Overview of Museveni's 2011 manifesto and what has been achieved

By Moses Mulondo

With the nomination exercise already done, battle lines have already been drawn for the 2016 presidential election which will greatly be determined by what each candidate promises to offer.

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) presidential flag bearer President Yoweri Museveni is launching his manifesto today at Imperial Royale hotel.

In the 2016 presidential race, President Museveni unveiled a 13-point program of campaign pledges.

Whereas Uganda currently has 850 megawatts of electricity according to figures from the energy ministry, President Museveni pledged that at the end of his current ending term Uganda would have 3800 megawatts of electricity.

Other promises included roads and railway line construction, promoting prosperity for all through agriculture, processing of all agricultural products that are not eaten fresh, industrialization, and expansion of education and health infrastructure.

Museveni promised that by 2015 Uganda would have grown to a lower middle income status with a per capita income of $1500.

Although Economic Policy Research Center puts Uganda’s current per capita income to $696, President Yoweri Museveni put it at $788 during the budget day in June this year.

Information from the UN data website indicates that at the time President Museveni made the pledges in the November of 2010, Uganda’s per capita income was $ 636.

In other pledges, Museveni promised his government would put a lot of emphasis on expansion of piped water, irrigation, development of the country’s newly confirmed oil resources, solve unemployment, improving the living wage of all public servants and work for the political federation of East Africa.

Irrigation, improving the living wage of all public servants, processing of agricultural produce, prosperity for all, unemployment, and inadequate infrastructure in the education and health sectors are some of the issues Museveni promised to address but which are yet to be solved to the satisfaction of Ugandans.

Even in the New Vision survey which was done recently, these were some of the major issues of concern to Ugandans which they want government to address. 

Industrialization is a promise which President Museveni has had in all his three previous manifestos of 2001, 2006, and 2011.

In his current manifesto, the President carries forward his 2001 and 2006 promise of promoting industrialization but significant progress in the sector is yet to be registered partly because it is not allocated adequate funding in the national budget.

Documents from Uganda National Planning Authority indicate the NRM government has been able to reduce poverty levels from 24.5 percent in 2010 to 19.7 percent in 2015 and increased per capita income from $ 665 to $788 in the same period.

President Museveni recently apologized to the people of Nakiwogo at Entebbe that he had not fulfilled his pledge to fight poverty because he had prioritized infrastructure development. The President promised that in his next term he will allocate sufficient funds to the agriculture sector to uplift the social-economic life of Ugandans

The writer is a journalist