By Willis Bashaasha

On May 12, 2021, National Resistance Movement (NRM) presidential candidate, Yoweri Museveni was sworn in to lead Uganda following his triumph in the presidential election of January 14, 2021.

May 12, 2022, makes it a year since the NRM party assumed government with yet another mandate to lead for the next five years. This victory in which President Museveni resoundingly defeated 10 rivals in the last elections has a bearing not only on the trust in his ability, but also in the quality of the promises/pledges by the party to the citizens of Uganda. These pledges are contained in the party’s 2021-2026 election manifesto, which is essentially the social contract signed between the NRM and Ugandans for the next five years.

The manifesto is aligned to NDP III. This avoids implementation overlaps. The NDP III also dictates that within the next five-year planning period, the whole planning and budgeting framework is based on a programmatic approach. That means the whole planning and budgeting architecture of the Government has to comply with this direction.

Secondly, the political term is premised on the calendar year (January to December) yet the planning and budgeting is based on the financial year (July to June) calendar. This brings the dilemma of losing a full calendar year in terms of implementation caused by the planning and budgeting cycle mismatch. Effectively, serious implementation business will begin with Financial Year 2022/2023.

 Based on the above context, much of what has been done in the first year of the term is about the alignment of these commitments into the planning and budgeting frameworks and little room for implementation. However, we continue to witness conclusions of the unfinished business within the last term caused by projects whose completion timelines go beyond the political terms.  As a scorecard for the first year, implementation is not more than 10% but planning and budgeting which supports readiness is over 99%.

The NRM manifesto 2021-2026 is structured along five thematic areas which were carefully selected to result into an all-round socio-economic transformation for both country and citizens. These areas include: creating jobs and wealth, delivering education, health and water, ensuring justice and equity, protecting life and property and achieving economic and political integration.

Milestones reached so far include:   

Creation of jobs and wealth

Under this thematic area, NRM promised to translate the economic growth and development so far registered into more jobs and wealth for all Ugandans. This, the manifesto promises, will be done using four critical sectors, including commercial agriculture, industrialisation, services and ICT.

In the past one year, basic results have been achieved in this thematic area, mainly based on the NRM government’s laying of the necessary infrastructure and governance structures to support industrialisation and The Parish Development Model (PDM).

The PDM which is our general purpose driver for transformation in this manifesto. It was launched on February 26, 2022, in Kibuku. This is meant to spur commercial agriculture, highlighting NRM’s commitment to creating wealth for farmers. The programme which is multi-sectoral in terms of implementation is anchored on seven pillars. It will help citizens at that administrative setup to get access to modern farming practices, including funding, extension services, fertilizers, constant water supply chains and knowledge centres (libraries), where farmers will read and equip themselves with information on how to manage the agricultural value chain for maximum yields and revenue. Together with these, farmers will be encouraged and funded to start and sustain cottage industries based on agricultural outputs to earn more money through value addition and related practices. The projection is that the PDM will move the 39% Ugandans still living under the subsistence economy to the money economy. The key pillar here is mindset change.

Industrialisation is another sub-programme under this pillar, intended to promote Uganda’s industrial growth as a deliberate shift from dependence on agriculture as the backbone of the economy. The 2021-2026 manifesto clearly demonstrates this shift by presenting a clear industrialisation strategy based on the establishment of industrial parks and the development of the oil industry as key drivers of Uganda’s new industrialisation policy. This, the manifesto promised, would be supported by the development of supportive infrastructure like roads, reduction of electricity costs and availability of cheap credit through capitalising on the Uganda Development Bank; as a way to reduce the cost of doing business.

Cabinet has already approved a proposal to establish 25 industrial parks in all sub-regions in the country. According to Uganda Investment Authority (UIA), the target is to have a total of 27 parks across the four regions of the country, which will, directly and indirectly, employ 690,000 Ugandans hence greatly solving the unemployment problem. The new parks will be in Arua and Adjuman in West Nile, Gulu in Acholi, Lira in Lango,  Moroto in Karamoja, Soroti in Teso,  Mbale in Bugisu,  Jinja in Busoga; Kabale in Kigezi and Rukungiri in Western;  Mbarara in  Ankole, and Hoima in Bunyoro. 

These will complement those already established in Mukono, Namanve, Kapeeka in Nakaseke.

President Yoweri Museveni in May 2021 commissioned six investment projects (or companies) in Kampala Industrial and Business Park, Namanve. These included: Mada Holdings Limited, Crown Packaging Industries, Picfare Industries Limited and Tian Tang Group with subsidiaries Tiang Tang Mixing Plant, Yaya Children’s Products Manufacturing Company Limited and Mi-Tech Uganda Limited. These are all valued at over $30m (about sh110b, and directly employ over 600 Ugandans.

Added to these are two new sugar factories launched at Kinyara and Kiryandongo to produce refined (industrial) sugar and brown sugar. Both new factories created 8,150 jobs.

Based on Uganda’s participation in the Dubai Expo, several investors were sourced and they are going to invest billions into the country in the areas of manufacturing, tourism and agriculture, among others. These investors include UAE-based Company, Connect, which will invest $500m in a variety of projects including a renewable energy initiative that will generate electricity and provide smart energy storage; Wondfo Biotech, a Guangzhou-based company which pledged to invest $50m in a pharmaceutical plant in Uganda to manufacture diagnostics; and Modern Group which plans to invest $50m in manufacturing, agriculture and mining. 

The manifesto also promises increased power generation and distribution, to reduce the cost of electricity (make it more reliable and affordable), particularly for factories. Indeed, in this regard, on July 2021, the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) approved new Electricity End-User Tariffs which indicated a remarkable reduction across consumer categories.

While domestic users were also catered for, there was a huge reduction for commercial consumers who received a reduction of sh616.6 from sh639.8 per unit. Medium Industrial Consumers were reduced to sh526.9 from sh556.0 a unit while large industrial consumers were to pay sh355.0 from sh361.0, and extra-large consumers, sh300.2 from sh301.7. The ultimate target is to have the tariff at $5 cents across the board.

The Oil & Gas Sector comes in as our new area of the economy and the government pledged to continue developing it through mineral-led industrialisation. Oil flow to the surface is targeted by 2025. In the last year, key milestones in this sector include the signing of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) Host Agreement between Uganda and Tanzania as well as the signing of the Final Investment Decision (FID) by the joint venture partners. The conclusion of the EACOP deal with the French energy giant Total paves way for the construction of a 1,440-km crude oil pipeline from Uganda’s Albertine region to the Tanzanian seaport city of Tanga while the FID is confirmation that the oil companies and the government of Uganda are ready to see the production of oil in the Kingfisher and Tilenga projects in the Albertine Graben. The oil industry alone is projected to create over 60,000 jobs for Ugandans.

Together with the two landmark agreements, the President commissioned oil roads in the Bunyoro sub-region, which are now complete and are supposed to support the oil production and other infrastructural needs within the sub-region.

Delivering education, health and water

The NRM government put emphasis on promoting equity in access to education. The education-for-all policy through the Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) programmes will continue to be improved to ensure that all key commitments in the 2021-2026 manifesto are realised. 

In the past year, the Government has commissioned 69 seed schools as part of the 117 seed secondary schools that are to be constructed in the first phase of the Uganda Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers Programme for Results (UgIFT). These schools are equipped with a multipurpose hall, three units of classroom blocks, an administration block, a fully equipped two-unit science block, a library, an ICT block and a three-unit teachers’ houses, among others. In April 2022, the Government kicked off the process of consulting stakeholders on the harmonisation of charges in UPE schools. Once this exercise is completed, it will inform whether parents with the ability can pay harmonised charges for their children to improve the quality of teaching, while a robust plan for the very poor who cannot pay will also be put in place.

In the health sector, achievements so far include the implementation of the enhancement of health workers’ salaries beginning with the next financial year. Installation of an oxygen plant for Kayunga Regional Referral Hospital was concluded. The plant has enough capacity to fill up to 140 oxygen cylinders in 24 hours and is deemed enough to sustain not only the hospital itself, but also facilities in Buikwe, Jinja, Kamuli, Luwero, Mukono, and Nakasongola.

The President also commissioned the ultra-modern Children's Surgical Hospital in Entebbe. The sh117b facility will help offer complicated surgical procedures to Uganda’s children.

On delivering water services, the Katosi-Kampala Water project which is 99% complete, is going to be a game-changer in this sector. Other investments to support the provision of clean and safe water, water for production across the country are under study and design pending implementation in the next financial year.

Ensuring justice and equity

The manifesto pledges to strengthen the institutions mandated to deliver justice to Ugandans like the Uganda Police Force and the courts of law.

This year, the Government appointed 48 judicial officers as magistrates to bring the total number of magistrates Grade 0ne to 212, and the overall number of judicial officers to 464. This was done to reduce case backlog and quicken the dispensation of justice and equity.

Also, on October 4, 2021, the president appointed the fully constituted Uganda Human Rights Commission to help uphold the respect for human rights in the country.

Achieving economic and political integration

The Government continues to be an active participant in this cause and joined her sister countries to welcome the DRC as the seventh member of the regional EAC bloc. This will widen the market for Ugandan products, promote prosperity and also strengthen collective security.

The writer is the director, Manifesto Implementation Unit