Musaazi NAMITI | The Founder’s Mind Space
Uganda is a poor country by any standard. Like many governments, it relies on taxpayers to finance social service delivery, to pay salaries of civil servants and build infrastructure.
But the money from taxes is not enough. The government borrows from the public using various means: treasury bills and bonds, soft or concessional loans, etc. Still, it cannot raise enough, and sometimes it turns to commercial banks and other lenders in and outside Uganda.
As a result, the country is highly indebted. The best evidence is in the shs84.39tn budget that was read in June. It shows that shs32.1tn is for debt servicing. That is the single biggest item on which government revenue will be spent in 2026–2027.
If that is surprising, this is shockingly baffling: While the government has to borrow because it does not collect enough money, the little it collects is routinely stolen, and the culprits are never punished in any meaningful way.
The revenue cow is the taxpayer milked by the government. The government gets whatever it can and then borrows. Borrowing means debt and, by extension, debt servicing. Then corruption enters the picture, and the taxpayer becomes the saviour of the government—or the shock absorber of the fiscal bumps caused by corruption.
Of course, Uganda would still borrow money even if there was zero corruption. But when public funds are lost through corruption, the government still goes back to the taxpayer to pay more. In fact, the taxpayer repays the government debts—with interest.
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For decades we have read stories of corruption and seen how poorly Uganda is rated on the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. We knew the corrupt were not getting punishments they deserve and that corruption was not going anywhere. A sense of indifference had set in.
But since President Museveni unveiled his new cabinet in May, we are getting treated to corruption news that leads many to think we had not seen anything.
Local Government Minister Balaam Burugahara and his deputy, Justine Nameere, have been traversing the country talking to local leaders and the people they lead. What they have discovered suggests corruption is deeply ingrained in our society. It is how many people with access to public funds finance their lifestyles.
The two ministers have been shown pit latrines, for example, that cost tens of millions of shillings and small structures that cost hundreds of millions of shillings. The sheer scale is something else. If the new ministers were not given this portfolio, Ugandans would probably never know how corruption has permeated the Ugandan society.
In the Ministry of Works and Transport, says Fred Byamukama, who heads it, corruption has either prevented or delayed major road projects. He has appeared before cameras to tell Ugandans that billions of shillings had been misappropriated.
Engineers in the ministry buy land where roads will be constructed and then ask the government to pay through the nose to compensate them.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS OUR READERS OFTEN ASK
The culprits, Mr Byamukama revealed, are even threatening to retaliate if punitive measures are taken against them. That tells you how powerful they have become.
The question many are now asking has been asked before many times. Do the anti-corruption agencies the government has put in place work? The Inspectorate of Government is one of them and has regional officers across the country. Yet in nearly all regions it is operating from, the ministers have unearthed shocking corruption.
People are blaming lack of political will for the failure to punish the corrupt, and they are right to a large extent. If those embezzling public funds knew there is a stiff price to pay, they would be hesitant to steal.
As things stand, taxpayers will continue to absorb the shock because they are helpless. If they had a way of saying no, that would force the government to rein in corruption or lose its biggest source of revenue.
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🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Weekend Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.