabanda was announcing an agreed political plan, or whether the statement represents political messaging or speculation, is a question President Museveni can easily settle.

He should. Because if Uganda’s next President is already being identified before the people have had an opportunity to choose—and before other aspirants have even had an opportunity to compete—the country is confronted with something much more serious than ordinary succession politics.

It is confronted with a constitutional question. Who chooses Uganda’s next President?

President Museveni may decide when to leave office. He may express a preference about who should succeed him. Gen Muhoozi may aspire to become President. Other NRM or PLU members may aspire to the same office. Opposition politicians may do likewise.

But none of them can constitutionally appoint Uganda’s next President.

Article 1 of the Constitution provides that all power belongs to the people, who exercise their sovereignty either directly or through their democratically elected representatives.

That principle is not decorative.

It means that the presidency is not the personal property of its incumbent. Neither is it the property of a political party, a family, a military institution or a political faction.

The next President must derive authority from the constitutional electoral process.

This is why the reported claim that the President will “give up power” in favour of Muhoozi deserves serious interrogation. Whatever the political meaning of “giving up power”, the constitutional transfer of presidential authority cannot simply be accomplished by personal designation. The Constitution establishes procedures governing presidential tenure, resignation, vacancy, elections and succession.

Political preference cannot substitute for constitutional process.

What about the other NRM and PLU aspirants?

There is a question that President Museveni should answer directly:

What happens to the other members of the NRM and PLU who aspire to become President of Uganda?

Why should one aspirant appear to enjoy an early endorsement while others have not even been given the opportunity to present themselves?

If Gen Muhoozi wishes to become the NRM flag bearer, why not allow him to compete openly against every other NRM presidential aspirant?

Let those who wish to contest declare their ambitions.

Let them articulate their programmes.

Let them debate one another.

Let the party’s members determine its flag bearer through transparent, credible and competitive internal processes.

If Muhoozi enjoys the overwhelming support that his supporters claim, there should be no reason to fear such a contest.

Indeed, an open contest would strengthen his claim to leadership.

If President Museveni genuinely believes that Muhoozi is the best person to lead Uganda, why should he fear allowing him to compete for the NRM flag against other aspirants? And if Muhoozi truly commands the overwhelming support claimed for him, why should that support not be demonstrated through an open and credible contest?

The same principle should apply to PLU or any other political formation.

After forty years, the ruling political movement has an opportunity to demonstrate that it is an institution capable of producing leadership through competition rather than succession by designation.

Allowing anyone who wishes to lead the NRM to compete for its presidential flag, subject to the law and the party’s rules, would strengthen rather than diminish the President’s historical legacy.

But can everyone actually compete?

This is where the question of succession becomes inseparable from the condition of Uganda’s civic and political space.

It is not enough to tell Ugandans that they will eventually be allowed to choose their President if the political environment in which that choice is supposed to occur has already been severely constrained.

A genuinely competitive election requires more than ballot papers, polling stations and competing names.

It requires the freedom to organise, assemble, campaign, speak, criticise government, mobilise supporters and participate in political life without intimidation or arbitrary interference.

Uganda’s experience in recent years raises serious questions on this score.

Reports of abductions and prolonged detention of political opponents, the continued prosecution and incarceration of opposition figures, and the displacement of political actors into exile have contributed to a political environment in which opposition forces face serious constraints on their ability to organise and compete.

These developments cannot simply be dismissed as isolated law-and-order incidents.

Their cumulative effect on the electoral environment matters.

The constitutional promise of popular sovereignty becomes hollow if citizens are presented with a choice only after some potential choices have been systematically weakened or eliminated.

This is the danger Uganda must confront before 2031.

For if the political field is sufficiently narrowed, an election can retain all the outward characteristics of constitutional legitimacy while failing the more fundamental test of whether voters were genuinely offered a free and meaningful choice.

The question therefore cannot simply be whether Muhoozi can win an election.

The prior question is whether everyone who wishes to challenge him will be allowed to compete on reasonably equal terms.

That responsibility rests principally with the State.

The Government must protect, rather than constrict, the civic space in which political competition takes place. Security agencies must operate within the law. Opposition politicians must be free to organise and campaign. The Electoral Commission must be capable of enforcing electoral rules impartially. The courts must remain independent. Political parties must be allowed to compete without intimidation or administrative manipulation.

Otherwise Uganda risks creating the appearance of constitutional succession while reproducing the substance of predetermined succession. But what if the contest itself has lost meaning?

Let me put the question personally, but hypothetically.

Suppose I wished to contest for the presidency in 2031. What exactly would I be contesting?

Would I be entering a genuinely open constitutional contest in which the law, the institutions and the political environment give every candidate a reasonable opportunity to persuade the electorate?

Or would I be participating in an electoral process whose fundamental conditions had already been compromised by restrictions on civic space, unequal access to political organisation, detention of political opponents, the use of State institutions in partisan politics and the unresolved involvement of the military in political mobilisation?

If the latter is the reality, then a more fundamental question arises:

What is the constitutional value of merely participating in an election whose essential conditions of democratic competition have already been compromised?

This is not an argument against elections.

It is an argument for elections that deserve to be called elections in the constitutional sense.

A ballot paper alone does not make an election free and fair. The constitutional right to choose necessarily includes the conditions that make meaningful choice possible.

If political competitors cannot organise freely, assemble freely, speak freely, campaign freely or remain free to participate in political life, then the existence of competing names on a ballot cannot, by itself, cure the underlying democratic deficit.

And if the eventual winner enjoys advantages unavailable to other contestants because of incumbency, State resources, security structures or political mobilisation by serving public officials, the question cannot simply be whether votes were counted. The deeper question is whether the people were genuinely free to choose.

The civil-military contradiction

This is also why the involvement of the military in the succession question is so consequential.

Article 208 of the Constitution establishes the UPDF as a national, non-partisan, patriotic, professional and disciplined force subordinate to civilian authority.

Parliament has reinforced this constitutional principle through the Political Parties and Organisations Act, which places significant restrictions on members of the UPDF and other specified public officers participating in partisan political activity.

These provisions exist for a reason.

The military possesses instruments of coercive power that ordinary political actors do not possess. Its political neutrality is therefore not simply a matter of institutional etiquette. It is a constitutional safeguard for political equality.

A presidential aspirant who simultaneously commands the national armed forces occupies a fundamentally different position from an ordinary presidential aspirant.

This does not mean that every political statement by a serving military officer automatically establishes a constitutional violation. Uganda’s constitutional jurisprudence itself reflects complexities concerning the relationship between military service and political office.

But the combination of active presidential ambition, partisan political mobilisation and command of the national armed forces presents a constitutional contradiction of exceptional seriousness.

It requires authoritative determination rather than political rationalisation. The question is therefore not whether Muhoozi has a right to aspire to the presidency.

He does, subject to the Constitution and the law.

The question is whether he can simultaneously exercise the constitutional responsibilities of a serving CDF and participate in partisan political activity in a manner consistent with those same constitutional and statutory requirements. That is a question for the institutions of the Republic—not for political convenience.

From formal election to genuine popular choice

There is a profound distinction between being elected and being freely chosen.

An election can be procedurally conducted while the political environment preceding it is profoundly unequal.

A country can have polling stations, ballot papers, counting centres and declared results and yet fail to provide citizens with the meaningful political choice contemplated by the Constitution.

That is why the integrity of the 2031 election cannot be left until 2031.

The conditions must be established well before polling day.

The Electoral Commission should clarify the legal status and activities of political formations involved in political mobilisation and ensure that electoral rules apply equally to all.

Parliament should interrogate the intersection between military service, partisan politics and presidential succession.

The Government should guarantee civic and political freedoms rather than merely proclaim them.

Security agencies should remain within their constitutional mandate.

Political parties should open their internal processes to genuine competition.

And citizens, civil society and political actors should not wait until an election has been conducted to ask whether the conditions for a free election existed.

What must be done now

President Museveni can remove much of the uncertainty surrounding succession.

He can publicly clarify whether the extraordinary claim that he intends to “give up power” in favour of Gen Muhoozi has any basis.

He can affirm that no successor has been predetermined. He can insist that every NRM presidential aspirant enjoys an equal opportunity to compete for the party’s flag.

The NRM itself can demonstrate its democratic maturity by establishing transparent rules through which competing presidential aspirants can present themselves and seek the mandate of the party.

The Electoral Commission can clarify the legal status and activities of political formations involved in presidential mobilisation, particularly where serving public officers are involved.

Government can restore the civic conditions necessary for genuine electoral competition—including freedom from arbitrary detention, abduction, intimidation and unjustified restrictions on lawful political organisation.

And the constitutional questions surrounding military command and partisan political activity can be subjected to authoritative institutional determination rather than political convenience.

These measures would not weaken President Museveni.

They would strengthen his legacy. After forty years, his greatest contribution to Uganda’s constitutional development may not be choosing who comes after him.

It may be demonstrating that he does not have the constitutional power to choose.

The Judiciary must be the constitutional compass

Ultimately, however, Uganda cannot depend upon individual goodwill. Constitutions exist precisely because political power cannot safely be left to the goodwill of those who exercise it.

The Judiciary therefore has a particularly important role.

Article 137 provides the constitutional jurisdiction for determining questions concerning the interpretation of the Constitution, including challenges alleging that an Act of Parliament or an act or omission by a person or authority is inconsistent with the Constitution.

Where the relationship between military command, partisan political activity, presidential succession, civic freedoms and electoral competition raises genuine constitutional questions, the courts should be prepared to pronounce upon them.

They should not wait until a succession arrangement has become politically entrenched or until another disputed electoral process has already produced a constitutional crisis.

But judicial independence is indispensable.

The courts must neither become instruments for legitimising political arrangements simply because those arrangements are powerful nor instruments for frustrating legitimate political aspirations.

Their responsibility is more demanding: to apply the Constitution impartially to everyone.

That requires courage. It requires institutional independence. And above all, it requires fidelity to the Constitution.

The real test of four decades

The ultimate issue is not whether Muhoozi should or should not become President.

If Muhoozi wins a genuinely free, fair and competitive election, Uganda must accept that result—even those who oppose him.

If another NRM candidate defeats him in a genuinely competitive party contest, that result should be respected.

If an opposition candidate wins a genuinely free national election, that result must equally be respected.

The constitutional issue is not who wins.

It is whether the people are genuinely free to decide who wins.

That is why the reported succession claims, the condition of civic space, the treatment of political opponents, the role of the military and the independence of the Judiciary cannot be examined separately.

Together they determine whether Uganda’s next presidential transition will be a constitutional succession—or merely an electoral ritual conferring legitimacy on a political outcome shaped by an unequal political environment.

After four decades, Uganda’s historical test is no longer simply whether an incumbent can remain in power.

It is whether Uganda can demonstrate that political power is bigger than any individual who exercises it. An incumbent may choose retirement or express a political preference.

Muhoozi may aspire to the presidency

Other NRM and PLU members may aspire to it. Opposition politicians may aspire to it.

Indeed, every Ugandan who satisfies the constitutional qualifications should be entitled to aspire to the presidency. But no individual can choose Uganda’s next President.

Only the people can do that through the Constitution. And if the meaning or limits of that Constitution are contested, the courts must be there to say what the Constitution permits and what it forbids.

They must do so without fear. Without favour. And with absolute fidelity to the Constitution.

President Museveni owes Uganda an answer—not because he is constitutionally required to nominate a successor, but precisely because he is not. Uganda must now confront a deceptively simple question:

When power eventually passes, will it pass through the Constitution—or around it?

By Asuman Kiyingi

The writer is a senior advocate and former Minister.

Africa’s relationship with Palestine is rooted in the continent’s own history of colonialism, racial domination, dispossession and struggles for self-determination. The Palestinian question became intertwined with the African liberation struggle because Africans understood that colonial domination could not be condemned as an injustice in Africa while being tolerated elsewhere.

The question today is therefore not whether Africa sympathises with Palestinians—almost every African government says that it does. The harder question is whether Africa is prepared to act consistently with the principles it has proclaimed for generations.

That question has acquired new urgency as Uganda prepares to participate in a proposed Gaza International Stabilisation Force while South Africa continues to pursue Israel’s conduct through the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

A Pan-African Commitment with Deep Roots

African solidarity with Palestine did not begin with the present Gaza war; it developed alongside independent Africa’s rejection of colonialism, racial domination and foreign occupation.

The history is not entirely linear. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana initially maintained close relations with Israel after independence in 1957, including cooperation in agriculture and development. But the trajectory changed as Nkrumah’s Pan-African and anti-imperialist outlook deepened and Israel’s occupation of Arab territories after the 1967 war increasingly conflicted with the image of Israel as another young post-colonial state.

Nkrumah’s importance, therefore, is not that he can simply be portrayed as a lifelong opponent of Israel. It is that his Pan-African philosophy located African independence within a wider struggle against colonial domination and imperialism.

That conception of liberation helped shape the political culture of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in which the Palestinian struggle increasingly came to be understood within the wider struggle against colonialism, occupation and foreign domination. The African Union (AU) inherited that position. Palestine thus became part of Africa’s political memory: a reminder that liberation cannot be selectively applied.

Mandela Gave the Principle a Human Face

Nelson Mandela articulated that connection with exceptional clarity. In 1997, marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela declared: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

The significance of those words lies in their universality. Mandela did not reduce Palestine to a humanitarian cause deserving sympathy; he connected Palestinian freedom to the meaning of South African freedom itself.

That did not require him to endorse every method used in a liberation struggle. South Africa’s own history was complicated and violent. The deeper principle was that the legitimacy of a people’s aspiration to freedom cannot be extinguished simply by condemning particular methods of resistance.

That distinction remains essential in Palestine. Attacks on civilians must be condemned, whoever commits them. But condemning particular acts does not require denying the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The principle is also reflected in Africa’s own human-rights framework. Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights recognises the right of all peoples to existence and self-determination and affirms the right of colonised or oppressed peoples to free themselves from domination.

The African Union’s contemporary position remains consistent with that tradition. In June 2026, the AU, Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and an independent state and condemned policies of annexation, displacement, siege and settlement.

Africa’s official position is therefore clear. It recognises Palestinian self-determination, rejects occupation and annexation, supports Palestinian statehood and invokes international law.

The problem is the distance between those declarations and what individual African states are prepared to do.

South Africa Has Chosen Law Over Rhetoric

South Africa offers the clearest contemporary example of solidarity translated into institutional action.

On 29 December 2023, Pretoria instituted proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention. The merits of the case remain pending, and the final legal outcome is awaited.

But South Africa’s significance lies in its decision to place the issue before an international judicial institution rather than confining solidarity to political statements.

The ICJ subsequently issued provisional measures concerning the protection of Palestinians in Gaza. The Court has stated that its provisional-measures orders have binding effect and create international legal obligations for the parties to which they are addressed.

Now comes a striking contemporary development.

On 25 August 2026, South Africa submitted a substantial dossier of information to the ICJ concerning Israel’s alleged non-compliance with the Court’s provisional-measures orders. Pretoria said the dossier was intended to assist the committee of judges monitoring implementation of the measures and to provide information relevant to possible action by the Court. South Africa reiterated that the orders are binding and said it would continue pursuing available avenues to secure compliance.

Whatever one’s view of South Africa’s broader foreign policy, this is an important distinction: Pretoria is not merely saying that Palestinians deserve justice. It is using an international legal institution to insist that international law be applied.

It has chosen to test its principles through law. That creates a standard against which other African states should be willing to measure themselves.

And Then There Is Uganda

Uganda presents a very different contemporary dilemma. On 6 August 2026, Parliament approved the government’s proposal to deploy a UPDF contingent to Gaza as part of an International Stabilisation Force. Defence Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka told Parliament that the deployment was intended to support efforts to restore peace and facilitate humanitarian assistance.

Reuters reported that the proposed deployment could involve approximately 1,200 Ugandan troops and followed a request from US President Donald Trump to President Museveni. The proposed force forms part of a US-backed plan involving stabilisation, a Palestinian technocratic administration, Hamas disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal.

Uganda’s peacekeeping credentials are substantial. Its forces have extensive experience in Somalia and other theatres. Uganda can therefore reasonably argue that it possesses the capacity to contribute to international peace-support operations.

But Gaza is not simply another peacekeeping theatre. The central questions are political and legal as much as military: What precisely is the mandate? Who commands the force? What are its rules of engagement? What is its relationship with Israel and Palestinian authorities? Under whose international legal authority will it operate? What happens if Israeli withdrawal is incomplete? And, above all, what political settlement is the force actually intended to protect?

These questions matter because a security arrangement can either facilitate liberation or inadvertently institutionalise the consequences of occupation.

A stabilisation force should not become a mechanism for stabilising an unjust status quo.

The South Africa–Uganda Contrast

This is where the South African and Ugandan positions intersect. At the very moment South Africa is submitting fresh evidence to the ICJ concerning alleged Israeli non-compliance with binding provisional measures, Uganda is preparing to place its own soldiers in Gaza under a proposed security architecture spearheaded by the United States.

That does not automatically mean Uganda supports Israeli policies or has become Israel’s ally.

But it creates a legitimate question about neutrality, legitimacy and consistency.

The question becomes more pertinent following the recent visit by Ugandan and Burundian military officials to Israel to discuss possible participation in the Gaza force. The visit to one party to the conflict politically raises questions about how an African force will maintain the appearance—and reality—of impartiality in a conflict in which Israel’s conduct remains the subject of international legal proceedings.

If Ugandan troops enter Gaza, their mandate should place the protection of Palestinian civilians, humanitarian access and Palestinian political agency at its centre. They should not become an instrument for policing Palestinians while the fundamental questions of occupation, territorial integrity and self-determination are postponed.

Uganda has frequently advocated African solutions to African problems. The principle should not disappear when the problem is outside Africa.

Do Not Reduce Palestine to Terrorism

There is another danger in the contemporary debate: reducing Palestine primarily to the vocabulary of terrorism.

The killing of civilians is indefensible, whoever commits it. But Africa’s history should make us cautious about allowing the label “terrorism” to erase the political history of a liberation struggle.

Colonial governments routinely described African liberation movements as terrorists, criminals and enemies of public order. That did not invalidate the underlying right of African peoples to self-determination.

The same distinction should be preserved in Palestine.

Africa can condemn attacks on civilians, whether by Israel, Hamas or any other armed group, without suggesting that Palestinians have forfeited their right to self-determination. It can recognise Israeli security concerns without accepting permanent Palestinian subjugation. It can demand accountability by Palestinian actors without allowing that demand to justify collective punishment.

The protection of civilians must apply universally, but condemnation of violence must not be weaponised to justify collective punishment or erase the political history of a liberation struggle.

Principles Must Survive Strategic Relationships

A number of African states maintain economic, technological, agricultural, military and diplomatic relationships with Israel. They also maintain important relationships with the United States and other powerful Western states.

Those relationships are legitimate. But they should not determine whether Africa applies international law consistently.

Africa’s independence movements succeeded because Africans insisted that principles were more important than the convenience of powerful partners.

If international law applies only when the accused is weak, it ceases to be a meaningful universal principle. If occupation is condemned in one context but tolerated when practised by a strategic partner, Africa’s anti-colonial legacy becomes diplomatic vocabulary rather than political conviction.

The issue is not whether Africa should have relations with Israel or the United States.

The issue is whether those relationships should determine the limits of African solidarity with an occupied people.

What Africa Owes Palestine

The African Union must move beyond declaratory solidarity. Any international force in Gaza involving African states should operate under a transparent, internationally recognised mandate, with Palestinian participation, sovereignty and political agency at its centre. African troops should not administer occupation or substitute for Palestinian sovereignty. Humanitarian protection and access should be explicit obligations, and African governments should continue supporting international accountability mechanisms rather than invoking international law selectively.

Above all, Africa should insist that security cannot permanently substitute for self-determination. Africa owes Palestine more than sympathy.

It owes Palestine the memory of its own history: the principle that occupation cannot become legitimate merely because it lasts long enough, and that territorial acquisition by force cannot be normalised through diplomatic fatigue.

It owes Palestine the moral clarity of Mandela and the Pan-African insight that political liberation is indivisible.

Mandela understood that the freedom of one oppressed people could not be morally complete while another remained unfree. Africa should remember that lesson now.

South Africa’s continuing engagement with the ICJ demonstrates one contemporary meaning of solidarity: using international institutions to demand compliance with international law.

Uganda’s proposed participation in Gaza presents another possibility.

Uganda can become another contributor of African manpower to an externally designed security arrangement.

Or it can use its participation, if it proceeds, to insist that security serves justice rather than substitutes for it.

It can make clear that Ugandan troops will protect Palestinians, not police their political aspirations; facilitate humanitarian relief, not become associated with its restriction; and contribute to a transition towards genuine Palestinian self-government rather than an indefinite external security regime.

That distinction will determine whether Uganda’s role enhances or diminishes Africa’s historic credibility on Palestine.

The real question is therefore not whether Africa supports Palestine. Almost every African government says that it does.

The real question is whether Africa is prepared to act and demonstrate that its principles mean something.

That is what Africa owes Palestine.

And ultimately, that is what Africa owes itself.

Asuman Kiyingi is a senior advocate of the High Court of Uganda, former Member of Parliament and former State Minister for Foreign Affairs (Regional Cooperation).

That framing turns a vital question of national interest into a narrow test of loyalty. Respect for the UPDF does not require issuing blank cheques for foreign deployments. The courage, discipline, and professionalism of Ugandan soldiers in numerous regional theatres are beyond serious dispute. But military bravery is not itself a foreign-policy doctrine.

Parliament has now approved Uganda’s participation in the proposed Gaza International Stabilization Force. That parliamentary approval is constitutionally significant, but it does not eliminate the operational, legal, and strategic questions that must be answered before troops actually enter a complex theatre: What precisely is their mandate? Who commands them? What are their rules of engagement? What legal protections will they have under a Status of Forces Agreement? How long will they remain? What are the exit conditions? And what core national strategic interest does Uganda expect to advance?

Parliament approved the deployment pursuant to Section 38 of the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces Act, the statutory provision governing the deployment of troops outside Uganda. The Government has indicated that operational arrangements, including a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) provided for under Section 39, will govern the contingent.

Parliamentary approval does not, however, by itself answer the questions that the eventual operational and legal arrangements must address, including jurisdiction, immunities, command arrangements, rules of engagement and the legal status of Ugandan personnel.

Uganda therefore needs a disciplined, institutionalised audit of every foreign military mission: Is it constitutionally and legally authorised? Is it operationally and diplomatically defensible? And does it advance a clearly defined, integrated Ugandan strategic interest?

Parliament Is Not a Technicality

Article 210(d) of the Constitution requires Parliament to make laws regulating the deployment of troops outside Uganda. Section 38 of the UPDF Act provides the statutory framework governing such deployments, while Section 39 provides for a Status of Forces Agreement where troops operate under bilateral or multilateral arrangements. These constitutional and statutory safeguards exist for a fundamental reason.

Parliament need not be micro-managed with tactical secrets, troop movements, or sensitive weapons inventories. Its constitutional responsibility is to scrutinise the overarching strategic and legal framework: what legal authority underpins the mission; what Ugandan troops are being deployed to accomplish; under what specific circumstances they may use force; who holds ultimate operational command; what legal protections apply to individual soldiers; how long the mission is intended to last; what financial burden Uganda assumes; and what measurable conditions will determine withdrawal.

Professor Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi’s examination of the constitutional drafting history is instructive in this regard. His research shows that parliamentary involvement in overseas troop deployment was deliberately contemplated as a crucial civilian oversight safeguard in Uganda’s constitutional settlement. These checks are therefore not procedural technicalities. They are the minimum constitutional requirements of responsible civilian control over the military in a democratic state.

The distinction is especially important now that Parliament has granted statutory approval for the Gaza deployment. The issue is no longer whether Parliament should be consulted; it is whether the mandate Parliament approved will be executed within clear, enforceable legal, operational, and strategic parameters.

Somalia Was Not a Blank Cheque

The argument that Uganda’s long-standing Somalia experience establishes a precedent where Parliament should simply trust Executive discretion is historically misplaced. When Parliament considered Uganda’s initial participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in February 2007, the proposed deployment was subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. Uganda initially committed a contingent of 1,500 troops.

Parliament’s consideration of the deployment was accompanied by a defined initial six-month framework and specified operational objectives, including securing strategic locations, promoting cessation of hostilities, building confidence among the parties and creating conditions for post-conflict reconstruction.

The parliamentary record also demonstrates that the deployment was contested. A minority report opposing the mission was presented, underscoring that the decision was subjected to substantive parliamentary disagreement rather than treated as an automatic executive prerogative. The true significance of the Somalia intervention lies not merely in what Parliament approved in 2007, but in what transpired during the nearly two decades that followed.

A mission initially conceived within a defined framework evolved through AMISOM, the AU Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), and into the AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM)—resulting in an extraordinarily prolonged Ugandan military commitment. The lesson is not that the original decision to intervene in Somalia was incorrect. It is that foreign military engagements naturally acquire an internal momentum and a life of their own once boots hit the ground.

That is precisely why exit conditions, operational milestones, and periodic strategic reviews must be designed into the architecture of a mission at the beginning, rather than improvised when political and security circumstances deteriorate.

The DRC: When Military Missions Become Legal Liabilities

Uganda’s historical military interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) offer a stark caution regarding the long-term legal and financial liabilities of foreign operations. In Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Uganda internationally responsible for violations of international law arising from its military activities on Congolese territory, including breaches of the principles of non-use of force and non-intervention.

In its 2022 reparations judgment, the ICJ ordered Uganda to pay the DRC US$325 million in damages: US$225 million for loss of human life and personal injury, US$40 million for damage to property, and US$60 million for the looting of natural resources. The Court ordered this sum to be paid in five annual instalments of US$65 million from 2022 through 2026.

The core takeaway is not that the UPDF should never operate beyond Uganda’s international borders when national security demands it. The takeaway is that foreign military operations must maintain unambiguous political objectives and strict adherence to international legal boundaries.

When those operational and legal boundaries are breached, the resulting liabilities do not vanish with time. They eventually translate into massive financial claims against the National Treasury—and are ultimately borne by the Ugandan taxpayer. The DRC experience should make Uganda more, not less, determined to establish the precise legal framework, international authorisation, and strategic parameters of any military deployment before sending soldiers into harm’s way.

Gaza: Legality Is Only the Beginning

Gaza presents an exceptionally complex and volatile strategic environment. It is not a conventional peacekeeping theatre or a standard counter-insurgency operation. It is deeply embedded in a dense geopolitical conflict involving Palestinian self-determination, Israeli security imperatives, military occupation, illegal settlement expansion, territorial sovereignty, disarmament, and the long-term political status of the Palestinian territories.

Uganda must therefore establish precisely what the proposed international force is expected to accomplish on the ground, what political authority ultimately governs the force, how that authority relates to the proposed broader political framework, and toward what ultimate political end-state the mission is directed.

Furthermore, as global economic analyses demonstrate, conflicts in the Middle East carry immense, cascading macro-economic risk. Broader regional escalation frequently generates severe global inflationary pressures, energy price spikes, and trillions of dollars in extra economic burdens that strain developing nations. Unilateral military actions by major powers routinely externalise these severe economic liabilities onto the rest of the international community.

By inserting the UPDF into this volatile theatre under a foreign-led stabilisation framework, Uganda risks absorbing the physical risks, logistical liabilities, and diplomatic fallout of an asymmetric conflict whose overarching strategic drivers and rules of engagement may remain beyond Kampala’s control.

This concern cannot be divorced from Uganda’s explicit diplomatic commitments. Through its chairmanship and active leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Uganda has consistently reaffirmed its commitment to international law, Palestinian self-determination, Palestinian statehood, and a viable two-state solution. The January 2024 Kampala Declaration explicitly called for an end to the Israeli occupation and condemned settlement expansion and annexation policies. These risks are far from theoretical.

Authoritative documentation from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and major human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch have extensively detailed the human rights environment in the occupied territories. Reporting has documented systematic attacks by armed settlers against Palestinian communities, land confiscations, and repeated instances where security forces either failed to intervene or actively shielded illegal settler activity. This goes directly to the political purpose of any international stabilisation force.

If an international force is deployed into an environment where land confiscations continue, settlements expand, and the framework for Palestinian self-determination remains contested, Uganda must know exactly what order it is being asked to stabilise. Uganda cannot credibly champion Palestinian self-determination within international forums while placing its soldiers in a mission whose structural effect could be to entrench a status quo inconsistent with that very principle.

The strategic question is therefore not simply whether Uganda supports international peace. The question is what political order it would be helping to enforce, under whose authority, and toward what long-term political outcome.

“Why Now?”

A predictable line of response to critique from former government officials is: If these principles are so vital, why raise them now? Why were they not fully implemented when you served in government? Having served both in government and in Parliament, I fully recognise that executive decisions regarding national security are rarely as straightforward from the inside as they may appear from the outside.

However, national policy and constitutional doctrine cannot remain permanently tethered to the individual judgments of those who temporarily occupy public office. Governments evolve, geopolitical contexts shift, and national experience provides valuable lessons over time. The relevant question is not: “Why are you speaking now?”

The relevant question is: “Is the core argument correct, and would adopting an institutionalised strategic audit make Uganda’s foreign-policy decisions more robust?” Four decades of executive experience in regional security affairs should yield more than reliance on individual presidential discretion; it should yield a codified, institutional doctrine capable of translating military capability into consistent, long-term national strategic advantage. A mature constitutional state should not rely principally on uncritical trust where it can require rigorous evidence, statutory procedure, and public accountability.

Beyond Bravery: Uganda’s Upstaging Problem

There is an overarching strategic vulnerability that Uganda’s foreign military policy has yet to resolve: What happens to Uganda’s national interest after our soldiers have secured the battlefield? Uganda has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to deploy military capability to stabilise fragile regional environments. Yet in several major theatres, other nations have proven far more adept at converting the resulting security environment into commercial, infrastructural, financial, and geopolitical influence.

This represents Uganda’s persistent upstaging problem. Uganda regularly supplies substantial “security capital”—bearing the initial human, physical, and financial costs of intervention. Other regional and international actors subsequently arrive with financial, diplomatic, and commercial capital, embedding themselves directly into the economic and institutional architecture that follows stabilisation.

This dynamic is particularly pronounced in high-stakes interventions: while contributing nations absorb operational hazards and local economic spillovers, external architects of these interventions frequently capture the diplomatic and economic dividends. This is not an indictment of the brave officers and soldiers of the UPDF. It is an indictment of the absence of an integrated national strategy that systematically links military sacrifice to diplomacy, trade, investment, and economic statecraft.

Somalia and the Strategic Dividend

Somalia offers the clearest illustration of this structural imbalance. Uganda served as the pioneer and primary military contributor to AMISOM and remained a central pillar of ATMIS. As a result, the UPDF bore a heavy share of frontline combat, operational strain, and casualties over nearly two decades.

Concurrently, nations like Turkey deployed a comprehensive, multi-dimensional statecraft strategy in Somalia. Turkey combined diplomatic representation, humanitarian assistance, direct bilateral trade, infrastructure development, and military training. This integrated approach subsequently positioned Turkish firms strongly within Somalia’s critical maritime, aviation and emerging energy sectors.

Turkey was not wrong to pursue its national interests; on the contrary, it provided a masterclass in integrated statecraft. The strategic question for Uganda is why its massive military contribution was not accompanied by a parallel, institutional strategy to secure long-term diplomatic, commercial, and economic dividends for the nation. That strategic disconnect surfaced publicly in April 2026, when Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba publicly raised the issue of a US$1 billion “security dividend” from foreign partners in relation to Uganda’s extensive military sacrifices in Somalia.

While Turkey or other external actors do not legally owe Uganda a transactional sum simply because Ugandan troops stabilised the region, the underlying strategic point is valid: Why was Uganda attempting to negotiate for a strategic dividend after the fact?

If Uganda’s military intervention created the secure environment necessary for economic activity and foreign investment to flourish, why was that security capital not leveraged within an integrated national strategy from the very beginning? The episode underscores a systemic weakness in Uganda’s strategic planning: the nation has proven far more effective at deploying military power than at translating that power into enduring economic and geopolitical leverage.

South Sudan: Trade versus Economic Architecture

A similar pattern is visible in South Sudan. Uganda has successfully built a major commercial export relationship with South Sudan. Official trade data reflects that exports to South Sudan represent a vital revenue stream for Ugandan traders and agricultural producers, making South Sudan one of Uganda’s largest regional export destinations.

That trade volume represents a real and tangible benefit. However, Uganda must ask whether informal trade alone represents the maximum strategic dividend achievable from its substantial political, military, and financial investments in South Sudan’s stability over the past two decades.

By comparison, Kenya moved strategically to position its corporate and state sector within the foundational infrastructure and financial architecture of South Sudan. Through regional transit corridors, civil aviation links, infrastructure integration, and the deep market penetration of Kenyan commercial banks, Kenya embedded itself within South Sudan’s economic architecture.

While Uganda excels at supplying goods to the consumer market, Kenya focused on embedding itself within the economic and financial systems that govern the market itself. That is the upstaging problem in another form: supplying immediate commercial goods while others build the long-term institutional architecture.

The Strategic Audit Uganda Now Needs

To break this cycle, Uganda must rethink how it conceptualises and executes foreign military deployments. Before committing troops to any foreign theatre, the Executive and Parliament should subject the proposed intervention to a comprehensive strategic audit that answers the following imperative questions:

Legal Framework: What specific domestic constitutional provisions, statutory authorities under Sections 38 and 39 of the UPDF Act, and international legal mandates authorise the deployment? Political & Military Mandate: What precisely is the mission’s political objective, and how does the military strategy directly serve that objective?

Command & Rules of Engagement: Who holds ultimate operational command over Ugandan troops, and what specific rules of engagement govern the use of force? Legal Protections: What specific immunities, operational guarantees, and legal protections are secured under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)? Timeframe & Exit Strategy: What is the intended duration of the mission, what measurable operational milestones define success, and what explicit conditions trigger withdrawal?

Financial & Macro Liabilities: What direct financial costs fall upon the Ugandan Treasury, and how will the state insulate itself from broader logistical cost overruns and global economic liabilities? Asymmetric Risk Mitigation: How does the deployment prevent Uganda from becoming an operational pawn in a broader, asymmetric foreign conflict controlled by external powers?

Integrated National Dividend: What specific diplomatic leverage, trade access, or economic opportunities will be pursued in parallel with the military deployment, and what mechanism ensures that Ugandan enterprises and citizens participate in those opportunities? This strategic audit must include an explicit National Dividend Test.

If Uganda is asking its soldiers to assume extraordinary physical risks abroad, the political leadership must identify in advance what diplomatic, commercial, infrastructural, or strategic returns the nation intends to pursue. This does not mean transforming military forces into commercial mercenaries. It means that statesmanship requires the simultaneous deployment of Uganda’s diplomatic, trade, and economic capabilities alongside its military power. Military force must be one coordinated instrument of national statecraft—not a substitute for a comprehensive national strategy. Without this integrated framework, Uganda risks repeating an unsustainable cycle: Uganda deploys. Uganda sacrifices. Uganda pays. Others consolidate the structural dividend.

Conclusion: Beyond Bravery

The debate over the proposed Gaza deployment must not be reduced to superficial tests of revolutionary loyalty or military patriotism. The UPDF can be entirely brave and professional while the political mandate governing a mission still requires intense public and parliamentary scrutiny. A deployment can be legally authorised by Parliament and still fail to advance Uganda’s broader national interest if it lacks clear strategic boundaries and an integrated statecraft plan.

Uganda’s historical experiences in Somalia, the DRC, and South Sudan should compel a mature national conversation. After decades of extensive regional military engagements, Uganda must establish a durable constitutional doctrine and institutional framework that ensures military sacrifice translates into national strategic power, diplomatic influence, and economic security.

That is the fundamental issue Gaza raises—not whether Ugandan soldiers possess the bravery to undertake another dangerous mission. The ultimate purpose of military power in a sovereign republic is not merely to demonstrate that its armed forces can fight. Military power is an instrument of national policy. It must serve clearly defined political ends and be integrated with diplomacy, trade, investment, and statecraft.

Demanding these answers before troops are committed to foreign soil is neither disloyalty nor political obstructionism. It is constitutional accountability. It is strategic statecraft. And above all, it is the highest form of respect for the Ugandan soldier. Patriotism demands bravery on the battlefield. Statesmanship demands that we know what the battle is for—and who benefits when the fighting is over.

By Asuman Kiyingi

The writer is a senior advocate, former Member of Parliament, and former State

Uganda’s decision to commit the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to a proposed international force in Gaza—and Parliament’s hurried approval of that deployment—represents a grave miscalculation in foreign policy and a troubling failure of parliamentary oversight.

No reasonable Ugandan should object to helping protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian access, or contribute to genuine international efforts to end conflict. Uganda has a proud record in international peace-support operations. But sending Ugandan soldiers into Gaza is not simply another peacekeeping assignment. It is a deployment into one of the world’s most politically charged and militarily volatile theatres, under a mission whose precise mandate, command structure, rules of engagement, funding arrangements and legal protections were not disclosed to Parliament prior to approval.

Reporting on the parliamentary debate reveals the extraordinary haste with which the decision was taken. Defence Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka informed MPs that President Yoweri Museveni had, through emissaries, received a request from President Donald Trump for Uganda’s participation. Yet troop numbers and deployment dates had not been determined, and the Minister indicated that the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) would be concluded after Parliament approved the deployment.

That sequence should concern every citizen: Parliament was asked to sign the contract first and learn its terms later.

A Constitutional Duty Abandoned

The deployment of armed forces outside Uganda is not an ordinary executive transaction. Article 210 of the Constitution assigns Parliament the explicit duty to regulate troop deployments outside our borders, backed by the statutory framework of the UPDF Act.

During the debate, Opposition MPs complained that they had been blindsided and that the motion was not subjected to the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee. Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa ruled that the motion did not require committee referral and proceeded to dispose of it.

Even if procedurally defensible, constitutional responsibility is larger than procedural minimums. Where Ugandan soldiers are to be placed in a combat zone thousands of kilometres away, Parliament must know what they are being sent to do, under whose command, under what law, with what rules of engagement, at whose cost and under what conditions they can be withdrawn.

Worse still are signals from the Executive framing the UPDF’s objective as “dismantling terrorist cells”. This language betrays a hawkish misreading of the conflict. Reducing a decades-long struggle over national liberation, occupation and self-determination purely to a counter-terrorism operation risks reproducing the logic of colonial enforcement.

The framework established under UN Security Council Resolution 2803 requires the permanent decommissioning of weapons from “non-state armed groups”. This creates a profound asymmetry: Israeli forces remain the military forces of a recognised state, while Palestinian armed groups are treated within the International Stabilization Force (ISF) mandate as non-state armed groups whose weapons must be permanently decommissioned.

If UPDF troops enter Gaza to forcibly disarm these groups without their consent, they will not simply be keeping peace. They could find themselves acting as combatants in an asymmetric counter-insurgency.

Who Commands the “Board of Peace”?

There is a fundamental distinction that was obscured from Parliament: the International Stabilization Force is UN-authorised, but it is not a conventional UN-commanded peacekeeping force.

Resolution 2803 places the ISF under a unified command acceptable to the “Board of Peace”—a US-sponsored transitional body created around Donald Trump’s Gaza plan and chaired by Trump himself, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner among its senior figures.

The UN Security Council authorised this arrangement but did not transform the Board into a UN institution. The subsequent implementation architecture has made the distinction even clearer: the ISF is operating under United States unified command through Major General Jasper Jeffers, in consultation with Egypt and Israel.

The political architecture should give Uganda pause. Israel is represented on the Board, but the State of Palestine is not. Palestinians are to have a peripheral role in the technocratic administration of Gaza, but they are not part of the sovereign political authority supervising the international security architecture.

Constructing a Palestinian political future through an externally designed security structure in which Palestinians do not exercise primary political authority is reproducing the logic of colonial tutelage. Security imposed from outside cannot substitute for the political agency of the people whose territory is being governed.

For Uganda—and especially for Uganda as Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)—joining the military arm of a US-designed transitional architecture without a clear Palestinian political mandate or conventional UN command represents a tragic recapitulation to imperialist preferences. It is a fundamental betrayal of Pan-African anti-colonial doctrine.

Africa’s historic liberation movements, including South Africa’s ANC and Algeria’s FLN, have consistently maintained a principled distance from externally imposed guardianship plans. They understand that security cannot be built by subordinating an occupied people’s right to self-determination.

Uganda risks transforming the UPDF into an auxiliary police force for a foreign imperial project.

The Danger of Mission Drift and Permanent Deployment

By failing to define a clear political destination, Uganda risks entangling its military in an open-ended quagmire. As strategic analysts have pointed out, there is a fundamental difference between state-collapse problems and sovereignty problems.

In Somalia, where the UPDF has been deployed since 2007, the challenge was state collapse—using military force to help build institutions. Gaza, by contrast, is fundamentally a sovereignty problem. Military force cannot resolve contested claims to identity, statehood and self-determination.

The history of international intervention offers sobering warnings. The Kosovo model: Military intervention can end open warfare while leaving the core question of state sovereignty frozen and unresolved indefinitely.

The Southern Lebanon model: Peacekeepers can spend decades containing surface instability without ever resolving the strategic conflict beneath it.Gaza risks becoming Kosovo without agreement on sovereignty, and Southern Lebanon without agreement on security.

The danger for the UPDF is not merely immediate tactical failure, but mission drift: troops arrive, mandates are repeatedly renewed, deadlines slip, and a “temporary” deployment acquires a permanent logic.

Having maintained a military presence in Somalia for nearly two decades, Uganda should know that entering a conflict without a clear political exit strategy can lead to indefinite commitment.

 Neutrality and NAM Commitments Compromised

Uganda’s credibility as an impartial actor has also been severely eroded. While President Museveni has historically advocated diplomacy and a two-State solution, recent military posture projects an increasingly unambiguous bias. CDF Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba publicly offered military assistance to Israel during its recent confrontation with Iran.

Then, days before Parliament approved the Gaza deployment, the military unveiled a monument at Entebbe honouring Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, commander of the 1976 Israeli raid on Ugandan soil.

Commemorating an operation that violated Ugandan sovereignty, immediately before Parliament authorised Uganda’s participation in the Gaza force, creates a profound credibility problem for Uganda’s claim to neutrality in the eyes of Palestinians.

This posture is difficult to reconcile with Uganda’s duties as NAM Chair for 2024–2027. The Kampala Declaration reaffirmed support for ending the Israeli occupation and securing an independent, sovereign Palestinian State based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Sending troops to enforce stabilisation without a binding political pathway to Palestinian statehood risks turning Uganda into an instrument of conflict management rather than liberation.

Furthermore, the framework envisages a newly trained Palestinian police force working with the ISF. But policing Gaza cannot substitute for Palestinian statehood. An externally supervised security administration risks becoming an instrument for managing the conflict rather than building the institutions of a sovereign state.

Without political reunification between Gaza and the West Bank and a credible pathway to Palestinian sovereignty, security arrangements risk merely managing the occupation rather than ending it.

The Unavoidable ICC Contradiction

The legal risks are equally acute. Uganda is a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in connection with the situation in Palestine.

Uganda is now proposing to send its armed forces into the very conflict theatre that remains before the ICC, while the principal Israeli leadership implicated in the Court’s proceedings faces arrest warrants.

The contradiction is sharpened by US sanctions imposed in June 2025 against four ICC judges, including Ugandan Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa, in response to the Court’s actions concerning Israel.

Participating in a security architecture designed by an administration that has actively penalised a Ugandan jurist serving on the ICC bench creates an uncomfortable legal and diplomatic contradiction for Uganda.

This does not mean that Uganda cannot participate in any international effort involving Israel or Palestine. It means that any participation must be consistent with Uganda’s international legal obligations and its longstanding commitment to an independent international justice system.

Conclusion: Demand Accountability Before Deployment

A Status of Forces Agreement and Rules of Engagement cannot be negotiated as afterthoughts. They determine legal immunities, criminal jurisdiction, rules on lethal force, responsibility for casualties, medical evacuation and the circumstances under which Ugandan soldiers may use force.

Ugandans are entitled to know whether their soldiers will use force only in self-defence or whether they may be ordered to forcibly disarm Palestinian armed groups.

Uganda already carries substantial military commitments in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. International flattery or diplomatic goodwill is not a sufficient reason to risk Ugandan lives.

Parliament must reopen this question, demand the missing legal instruments, scrutinise the SOFA and Rules of Engagement, and insist that any military contribution be explicitly tied to an undeniable roadmap towards a sovereign, independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.

Our soldiers deserve to know what they are being sent to do, under whose command, under what law, at whose expense and to what political end.

Security in Palestine must ultimately serve freedom and self-determination—not merely a better-policed occupation.

The writer is a senior advocate, former Member of Parliament, and former State Minister for Foreign Affairs.

The United Nations Security Council is composed of fifteen member states, but authority within the chamber is divided into a rigid, two tiered hierarchy. Ten seats are reserved for non permanent members elected for rotating two year terms by the UN General Assembly. The remaining five seats belong permanently to the victors of World War II: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, collectively known as the P5. The veto power is an exclusive privilege granted solely to these five permanent members. In the context of executive decision-making, a veto means that if a single P5 country casts a negative ballot on a substantive matter, the initiative is killed instantly. When applied to the selection of the Secretary General, one nation’s opposition can unilaterally overrule the collective preference of the remaining 192 sovereign states, reducing global consensus to a nullity.

Under Article 97 of the UN Charter, the General Assembly, which represents all 193 member states, does not hold an open, democratic election for the top diplomat of the world. Instead, the General Assembly acts as a passive ratifying body, forced to wait until the Security Council agrees on a single candidate to recommend. During the Council’s informal straw polls, diplomats mark secret ballots for each candidate as encouraged, discouraged, or no opinion expressed. In the initial non-binding tallies of yesterday, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan led the field with 10 encourage votes, 1 discourage, and 4 no opinions. She was followed by Guyana’s Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett with 9 encourage votes, 2 discourages, and 4 no opinions, and Argentina’s Rafael Grossi with 7 encourage votes, 2 discourages, and 6 no opinions.

Meanwhile, Africa’s candidates met immediate structural resistance. Senegal’s former President Macky Sall received 6 encourage, 7 discourage, and 2 no opinion votes, while Uganda’s Olara Otunnu, a seasoned diplomat and former UN Under Secretary General, garnered 2 encourage, 5 discourage, and 8 no opinion votes. While these initial rounds utilized uniform ballots to obscure which votes came from permanent members, upcoming voting rounds will introduce color coded ballots. The moment a P5 member casts a red ballot, it signals a definitive veto that immediately eliminates a candidate, regardless of how many non permanent members or General Assembly delegates support them.

This system exposes a profound structural prejudice against the African continent. Africa consists of 54 sovereign nations, forming the largest single regional voting bloc in the UN General Assembly, and is home to over 1.4 billion people. Yet, Africa holds zero permanent seats and zero veto power on the Security Council. An entire continent representing nearly twenty percent of humanity is effectively stripped of direct structural leverage over global security decisions and executive appointments. Statesmen with world class executive credentials, such as Macky Sall and Olara Otunnu, find their candidacies judged not on their leadership, moral integrity, or continental backing, but on whether their independence aligns with the geopolitical interests of the five ruling powers.

Scholars, international legal experts, and reform advocates have long condemned this arrangement, routinely describing the selection process as a farce, a waste of time, and a hollow illusion of multilateralism Analysts point out that despite public town halls and General Assembly dialogues, the actual decision remains an exercise in backroom bargaining among the permanent five. P5 members routinely prioritize geopolitical predictability and compliance over independent merit, ensuring that no leader who challenges imperial interests can survive the selection.

This institutional bias has drawn sharp condemnation from prominent African leaders. Kenyan President William Ruto forcefully challenged the composition of the Security Council directly before the United Nations General Assembly, declaring the complete exclusion of Africa from permanent membership to be inherently unfair, outdated, and unacceptable. Ruto warned world leaders that the current structure of the Security Council is anachronistic relic of 1945 that disregards the legitimate rights of 54 nations, emphasizing that granting Africa permanent seats with veto rights is not a favor, but an urgent requirement for the credibility of global governance.

Ultimately, the straw poll yesterday demonstrates the persistent gap between the founding ideals of the United Nations and its operational realities. When a single nation can veto the candidate preferred by the international majority, the selection of global leadership ceases to be a democratic process and reverts to power politics. For Africa and the wider Global South, these dynamics underscore the urgent necessity to reevaluate strategic multilateral relationships and demand structural equity rather than settling for minor procedural adjustments within a rigged system.

ByTwiine Mansio Charles (TCM)

Geopolitical Analyst | Security Strategist | CEO, The ThirdEye Security Consults (U) Ltd | Doctoral Scholar, Stellenbosch University.

A constitution derives its authority not simply from its enactment, but from the continuing willingness of those who exercise state power to remain bound by it. It is, at its core, a political covenant—a social contract through which citizens surrender part of their natural liberty in exchange for security, justice, accountable government, and the impartial protection of their rights.

This principle lies at the heart of modern constitutionalism. John Locke argued that free people consent to establish governments to protect life, liberty, and property. Jean-Jacques Rousseau maintained that sovereignty ultimately resides in the people, who delegate authority to institutions created to serve the common good. Modern constitutions therefore perform two reciprocal functions: they empower governments to govern, but they also restrain governments from abusing that power.

Citizens obey the law because they trust that those entrusted with public authority will themselves obey the Constitution. Every constitutional democracy experiences occasional violations of law, which functioning institutions can correct. A true crisis begins, however, when violations become systematic, when oversight institutions become unable or unwilling to correct them, and when constitutional guarantees exist only on paper while executive discretion becomes the principal regulator of political life.

That, increasingly, is the constitutional question confronting Uganda.

Thirty years ago, Uganda appeared to have broken decisively with its history of constitutional instability. The 1995 Constitution emerged from one of the most extensive consultative processes on the African continent. The Odoki Constitutional Commission gathered submissions from ordinary citizens, religious leaders, cultural institutions, and political organisations. Ugandans overwhelmingly expressed a desire for accountable government, judicial independence, respect for fundamental rights, civilian supremacy over the military, and safeguards against a return to authoritarian rule.

The resulting charter was celebrated as one of Africa’s most progressive constitutional settlements. It contained an extensive Bill of Rights, entrenched judicial review, recognised decentralisation, restored traditional cultural institutions, and sought to permanently remove the armed forces from partisan politics.

Three decades later, however, an uncomfortable question now lingers: Has the constitutional settlement negotiated in 1995 progressively lost the legitimacy upon which it was founded?

This question does not arise because particular political actors have become unpopular. It arises because Uganda increasingly exhibits a pattern in which the Constitution’s most fundamental guarantees are repeatedly challenged without effective institutional correction. When this occurs over a prolonged period, it becomes a question of whether the underlying social contract itself requires peaceful renegotiation.

The Constitution Under Strain

Perhaps nowhere is this tension more visible than in Article 208 of the Constitution. The framers understood Uganda’s painful history of military intervention. Article 208 was drafted in unequivocal language, requiring the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to be non-partisan, national in character, patriotic, professional, disciplined, and subordinate to civilian authority.

Recent developments have inevitably raised questions about whether that constitutional firewall remains intact. The emergence and rapid expansion of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), publicly championed by General Muhoozi Kainerugaba while serving as Chief of Defence Forces, has generated significant constitutional debate.

The issue is not whether General Muhoozi enjoys political rights as a citizen. The narrower institutional question is whether the serving commander of the national armed forces can simultaneously remain constitutionally non-partisan while leading sustained political mobilisation connected to future presidential succession.

The concern arises from the constitutional danger created when the distinction between military command and partisan political organisation becomes blurred while an officer remains in active command. Article 208 exists precisely to ensure that the armed forces belong equally to every Ugandan citizen, regardless of political affiliation.

This issue assumes greater significance when viewed alongside the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Attorney General v Hon. Michael Kabaziguruka, which held that military courts lack constitutional jurisdiction to try civilians because they do not possess the institutional independence required of courts exercising judicial power over ordinary citizens.

Yet constitutional legitimacy depends upon faithful implementation. When authoritative judgments encounter hesitation, delay, or selective application, public confidence shifts from faith in institutions to uncertainty about whether constitutional guarantees remain practically enforceable.

The same concern arises regarding personal liberty. Article 23 guarantees that no person shall be deprived of liberty except according to law, requiring detainees to be brought before a court within forty-eight hours. Article 24 absolutely prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Nevertheless, persistent reports of arrests by unidentified security operatives travelling in unmarked vehicles—popularly known as “drones”—together with reports of prolonged incommunicado detention, have generated increasing public anxiety.

Specific incidents involving prominent Ugandans have brought these questions into national focus.

The reported abduction and detention of former Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago illustrates why these issues extend beyond individual fortunes. Seized while engaged in legal work and held incommunicado, Lukwago was produced before court in visibly poor health. The controversy deepened following public statements attributed to General Muhoozi Kainerugaba on his verified X account acknowledging that Lukwago had been tortured.

Such an acknowledgment by the CDF raises an extraordinary constitutional question: How can a constitutional democracy reconcile the acknowledged torture of a citizen with Article 24’s absolute prohibition?

Similarly, the public abduction of Hon. Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi, captured on camera by NBS Television as he was taken away by security operatives, has intensified concern. His whereabouts remain unknown after more than 10 days of incommunicado detention, raising urgent questions regarding compliance with Article 23.

An individual’s constitutional rights cannot depend upon political popularity or acceptability. The essence of constitutionalism is that even critics of government remain entitled to the protection of the law. When access to family, legal representation, personal doctor, and judicial supervision becomes uncertain in politically sensitive cases, confidence in constitutional guarantees diminishes for everyone.

Uganda’s Recurrent History of Broken Compacts.

Uganda’s present predicament forms part of a longer historical pattern where successive constitutional settlements have struggled to survive when political competition became dominated by the concentration of power and the control of coercive institutions.

The 1962 Independence Constitution represented Uganda’s first attempt to reconcile a modern nation-state with historical kingdoms and identities. It was a negotiated political settlement that recognised regional autonomy, but it was severely tested when national political competition intensified.

The 1966 constitutional crisis and the 1967 Constitution marked a major rupture. The conflict between the central government and the Buganda Kingdom escalated into the suspension of the constitutional order and the military attack on the Lubiri. This established a dangerous precedent: that constitutional disputes could be resolved through state coercive power rather than negotiation.

The subsequent 1967 Constitution entrenched a highly centralised model that concentrated authority within the executive, ultimately creating conditions for the military takeover of 1971.

The 1985 Nairobi Peace Agreement sought to establish a framework for transition and reconciliation between the military government and the National Resistance Army (NRA). However, before the agreed arrangements could mature, military victory displaced political compromise when the NRA captured Kampala in January 1986.

The 1995 Constitution was designed to break this historical cycle by replacing the politics of force with the politics of law. As legal scholars Professors Frederick Jjuuko and Sam Tindifa observe in their analysis of Ugandan political settlements, these historical milestones have often functioned as elite-driven accommodations rather than enduring social contracts.

Because these frameworks were frequently transactional pacts constructed to preserve immediate political interests, they remained inherently fragile.

Consequently, over the years, several constitutional amendments have fundamentally altered the architecture of 1995, including the removal of presidential term limits in 2005 and age limits in 2017. While undertaken through legally established parliamentary procedures, the deeper question is whether repeated alterations to foundational safeguards have weakened public confidence in the settlement itself.

As Jjuuko and Tindifa’s critique suggests, a constitution can be legally amended while its underlying social contract becomes progressively hollowed out and fragile.

Why Buganda and Busoga Should Convene a Sovereign National Conference

History demonstrates that national dialogues rarely emerge spontaneously. They usually begin through a coalition of institutions or communities possessing sufficient legitimacy and organisational capacity to create a platform for wider national participation.

Benin’s historic 1990 Sovereign National Conference emerged from an alliance of civic and religious institutions, while Kenya’s constitutional reform process developed through sustained engagement among political actors and civil society before culminating in the 2010 Constitution.

Uganda’s own constitutional history demonstrates that when the political settlement becomes contested, the answer cannot always be found within the ordinary mechanisms created by that same settlement. At such moments, the people—the ultimate source of constitutional authority—must have an opportunity to deliberate on the future direction of the state.

In my considered view, the most credible constitutional nucleus to initiate such a process in Uganda lies in a partnership between Buganda and Busoga—not because these regions possess a superior claim over Uganda’s future, but because they combine historical legitimacy, economic influence, demographic significance, and strategic national assets capable of providing a platform for a broader national conversation.

Their role would be fundamentally different: to convene, not to control; to open the door, not to occupy the room.

Buganda remains Uganda’s principal economic engine. The Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area contains the largest concentration of national economic activity, hosting Parliament, the central bank, manufacturing industries, major universities, and Entebbe International Airport. Buganda’s contribution would arise from this present-day institutional capacity and economic significance.

Busoga represents one of the country’s most important strategic resource frontiers. It hosts critical energy infrastructure along the Nile corridor—including the Nalubaale, Kiira, Bujagali, and Isimba hydroelectric stations—which form the foundation of Uganda’s energy security.

Furthermore, the emerging Makuutu Rare Earth Project in Mayuge and Iganga positions Busoga as a region of global strategic importance. The governance of rare earth elements raises fundamental constitutional questions concerning national sovereignty, resource ownership, revenue sharing, and distributive justice.

However, the purpose of involving Buganda and Busoga is not to elevate two regions above others. On the contrary, it is precisely to demonstrate that every constituent community of Uganda brings immense value to the national table.

The outdated assumption that some regions are permanently resource-poor and therefore dependent on central government control has been challenged by Uganda’s evolving resource map.

Bunyoro and Acholi possess significant oil resources. Karamoja has substantial mineral wealth, including gold and marble deposits. Buganda and surrounding regions remain central to Uganda’s agricultural economy through coffee—our enduring “black gold.” Busoga possesses strategic energy and mineral resources, including uranium potential that places it at the centre of future energy discussions.

Tooro contributes extraordinary environmental, tourism and cultural assets. Ankole contributes agricultural and livestock strength. Acholi offers invaluable experience in peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery. Lango, Teso, Bugisu, Bukedi, Sebei and West Nile each possess distinct economic, cultural and strategic capabilities.

The myth of the “impoverished region” has therefore been permanently challenged by geography. Uganda is not a country lacking resources; it is a country whose governance arrangements have struggled to ensure that national wealth is translated into equitable development.

This widespread and decentralised wealth provides the material foundation for a more equitable system of governance, whether through meaningful devolution or a federal arrangement negotiated through national consensus.

A Sovereign National Conference is therefore not a luxury. It is an urgent mechanism through which Uganda can determine how its collective wealth, diversity and aspirations can be organised into a more legitimate political order.

A Sovereign National Conference also differs fundamentally from an ordinary parliamentary process. Parliament derives its authority from the existing Constitution; it exercises constituted power. The people, however, possess the original democratic authority from which constitutions derive their legitimacy; they exercise constituent power.

When the foundational constitutional settlement itself becomes the subject of national concern, legitimacy must ultimately return to the people.This does not mean rejecting Parliament or abolishing constitutional institutions. Rather, it recognises that there are moments in a nation’s history when ordinary institutions may lack the political capacity to resolve fundamental structural questions.

A Parliament whose members are products of the existing political settlement may find it difficult to undertake reforms that fundamentally alter the very structures within which they operate. Expecting a highly partisan legislative body to voluntarily limit executive dominance, enforce absolute military neutrality, or redesign the distribution of national resources presents an inherent institutional challenge.

A Sovereign National Conference would therefore serve as an inclusive vehicle of citizen participation, operating alongside existing institutions to address unresolved national questions. It would not claim authority above the Constitution; rather, it would seek to renew the constitutional covenant upon which state legitimacy depends.

Its mandate would include addressing questions such as land justice, regional equity, federalism or meaningful devolution, military neutrality, judicial independence, corruption, and fair governance of national resources.Professor Wangoola-Wangoola Ndawula has described one of the enduring dilemmas of post-colonial states as the tension between constitutional government and “Gun Power”—the reality that coercive authority too often becomes the ultimate guarantor of political power.

A Sovereign National Conference offers Uganda a peaceful constitutional response to that dilemma. It seeks to ensure that political authority derives from consent rather than coercion, from institutions rather than personalities, and from law rather than force.It is constitutional renewal, not constitutional destruction.

Conclusion: Refounding Uganda Through Consent

A constitution survives not because it is written, but because those who exercise power accept that they, too, are bound by it.

The choice before Uganda is not between preserving the 1995 Constitution and abandoning constitutionalism. The real choice is whether to allow the gap between constitutional promise and constitutional practice to continue widening, or to create a peaceful national mechanism to renew the political covenant upon which the Republic rests.

Properly constituted, a Sovereign National Conference would bring together government, opposition, traditional institutions, religious leaders, civil society, the private sector and citizens from every region as equal partners.

Its purpose would not be to assign victory to one political faction or region. Its purpose would be to restore the principle upon which every genuine democracy rests: that sovereignty ultimately belongs to the people.

Thirty years after the adoption of the 1995 Constitution, Uganda has reached a moment of constitutional reflection. The country must decide whether its future will continue to be shaped by recurring cycles of political contestation and institutional strain, or whether it can peacefully renew its national compact through dialogue, consent and inclusion.

The ultimate question is not whether Uganda needs another Constitution merely for the sake of changing text. The deeper question is whether Ugandans can rebuild the trust between the governed and those who govern.

A Sovereign National Conference provides an opportunity to do precisely that: to transform constitutional frustration into constructive national renewal.

That is the conversation Uganda can no longer postpone.

The writer is a senior advocate, former Member of Parliament and former Minister.

Among those who sounded the alarm was Morrison Rwakakamba. He argued that removing these constitutional safeguards amounted to a fundamental compromise of the spirit of the Constitution and created the conditions for a life presidency with potentially grave consequences for political stability.

Today, with the emergence of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) under the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, and the apparent disregard for Article 208 of the Constitution, which requires the Uganda People’s Defence Forces to remain non-partisan, professional and subordinate to civilian authority, many of those warnings appear strikingly prescient.

Indeed, Morrison Rwakakamba deserves recognition for articulating, with remarkable clarity, the constitutional risks that lay ahead. To understand how Uganda’s current institutional crisis was engineered, it is worth revisiting his observations in an interview published by The Observer on 25 September 2017, at the height of the national debate over the proposed removal of Article 102(b).

On governance being subordinated to personal political survival, Rwakakamba observed:

“There is need for more imagination. I think the President is more concerned with maintaining a hold onto power. For example, you have a Parliament spending so many hours trying to diminish the Constitution by removing Article 102(b) instead of concentrating on those things in the 2016 manifesto… the entire Cabinet and Parliament are busy weakening the Constitution in order to perpetuate a life presidency.”

On the illusion of economic transformation while constitutional politics consumed the State, he added:

“To say you want Uganda to move to a middle-income status yet you are presiding over an economy that is growing at 3.8 per cent per annum… you need an economy that is consistently growing at 10 per cent per annum for ten years. If your population is growing at three per cent and that population is jobless… Deploying money on buying a machine to detect pornography and not in the productive sectors of the economy shows that your agenda is not transformative.”

His most powerful warning, however, concerned what he described as the dismantling of the Constitution’s final institutional safeguards.

On the constitutional “firewalls” against instability, he warned:

“We are concerned with the age limit removal. That is our last firewall… If you don’t have institutions that can deliver, then you have term limits. If the term limits were removed through political manoeuvring, then at least have other caps… If it passes, it portends trouble for the country and pushes Uganda’s risk profile through the roof.”

He continued: “You are faced with a life presidency and opening this window is allowing Museveni to be here not only beyond 2021, but 2026, or even 2031. In my view, President Museveni has done his part. He should be retiring. If he doesn’t, he is pushing us to the Zimbabwe corridor.”

Perhaps his most profound constitutional insight came in challenging the long-standing official argument that Uganda’s problems lay with “the what” rather than “the who.”

On the relationship between constitutional succession and political stability, he concluded:

“The President has been saying that the problems of Uganda are ‘the what’ not ‘the who.’ ‘The what’ has been here: it is the lack of jobs, health care and education. If ‘the what’ is not changing, then the problem is ‘the who.’ Year 2021 is the opportunity to re-imagine ‘the who’ to solve ‘the what.’… If the Constitution is removed, then people lose hope and you cannot comfortably say that people will not try to look for other means that are violent in nature.”

Looking back today, these observations read less like political commentary than constitutional prophecy.

The removal of presidential term limits in 2005—procured through the transactional distribution of five million shillings to Members of Parliament—fundamentally commercialised the legislative arena, signalling that even the supreme law of the land could be bartered for regime survival.

By the time the age limit was targeted in 2017, the trajectory had evolved from mere financial inducement to naked coercion. Even though there were attempts to maintain a transactional veneer by paying 29 million shillings to each legislator – officially billed as facilitation to consult with their constituents – the institutional environment had fundamentally shifted. The majority of Opposition MPs recognized the disbursement as a political bribe and publicly returned the funds. Ultimately the amendment was not secured through constitutional consensus but under the shadow of force, punctuated by the unprecedented invasion of Parliament by the Special Forces Command (SFC), which violently assaulted and removed dissenting Members of Parliament from the Chamber.

Yet the most consequential institutional failure lay not in Parliament but in the courts.

When the amendment was challenged, the Constitutional Court acknowledged the military’s unlawful intrusion into Parliament but nevertheless upheld (4 -1) the constitutional amendment. On appeal the Supreme Court confirmed the decision (4-3). In doing so, the highest courts of the land effectively legitimised a constitutional change enacted under the shadow of military coercion. The final institutional firewall—the judiciary—thus yielded where it was expected to stand firm.

Once constitutional restraints are dismantled, or their violation judicially excused, in order to preserve an individual in power rather than the integrity of the constitutional order, the erosion of every subsequent institutional safeguard becomes progressively inevitable.

The increasing political role of the military, the rise of the PLU under a serving Chief of Defence Forces, and growing concerns over compliance with Article 208 should therefore not be viewed as isolated or contemporary aberrations. They are the logical culmination of a constitutional trajectory that began by commercialising constitutional amendment in 2005, escalated into military intimidation in 2017, and was ultimately normalised through judicial validation.

The question confronting Uganda today is therefore no longer whether the removal of presidential term and age limits mattered. The more profound question is whether those amendments became the constitutional gateway through which the Republic entered its present constitutional crisis.

Measured against the warnings issued by Mr. Morrison Rwakakamba in 2017 and the events that have since unfolded, the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction: they did.

By Asuman Kiyingi

The writer is a senior advocate, former Member of Parliament and former Minister.

His mandate includes a rigorous oversight of the revolving funds disbursed to various groups, and whispers of accountability are sending jitters through members who have allegedly dipped into these funds for personal use.

Sources close to the new presidential appointee indicate that a comprehensive audit is imminent, with a particular focus on SACCOs that have shown poor repayment rates or irregular fund utilization. Gumisiriza Jeremiah is reportedly keen on ensuring that the revolving funds, intended to empower small businesses and entrepreneurs, are channeled effectively and sustainably.

In 2022 we broke a story on how President Museveni had personally blown the cover of his informant during a meeting to streamline the administration of public markets in Kampala Metropolitan Area. Gumisiriza singlehandedly convinced the President to direct government to repossess markets which had been leased to private businessmen in order to protect the vendors from exploitation.

Our source informed us that Gumisiriza is the author of numerous revolving funds that were dished out by the President before and during the campaign much as he remained in the shadows having fallen out with some powerful women in the administration of State House which led to his resignation from the National Secretariat for Patriotism Corps.

The looming crackdown comes at a time when President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has repeatedly stressed the importance of financial discipline among beneficiaries of government programs. In a September 2025 address to Boda Boda riders in Kampala Metropolitan Area while handing over a cheque of 10.2 billion shillings to the Saccos, the President issued a stern warning: “Whoever misuses this SACCO money, I will go after them. I also want accountability for the 2011 Boda Boda SACCO funds because I want to know what happened.”

President Museveni directed the SACCO members not to use the funds to repay debts from money lenders but rather purchase new motorcycles for their fresh start, a directive we have learnt it was since ignored.

On 16th December 2025, the President also pledged to give SACCOs of salon operators across the country 85 billion as a revolving fund. However, the number of salon operators we spoke to said they have never received any money and they have no hope of ever receiving it as they allege it has been beaten by the leaders of the Federation who are NRM Cadres.

Other Presidential revolving funds include 7 billion shillings to Mechanics SACCOs in Kampala Metropolitan Area, 5 billion shillings to Tiktokers, 7 billion shillings to music promoters, over 1 billion to journalists in Sub-regions given during the PDM Tour, 1.8 billion to MCs in 18 Zonal regions, 8.8 billion to Presidential hubs bringing the total close to 126 billion shillings.

The President’s firm stance, coupled with Mr. Gumisiriza Jeremiah’s focused mandate, has led many SACCO members, particularly those in the informal sector, to review their financial dealings. The fear of potential sanctions, including arrests and recovery efforts, is palpable.

Many are reportedly rushing to regularize their accounts and ensure all outstanding loans are settled before the impending audits begin. The coming weeks are expected to be Kisanja No More Sleep.