President Yoweri Museveni is right to insist that Uganda’s oil revenues must be used to build a productive and durable economy rather than finance a temporary consumption boom.

The President’s message at the naming ceremony for Uganda’s crude oil at Kingfisher was particularly important because it went beyond the first barrel. He argued that the country’s finite petroleum resources should create productive capacity in power, transport, railways, universities, industrialisation and human capital that will outlive the oil fields.

That is the right ambition, but there is a less glamorous question that Uganda must confront before the oil money begins to flow in earnest. How much of that money will actually reach the projects for which it is intended?

The greatest threat to Uganda’s oil transformation may not be a collapse in oil prices or even the depletion of the resource. It could be the familiar leakage that occurs when public money passes through weak procurement systems, inflated contracts, poor-quality works and inadequate supervision.

This is why Uganda needs to treat public procurement and project implementation as two sides of the same oil-revenue protection system.

Cleaning up procurement is essential but it is not enough. A perfectly conducted tender can still produce a poor road, bridge, hospital or power project if implementation is not properly supervised. Conversely, strong technical supervision cannot fully compensate for a procurement process that awards contracts at inflated prices or to firms without the capacity to deliver.

The country therefore needs a much tighter chain of accountability; from project selection and budgeting, through procurement and contracting, to physical implementation, payment and eventual handover.

This matters because infrastructure is likely to absorb a substantial share of the public investment Uganda hopes to make from its petroleum revenues.

A kilometre of road that costs more than it should is oil revenue lost. A poorly constructed bridge that requires premature reconstruction represents another claim on future revenue. A public building that takes years to complete while contractors receive payments is capital that has failed to generate the intended economic return.

The leakage is therefore not simply the cash allegedly lost to corruption. It is also the economic value that Uganda fails to obtain for every shilling spent.

That distinction is important because corruption is often discussed in terms of money disappearing from government accounts. But the larger economic damage can occur when corruption and weak oversight result in projects being unnecessarily expensive, delayed or badly constructed.

Uganda could therefore enter the oil era with billions of dollars of additional public resources and still fail to achieve the economic transformation those resources should finance.

The answer should be a national infrastructure vigilance system that follows projects from the drawing board to completion.

Major oil-funded projects should have clear costs, timelines, measurable outputs and publicly accountable implementing agencies. Payments should be tied rigorously to verified milestones. Independent technical inspections should be routine for major projects rather than an afterthought when problems emerge.

Uganda also needs to strengthen the capacity of institutions responsible for procurement and project oversight. The objective should not simply be to catch corruption after money has been lost, but to make it increasingly difficult for leakage to occur in the first place.

There is also a role for citizens, professional bodies, the media and Parliament in this process.

Public scrutiny should extend beyond the announcement of a new project or the signing of a contract. Ugandans should be asking a few questions. What was promised? What was budgeted? Who was contracted? What has actually been delivered? At what cost and to what standard?

Museveni’s call for an integrated petroleum strategy — linking oil to refining, energy generation, industrialisation and human capital — is sound because Uganda’s objective should be to use oil to diversify the economy rather than make it more dependent on hydrocarbons.

But diversification itself requires disciplined investment. The refinery should generate industrial opportunities. Reliable electricity should support manufacturing. Better transport and rail infrastructure should reduce the cost of moving goods. Universities and technical institutions should produce the skills required by an increasingly sophisticated economy.

None of these outcomes is automatic simply because oil revenues become available. Oil can provide the capital. It cannot provide the discipline to spend that capital well.

That discipline must come from institutions. Uganda has already spent years preparing for first oil. It has negotiated investments, built infrastructure, trained petroleum professionals and developed the regulatory framework for the sector.

The next institutional and equally important challenge is ensuring that the wealth generated by the resource is converted into assets rather than absorbed by waste and rent-seeking.

The President’s warning against repeating the mistakes of other African oil producers should therefore be taken seriously. The lesson from the continent is not merely that oil revenues can encourage excessive consumption. It is that resource wealth can magnify existing weaknesses in governance and public financial management.

Uganda’s best defence is to ensure that every major investment financed from oil revenues is subjected to clean procurement, competitive pricing, competent contracting and relentless implementation oversight.

The country does not need to create another layer of bureaucracy for its own sake. It needs to make existing accountability mechanisms work better and ensure that responsibility for project outcomes cannot be passed endlessly from one institution to another.

With first oil now approaching, this is the right moment to establish the standards by which the oil era will be judged. The ultimate measure should not be how much oil Uganda produces or how much revenue enters the Treasury.

It should be what that money builds. If oil revenues produce reliable infrastructure, productive industries, skilled citizens and a stronger private sector, Uganda will have converted a finite resource into enduring wealth. If too much of the money disappears through inflated procurement, unfinished projects and weak supervision, the country will have extracted the oil without extracting its full economic value. ultimately, oil wealth must be protected not only at the wellhead, but all the way to the completed project.

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Fifty-four years after President Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of Asians from Uganda, the episode remains largely trapped in an argument about right and wrong.

It was wrong. It was a traumatic act of dispossession that tore families and businesses from a country many considered home. It also inflicted enormous damage on Uganda’s economy.

The fortunes of many of those expelled, particularly those who rebuilt their lives in Britain, Canada and elsewhere, have since become part of the evidence of what Uganda lost.

But there is a more useful question to ask in 2026: what did Uganda learn?

That question matters because history becomes useful only when it changes the choices a society makes.

The temptation is to reduce the Asian expulsion to a story about race. That interpretation is too narrow. Beneath the racial language of the time was a much deeper problem: Uganda had inherited an economy structured around unequal access to opportunity.

Colonial economic policy had encouraged Asians into commerce and intermediary roles while systematically excluding the African majority from many of the opportunities required to build wealth and productive enterprises.

The Asians did not create that system. Nor can they be blamed for the resentment it eventually produced.

But neither should Uganda romanticise what happened by pretending that entrepreneurial talent alone explains the dramatically different outcomes experienced by many of those expelled.

Talent matters. Enterprise matters. Hard work matters. But institutions matter just as much.

The Asians who rebuilt their lives abroad did so in economies where capital markets, property rights, education, professional networks and relatively open opportunities allowed enterprise to flourish. Their success tells us something not only about them, but also about the environments in which talent is given room to work.

That is perhaps the most important lesson for Uganda today.

Social inequality is no longer primarily a question of Asians versus Africans, or Ugandans versus foreigners. It is increasingly a question of social class and access to economic opportunity.

The next rupture, if Uganda fails to address these inequalities, may therefore look very different. It may not discriminate by the colour of one’s skin. It could be directed at whoever is perceived to have accumulated wealth while others remain excluded from meaningful economic participation.

That is why building an inclusive economy is not simply a matter of social justice but an insurance policy against future instability.

Uganda may indeed have lost a significant development opportunity in 1972. But the country also witnessed the emergence of an indigenous entrepreneurial class that the colonial economy had denied sufficient space to develop.

The problem is that this class still has some distance to travel.

Too much indigenous enterprise remains concentrated in merchandise trading, importation and low-value commerce. The next transition must be towards industry, agro-processing, technology, digital innovation and productive investment.

That transition will not happen through rhetoric. It requires access to affordable capital, reliable infrastructure, skills, markets and predictable rules.

It also requires Uganda to confront an uncomfortable reality: some of the country’s worst exploitation of workers and producers today is perpetrated by fellow Ugandans.

In agriculture, ruthless middlemen can squeeze farmers while retaining disproportionate margins. Poor wages and weak bargaining power can transfer value from those who produce to those who control markets.

An inclusive economy must therefore reward contribution more fairly — whether the contributor is a farmer, factory worker, entrepreneur, professional or investor.

The lesson of 1972 should not be that one community prospered while another lost.

It should be that no society can afford an economic system in which large sections of its people feel permanently locked out of opportunity.

Uganda cannot undo 1972. But it can ensure that the next generation inherits an economy in which prosperity is broad enough, opportunity is open enough and institutions are fair enough that nobody has to be defined as an outsider before they can be treated as a citizen.

That would be a far more meaningful way to remember the expulsion than endlessly revisiting the wound, without building a country that has learned from it.

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The death of genocide mastermind Félicien Kabuga in The Hague has brought a dramatic and symbolic end to one of the longest-running manhunts in modern international criminal justice.

The United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) confirmed on Friday that Kabuga died while hospitalized in The Hague, where he had been under UN detention following his arrest in France in 2020 after more than two decades on the run.

In a statement issued from Arusha and The Hague, the UN tribunal said Dutch authorities had commenced standard investigations into the circumstances surrounding his death, while Mechanism President Judge Graciela Gatti Santana ordered a full inquiry led by Judge Alphons Orie.

Kabuga, a wealthy Rwandan businessman once regarded as one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, had been charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity linked to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Prosecutors accused him of financing extremist militias, facilitating hate propaganda and supplying resources used during the massacres that killed more than 800,000 people in approximately 100 days.

For decades, Kabuga’s name occupied a near-mythical place in international justice circles.

An arrest warrant was first issued by the former International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), but Kabuga managed to evade capture across several countries for over 25 years before French authorities arrested him near Paris in May 2020.

His capture was hailed globally as a breakthrough moment for accountability over the Rwanda genocide — particularly because many believed age and time might permanently shield senior suspects from prosecution.

Yet the legal process that followed revealed the growing challenges confronting international war crimes tribunals.

Kabuga’s trial formally began in September 2022, but proceedings soon became overshadowed by concerns about his health and mental fitness. In 2023, judges indefinitely stayed the case after finding he was no longer fit to stand trial because of severe cognitive decline.

At the time of his death, he remained in detention while awaiting provisional release to a country willing to receive him.

That unresolved status leaves behind a deeply complicated legacy.

For survivors of the genocide, Kabuga’s death may represent the final disappearance of one of the men they viewed as central to organizing and enabling the killings. But it also means one of the most anticipated genocide trials of recent decades will never reach a verdict.

The development therefore carries implications far beyond Rwanda.

Kabuga’s case had increasingly become a measure of whether international justice institutions established after the atrocities of the 1990s could still deliver meaningful accountability decades later. Instead, his death before judgment highlights a recurring dilemma: justice mechanisms often move more slowly than history itself.

The case also revives broader questions about the effectiveness and future of international criminal tribunals.

Supporters argue that Kabuga’s eventual arrest demonstrated that genocide suspects can never fully escape accountability, regardless of how much time passes. Critics, however, contend that delayed prosecutions risk depriving victims of closure while consuming enormous institutional resources.

For Rwanda, the symbolism is especially powerful. The genocide remains the defining event in the country’s modern political identity, shaping everything from governance and national reconciliation to regional security policy and diplomatic relations across Africa and beyond.

Kabuga’s alleged role was particularly significant because prosecutors portrayed him not as a battlefield commander, but as part of the financial and ideological machinery that enabled mass violence. His prosecution was expected to deepen historical understanding of how economic elites, media structures and political networks helped fuel genocide.

Now, that judicial process ends without a final courtroom reckoning.

Still, Kabuga’s death is unlikely to diminish the historical consensus surrounding the atrocities of 1994 or the global legal precedents established in their aftermath.

The institutions created after Rwanda and the Balkans transformed international law, expanding the principle that individuals — including financiers, propagandists and political actors — can be held personally accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Even so, the conclusion of Kabuga’s case without a verdict may reinforce calls for faster, more adaptive systems of international justice capable of handling aging suspects and prolonged conflicts more effectively.

More than three decades after the genocide, the world is once again reminded that while history can pursue fugitives for decades, time itself often remains the ultimate adversary of justice.

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Multilateral development banks occupy a delicate space. They are political creations, established by treaties and backed by sovereign shareholders. Yet their operational credibility depends fundamentally on financial independence, institutional discipline and market confidence. That balance is fragile. When political considerations appear to influence financial decisions — or when markets suspect they do — the cost can be immediate and enduring.

Afreximbank’s break with Fitch Ratings followed a downgrade that pushed the bank into non-investment grade territory. The institution argued that the rating agency misunderstood its Establishment Agreement and failed to properly recognise the strength of shareholder backing. That may well be a legitimate concern. However, withdrawing from the rating relationship altogether risks sending a troubling signal to investors: that the bank is unwilling to subject itself to external scrutiny when assessments turn unfavourable.

Credit ratings are not endorsements. They are risk opinions. Markets understand that disagreements between issuers and agencies occur. What they watch closely, however, is how institutions respond. A development bank’s willingness to engage constructively with scrutiny — even when critical — reinforces perceptions of governance strength. Abrupt disengagement can instead raise doubts about transparency, resilience and tolerance for independent oversight.

The deeper concern lies in the perception of political influence. Afreximbank’s shareholders are sovereign states. Some of those states have recently faced debt distress, restructuring episodes and contentious rating downgrades. In that context, the optics of severing ties with a rating agency may invite speculation that political sensitivities, rather than purely technical disagreements, are shaping institutional decisions.

Even the perception of political encroachment can be costly. Multilateral banks depend on global capital markets for funding. Their business models rely on borrowing at competitive rates and on-lending to member states and enterprises. If investors begin to price in governance risk — or fear that financial discipline may yield to political imperatives — borrowing costs rise. Over time, that erodes the very development mandate the institution was created to advance.

There is also a systemic dimension. African financial institutions have long argued that global rating methodologies inadequately reflect regional realities. That debate deserves serious engagement. But credibility in reform advocacy requires demonstrating the highest standards of governance at home. If calls for methodological fairness are accompanied by actions perceived as defensive or politically driven, the broader argument risks losing force.

The danger, therefore, is not the disagreement itself. Robust debate between issuers and rating agencies is healthy. The danger lies in what this episode might signal about institutional independence. Development banks must be insulated not only from market volatility, but from political pressures that could compromise objective risk management.

The path forward should prioritise transparency and reassurance. Afreximbank would strengthen its position by publicly clarifying governance safeguards, reaffirming its commitment to independent oversight and maintaining engagement with multiple international rating agencies. Markets are less concerned with disagreements than with opacity.

Africa’s financial architecture is maturing. Institutions like Afreximbank play a central role in shaping that trajectory. Preserving their independence is not merely a governance ideal — it is a financial necessity. If political overreach, real or perceived, takes root, the consequences will not be symbolic. They will be measured in basis points, investor confidence and long-term development capacity.

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One of the core assumptions underpinning any justice system is that courts exist not merely to determine winners and losers, but to deliver justice through a process that is independent, impartial and grounded in law. In that sense, litigants go to court not solely in pursuit of victory, but in the expectation that a fair process—faithfully applied—will command legitimacy, even where the outcome is unfavourable.

It is against this backdrop that the High Court’s dismissal of Mathias Walukagga’s petition challenging his exclusion from the 2026 parliamentary race must be assessed. Justice Simon Peter Kinobe’s ruling was procedurally sound, swift and firmly anchored in the letter of the law. The judge confined himself to the narrow questions placed before the court and concluded that the Electoral Commission acted lawfully in rejecting Walukagga’s nomination on the basis of expired academic qualifications.

From a strictly legal standpoint, the reasoning is difficult to fault. The law is explicit: a Mature Age Entry Examination certificate is valid for two years, with no provision for extension. By the time Walukagga presented himself for nomination, that certificate had lapsed. The court applied the law as written, and in doing so, reaffirmed an important principle of judicial restraint—courts do not rewrite statutes under the guise of interpretation.

Yet judicial correctness does not automatically equate to jurisprudential completeness. While the court answered the procedural question decisively, it left a more substantive issue unresolved—one that goes beyond Walukagga as an individual and speaks to the coherence of Uganda’s electoral and educational frameworks.

At the heart of the matter lies the concept of equivalence. The Electoral Commission’s case rested partly on the argument that Walukagga’s Mature Age certificate had expired, and that any equivalence derived from it therefore collapsed. But this reasoning exposes a deeper ambiguity: what does equivalence to A-Level education truly mean in law and in practice?

Advanced Level education is ordinarily understood as two years of structured study, assessment and progression. A Mature Age Entry Examination, by contrast, is an aptitude test sat over a matter of hours. While the law recognises this pathway as an alternative route into higher education, it remains unclear whether such an assessment can reasonably be equated—substantively, not just procedurally—to the rigour and duration of A-Level study.

Justice Kinobe chose not to interrogate this broader question, and he was arguably entitled not to. Courts are not policy forums, and judges must be cautious not to stray beyond the issues framed before them. However, the fact that this question remains unanswered points to a gap that the legislature and regulatory bodies have yet to address with sufficient clarity.

Notably, the court declined to award costs, recognising that the petition raised issues of public importance not previously tested in Ugandan jurisprudence. That acknowledgment matters. It signals that while the law was correctly applied, the policy architecture surrounding candidate qualifications remains unsettled.

Walukagga retains the option of pursuing appellate review, where differing judicial perspectives may further enrich the debate. But beyond the fate of one candidate, the case should prompt a wider national conversation. If Uganda is committed to broadening political participation while maintaining credible standards for leadership, then the rules governing academic qualifications must be coherent, defensible and clearly aligned with their stated purpose.

Justice is not only about strict adherence to process; it is also about ensuring that the rules themselves make sense. In the Walukagga case, the courts have spoken clearly on the former. It is now up to lawmakers and regulators to confront the latter.

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Jimmy Cliff spent his life trying to explain something simple yet profound: that reggae was never just a rhythm, never just a genre, never merely a sound from a small Caribbean island that somehow conquered the world. To him, reggae was born out of necessity — a declaration of existence from people who had long been denied dignity.

“We formed this music out of the need for recognition, for identity, respect, love and justice,” he once said. Those were not abstract words for Cliff but the coordinates of his own life.

Born James Chambers into deep rural poverty in St. James, Jamaica, he grew up hearing the echoes of dispossession — the kind that leaves marks on a nation, not just an individual. Yet from those beginnings, he stitched together a voice and a worldview that would become one of the great moral and artistic forces of the 20th century.

When Cliff entered the industry, Jamaica had no reggae, no template, no global stage waiting. There was ska — fast, bright, restless — mirroring the energy of a young nation finding its post-independence footing. There was rocksteady — slower, steadier — reflecting a people exhaling after the storm of political and social upheaval.

Then came reggae: a new beat carrying an old longing, a cultural and philosophical ascent rooted deeply in Rastafari’s insistence on African consciousness, black pride, and human upliftment. Cliff didn’t just witness that evolution; he catalysed it. His early work gave reggae its emotional vocabulary, equal parts defiance and tenderness.

For Cliff, music was never entertainment alone. “The essence of my music is struggle. What gives it the icing is the hope of love,” he said. Few artists embodied this duality as naturally.

From Wonderful World, Beautiful People, which made global audiences dance even as it pleaded for decency, to Vietnam, which Bob Dylan hailed as the greatest protest song he’d ever heard, Cliff carried the conscience of a generation.

He sang about war, injustice, poverty, longing and resilience — but always with that unmistakable melodic warmth that made the listener believe that hope was still rational.

His starring role in The Harder They Come was more than a film credit. It was a cultural breakthrough, a cinematic and musical detonator that blasted Jamaican sound and struggle into international consciousness. Cliff played Ivan Martin, a young dreamer battered by a corrupt system — a mirror of countless real lives.

The film told the world where reggae came from. Cliff, through music like Many Rivers to Cross, told them why it mattered.

It is no exaggeration to say that without that film — without Cliff — reggae might have remained a regional sound instead of a global language.

Cliff’s accolades — the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Order of Merit, Grammy wins — were meaningful, but they were never the core of his legacy. That belonged to the countless people who found themselves reflected in his work.

“When we saw Jimmy Cliff, we saw ourselves,” Wyclef Jean once said. That sentiment spans continents. For decades, Cliff was a soundtrack for the marginalised, the ambitious, the spiritually searching, the people climbing their own mountains one slow, determined step at a time.

To hear You Can Get It If You Really Want was to be reminded that dreams are not an extravagance — they are a right.

With his passing at 81, the world loses more than a legendary artist. It loses a moral voice — one that sang about resistance without hatred, about identity without exclusion, about justice without despair.

We lose an elder who remembered the birth of reggae not as a commercial milestone but as a cultural awakening.
We lose a philosopher disguised as a singer.
We lose a carrier of memory — of a time when music itself was a rebellion.

Most of all, we lose the rare kind of artist who understood that every lyric could be a lifeline, every melody a shelter, every beat a declaration that a people long overlooked were, in fact, profoundly alive.

His death — from a seizure followed by pneumonia — closes a remarkable earthly journey. But it does not silence him. His songs remain global prayers for justice, identity, consciousness and dignity. They remain the sound of people rising.

Jimmy Cliff once said that Rastafari appealed to the world’s consciousness because it lifted humanity. In truth, his music did the same.

He leaves behind a world that still aches for the very recognition, respect and justice he sang into being.
And he leaves us with a simple instruction, whispered through decades:

Sing. Resist. Rise. Hope.

Jimmy Cliff has crossed over. But the movement he helped build — and the humanity he insisted we recognise — endures, steady as a reggae beat.

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Can a culture of rule of law truly take root in a society where the powerful routinely operate above it? That question remains unresolved in Uganda, six decades after the 1966 constitutional rupture, when military force displaced constitutional order and set a precedent that has lingered ever since. That moment reshaped the relationship between state power, public authority and the everyday citizen, embedding a tension that continues to define Uganda’s political culture.

Today, impunity is no longer the exclusive domain of the armed forces—though they remain among its most visible practitioners. It has widened into a multi-layered ecosystem of privilege inhabited by soldiers, politicians, wealthy businessmen and even dubious foreign actors who navigate public spaces with casual disregard for legal norms. Kampala’s daily traffic theatre tells the story plainly: heavily tinted vehicles slicing against traffic, SUVs with no number plates barreling down pedestrian walkways, and armed escorts converting public roads into personal thoroughfares. These are not isolated displays of misconduct; they are public performances of untouchability.

Over time, such transgressions have hardened into a broader culture of entitlement. When land is grabbed, when vulnerable communities are evicted without due process, when repression becomes routine and increasingly normalised, these acts draw legitimacy from the everyday demonstrations of impunity. The underlying message is unmistakable: laws restrain the powerless, not the powerful.

This environment breeds a caste-like hierarchy in which privilege is not merely possessed but flaunted. Impunity becomes aspirational. Those lacking formal authority seek proximity to it—hoping for immunity from the constraints that govern ordinary life. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: impunity displayed at the top cascades downward, encouraging more people to bend rules, cut corners, undermine institutions and pursue advantage outside lawful channels.

The cumulative effect is deeply corrosive. A nation preoccupied with the theatrics of power inevitably loses sight of the basic needs that shape everyday life. When elites are insulated from broken roads, dysfunctional health systems, failing schools and decaying infrastructure—because they can circumvent public services or purchase private alternatives—national priorities become distorted. The lived reality of the majority becomes invisible to those empowered to address it.

Meanwhile, policy reforms and governance interventions routinely stall because they threaten entrenched interests that benefit from the existing order. Oversight institutions remain constrained, underfunded or politically subordinated. Citizens, observing a system that shields its most powerful actors from scrutiny, turn to informal networks, patronage or quiet resignation.

Ultimately, the rule of law is not simply a legal doctrine but a shared cultural expectation that no individual stands above the norms that safeguard society. It demands fairness, restraint and a willingness—especially by those in authority—to submit to the same standards they prescribe for others. Uganda’s challenge, sixty years after the foundational breach of 1966, is not only institutional but cultural: rebuilding a social contract grounded in equality, accountability and mutual respect.

Unless that culture is deliberately reclaimed and defended, the promise of rule of law will remain elusive—forever overshadowed by the daily spectacle of privilege and impunity.

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This week, Africa’s leaders gathered in Yokohama, Japan, for TICAD 9, the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. Japan, like others before it, is extending a hand to help Africa unlock its potential. The conference showcased ambitious initiatives, including the landmark Safaricom Ethiopia project backed by Japanese capital and guarantees. The event brimmed with optimism about unlocking private investment and building strategic partnerships for infrastructure, energy, and digital transformation.

But beneath the pledges and panels lies the persistent paradox: Why, after decades of similar interventions, is Africa still lagging behind? Why does the continent remain a patient perpetually in recovery, unable to stand on its own feet?

Part of the answer lies in the structure of these engagements. While pitched as development partnerships, many conferences also serve as gateways for external powers to secure access to Africa’s vast resources and strategic markets. For Japan, TICAD is both an instrument of diplomacy and a hedge against Chinese dominance in Africa. For Africa, it becomes yet another forum where leaders shop for aid and projects, while sidestepping the deeper structural reforms needed at home.

Yet Africa’s biggest problem is not a lack of partners. It is the failure to govern itself effectively. Weak institutions, poor governance, corruption, and regulatory uncertainty keep investors wary and citizens disillusioned. Youth—who make up the bulk of the population—see leaders who talk about the future in foreign capitals while failing to build the basics at home.

The African patient, in truth, has never been short of medicine. What it lacks is the discipline to take the treatment consistently. Cleaning up governance, creating a predictable business environment, liberalising economies, and investing heavily in human development are tasks that cannot be outsourced. They require courage, vision and accountability from African leaders themselves.

This is why the continent’s youth and thinkers must interrogate both the motives of foreign partners and the decisions of their own leaders. Development is not imported; it is built. Japan’s interest in Africa is welcome. So was China’s, America’s, and Europe’s. But without internal reforms, even the most generous partners will not cure Africa’s chronic malaise.

At TICAD 9, the theme was “co-creating innovative solutions with Africa.” That “with” is the key. No external partner can substitute for Africa’s own agency. Conferences may open doors, but only Africans can walk through them with conviction.

Until the continent takes full responsibility for its own recovery, Africa will remain the paradoxical patient—surrounded by doctors, prescriptions and medicine, but never quite healed.

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While cloaked in the language of “rebalancing the global economy,” Trump’s latest tariff barrage is nothing short of economic strong-arming. Uganda joins a long list of countries—many of them African—targeted not for any demonstrable wrongdoing, but for the simple reason that they do not “align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national-security matters.” In plain terms: you are either in America’s corner politically, or you will be punished economically.

This is not trade policy; it is coercion.

Uganda’s inclusion in the punitive tariff sweep, despite having no ongoing trade dispute with Washington, exposes the fragility and one-sidedness of African-American economic ties. At the same time, it validates a growing consensus among African policymakers: the continent cannot—and must not—continue to tether its economic destiny to the shifting whims of U.S. domestic politics.

It is time for strategic disengagement.

This does not mean isolationism or severing ties. It means recalibrating the terms of engagement. It means prioritising self-interest over sentimentality and investing in regional economic resilience over Atlantic dependency. Africa, and Uganda in particular, must seize this moment to turn inward—to AfCFTA, to COMESA, to East African regional supply chains—and build trade infrastructure that cannot be so easily weaponised by foreign powers.

Trump’s move jeopardizes sectors vital to Uganda’s export economy—coffee, textiles, floriculture, and processed foods—placing the ongoing pivot to value-addition, jobs and incomes at risk. It also undermines decades of goodwill nurtured under frameworks like AGOA, which are now exposed as privileges granted, not rights upheld.

The logic of dependency has failed us. American market access, while valuable, is no longer reliable. The volatility of U.S. trade policy—marked by executive overreach, disregard for multilateralism, and ideological realignment—makes it a poor foundation for African economic planning.

Uganda should respond not with indignation, but with strategy. This is the time to aggressively court alternative export markets in Asia, Latin America, and within Africa itself. It is time to leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as more than a slogan—to operationalise it, build cross-border infrastructure, harmonize standards, and eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers within the continent.

President Museveni was blunt but right when he said, “Don’t involve me in issues to do with Trump… You have Africa—work on Africa.” That is not just a defiant quip; it is a doctrine waiting to be institutionalised.

The new tariffs are a blow—but they are also an opportunity. Uganda can either plead for access to a market that weaponises trade for political gain—or it can take the first real steps toward building a Pan-African economic future.

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At the heart of this case lies a UGX150 billion commercial loan extended by Equity Bank to businessman Kennedy Losuk Lokule for the development of the Emin Pasha Lake View Residence, a luxury property in Muyenga. The borrower, through his affiliate Prism Construction, also undertook work on a government project—constructing a technical college in Bushenyi under the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES). The state’s failure to honour its obligation to Prism, amounting to UGX8.4 billion, has now snowballed into a liquidity crisis that threatens not only Lokule’s property empire but also the financial institution that backed his vision.

That a commercial bank has moved to foreclose on the collateral behind a non-performing loan is unremarkable—it is the standard legal recourse under such circumstances. What is deeply troubling is the government’s reaction: applying political pressure on the lender to defer enforcement of the court-approved foreclosure, while simultaneously failing to settle a long-overdue contractual obligation.

President Museveni’s directive to the Attorney General to halt the auctioning of Lokule’s Emin Pasha Hotel, combined with political overtures from Finance Minister Matia Kasaija and presidential advisor Odrek Rwabwogo, reflects an overreach that risks distorting the fundamentals of Uganda’s credit environment. In principle, political authority has every right to intervene when public interest is at stake. But in this case, the matter is neither nationalised nor public—it concerns a commercial loan, lawfully executed and legally enforced, with implications that are now being offloaded onto a private lender.

It must be clearly stated that the Ugandan government’s failure to settle its contractual obligations to Prism Construction should not become Equity Bank’s problem.

What’s unfolding is symptomatic of a deeper rot. Ministries and agencies continue to sit on trillions of shillings in arrears owed to service providers. Rather than systematically settling these verified claims, Treasury officials have relied on reactive, ad hoc bailouts disguised as support for distressed businesses. This practice creates fertile ground for rent-seeking. Genuine claimants languish while politically connected actors position themselves for special treatment.

The message being sent—wittingly or not—is that businesses that leverage political connections are more likely to recover their dues than those that pursue due process through the courts or Treasury channels. It undermines faith in Uganda’s procurement system, distorts incentives, and exposes the banking sector to systemic risk.

Allowing political authority to override judicial processes and contractual obligations erodes the rule of law and corrodes credit discipline. It introduces sovereign risk into what should otherwise be straightforward commercial engagements, and the long-term consequences for Uganda’s credit rating, investor confidence, and financial intermediation are grave.

Already, banks operating in Uganda factor in high risk premiums due to legal unpredictability and bureaucratic inefficiencies. When even court-sanctioned foreclosures can be stayed by political fiat, lenders will logically adjust—either by tightening credit to the real economy or raising lending rates to price in regulatory uncertainty. Either scenario stifles investment and punishes legitimate borrowers.

Moreover, while the government may claim to be acting to preserve economic assets or protect local investors, it fails to grasp the ripple effect on banking operations. The funds lent to Prism and Lokule are not abstract—they are depositors’ savings. By shielding borrowers from the consequences of default, the government is effectively asking banks to subsidise its failures at the cost of savers, shareholders, and future borrowers.

If the government believes Prism Construction was wronged, the solution is not to pressure Equity Bank into suspension of its rights. The urgent and appropriate course of action is to settle the MoES arrears, which have been outstanding since 2021. If the state had paid on time, this loan would not have soured.

Uganda must learn that respecting private contracts, enforcing payment discipline, and managing public obligations transparently are foundational to sustainable economic growth. These cannot be selectively suspended when politically inconvenient.

In the long run, the economy will only benefit if government honours its debts, restrains from meddling in judicial processes, and allows commercial institutions to operate based on the law—not patronage. Anything less turns development finance into a rigged game, punishing prudence while rewarding political proximity.

To restore confidence and credibility, the Ministry of Finance must expedite the payment owed to Prism Construction. Simultaneously, it should publish a clear framework for verifying and settling all government arrears, with timelines and transparency.

Let businesses rise or fall on their own merit—not the whims of political expedience.

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