The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Why the new electricity distributor is under fire from both the ministry and the regulator
THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | Daily Monitor reported on Friday, December 5, 2025, that the Prime Minister, Robinah Nabanja, had stopped the minister of energy from firing the top management of Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Limited (UEDCL). This is the government-owned entity that took over the management of the national electricity distribution network from a private company called Umeme beginning April 1, 2025, exactly eight months ago. I predicted at the time of that takeover that UEDCL would soon become a battleground of powerful forces within Uganda’s power structure, who have a vested interest in its highly lucrative procurement deals.
My predictions were during a debate on UBC television where the CEO of UEDCL, Paul Mwesigwa, featured as a panellist. I warned him that he would find himself embroiled in battles beyond his comprehension. These battles could even end him in jail regardless of how honest and/or competently he does his work. I have been on the Ugandan scene long enough to have an idea of how politics works in our country. Indeed, it is the reason that has made me sceptical of state interventions in the economy. Although I am theoretically convinced, based on historic and contemporary evidence, that an activist state is vital for economic transformation, I am acutely aware that the state in Uganda cannot play such a role. Therefore, in our very specific political context, I am a free market fundamentalist.
Even before they took over from Umeme, UEDCL asked for $85m from the ministry of energy and regulator, the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) to invest in the network. UEDCL wanted this $85m to be offset from the government payout to Umeme on her exit. They wrote to the Solicitor General for a legal opinion on this. They argued that Umeme had let the network deteriorate in the last five years of the concession and therefore should be penalised as per the concession agreement. Yet, Umeme had been deliberately blocked by the regulator from investing more in the network. This was aimed at reducing government payout at their exit.
Meanwhile, by December 31st, 2024, UEDCL had cash in hand worth $20m it had earned through the tariff. They asked for permission from ERA to use this money to procure and stock equipment so that by April 1st, when they take over, they have enough materials to fix the network. This was July 2024. ERA said they should put the money in a fixed deposit account. ERA knew the network was deteriorating rapidly because of very limited investment in it by Umeme because it had not been approving the distributor’s investment plans. The stage had been set for blackouts.
Interestingly, in June 2024, while ERA was refusing Umeme to invest in the network, it did a study of UEDCL and came out with 25 issues on why the government should not entrust them with the takeover of the network. This means they have been supervising and regulating a company they had no confidence in. However, this being Uganda, there could have been another motive: someone perhaps wanted to bring their private company to take over from Umeme, therefore the better to mudsling UEDCL.
Be that as it may, UEDCL had revenues of Shs 200 billion, and Umeme, Shs 2.3 trillion. By taking over from Umeme, UEDCL, a state-owned company, had overnight increased her revenues ten times to Shs 2.5 trillion. This would bring huge and lucrative procurement tenders under government control and therefore spark off intense power struggles. Anyone with even basic knowledge of Uganda would have easily predicted this.
Thus, after taking over the network, UEDCL did scoping of the network and specifications for items, auditing of transformers, etc. It took four months (the first 120 days) to critically analyse the behaviour of the network for both the hard and soft parameters. They found many critical equipment failures: 12% of transformers, equivalent to 3,500 of them, needed upgrades. Then 26.7% of low-voltage poles (71,483) and 12.5% (27,138) of medium-voltage poles were due for replacement. Finally, 11 out of their 60 substations were overloaded and needed upgrade.
Any Ugandan reading this article is a victim of constant electricity blackouts in the country. People blame UEDCL. Yet it inherited a bad network that has been allowed to atrophy by the regulator. Why didn’t UEDCL procure equipment early so that immediately after they take over from Umeme, they begin rehabilitation? Uganda’s procurement rules are self-defeating, archaic and arcane. According to the Public Finance Management Act, an accounting officer can only commit a government institution when they have cash. Therefore, UEDCL had to wait until they took over from Umeme in April 2025 to begin procurement of equipment to fix the network.
Once in charge, and after auditing the network, UEDCL set up Shs 300 billion for investment in the network. Procurement is ongoing for 4,100 transformers (Shs 66 billion), 350,000 meters (Shs 70 billion), etc. For the myriad wheeler-dealers that dominate politics in Uganda, this is an opportunity to flex political muscle, get lucrative contracts and sing kumbaya. I am inclined to believe that the fight between the Ministry of Energy and UEDCL is over who controls and therefore awards these tenders.
Our country has a program called ‘Buy Uganda, Build Uganda’. Under PPDA rules, tenders ring-fenced for local companies need participating local firms to have established a factory for ten years. It doesn’t take rocket science to see that middlemen for foreign firms had used the PPDA law to protect their interests. UEDCL went to PPDA and asked for a waiver on this provision of the law to allow local firms without ten years to participate. They used BUBU to buy local transformers and local meters. All the conductors, except for high voltage, were locally procured. This took money from middlemen representing foreign firms who now want the heads of executives at UEDCL.
Earlier this year, the minister of energy, Ruth Nankabirwa, changed the articles of association and memorandum of incorporation of UEDCL to say she can terminate any member of the board or the entire board at any time at her sole discretion. This makes the board subservient to her “discretion”. Why would Nankabirwa assume such powers over the board? Then Daily Monitor claimed the ministry has a private company it is trying to smuggle through the backdoor to take over UEDCL. The ministry denied this. Whatever the truths, the exit of Umeme has opened doors for political buccaneering in Uganda’s previously insulated electricity distribution sector. It also portends worse days to come.
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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug
Andrew: You have consistently raised valid concerns, but what still remains missing in your articles even now is the core truth behind the Umeme and UEDCL saga: the main beneficiary of this entire operation was Museveni and his family. Everything else ERA’s sabotage, UEDCL’s starved funding, procurement wars, ministerial power grabs is secondary. The real agenda was simple as I noted here before: push out a effective UMEME, let UEDCL fail under deliberate pressure, then quietly take over the electricity distribution business through a Museveni linked offshore “investor”. Your analysis captures the symptoms corruption, turf wars, rent seeking but avoids naming the root cause: presidential family capture of the electricity sector and everything in Uganda. This was never about “state intervention” versus the free market; it was about engineering a crisis so that Museveni’s family could seize one of Uganda’s most lucrative national assets. Until your articles acknowledge this, your analysis behind Umeme’s exit remains incomplete.
Andrew, below is totally unrelated to your article, but I thought you would like to read it:
Trump’s Empire of Hubris and Thuggery
Jeffrey D. Sachs | December 11, 2025 | Common Dreams
The president’s latest National Security Strategy memorandum treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of US sovereignty. It is an ominous document that will—if allowed to stand—come back to haunt the United States.
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) recently released by President Donald Trump presents itself as a blueprint for renewed American strength. It is dangerously misconceived in four ways.
First, the NSS is anchored in grandiosity: the belief that the United States enjoys unmatched supremacy in every key dimension of power. Second, it is based on a starkly Machiavellian view of the world, treating other nations as instruments to be manipulated for American advantage. Third, it rests on a naïve nationalism that dismisses international law and institutions as encumbrances on US sovereignty rather than as frameworks that enhance US and global security together.
Fourth, it signals a thuggery in Trump’s use of the CIA and military. Within days of the NSS’s publication, the US brazenly seized a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil on the high seas—on the flimsy grounds that the vessel had previously violated US sanctions against Iran.
The seizure was not a defensive measure to avert an imminent threat. Nor is it remotely legal to seize vessels on the high seas because of unilateral US sanctions. Only the UN Security Council has such authority. Instead, the seizure is an illegal act designed to force regime change in Venezuela. It follows Trump’s declaration that he has directed the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela to destabilize the regime.
American security will not be strengthened by acting like a bully. It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great power that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards international rules ultimately isolates itself.
The NSS, in other words, is not just an exercise in hubris on paper. It is rapidly being translated into brazen practice.
A Glimmer of Realism, Then a Lurch into Hubris
To be fair, the NSS contains moments of long-overdue realism. It implicitly concedes that the United States cannot and should not attempt to dominate the entire world, and it correctly recognizes that some allies have dragged Washington into costly wars of choice that were not in America’s true interests. It also steps back—at least rhetorically—from an all-consuming great-power crusade. The strategy rejects the fantasy that the United States can or should impose a universal political order.
But the modesty is short-lived. The NSS quickly reasserts that America possesses the “world’s single largest and most innovative economy,” “the world’s leading financial system,” and “the world’s most advanced and most profitable technology sector,” all backed by “the world’s most powerful and capable military.” These claims serve not simply as patriotic affirmations, but as a justification for using American dominance to impose terms on others. Smaller countries, it seems, will bear the brunt of this hubris, since the US cannot defeat the other great powers, not least because they are nuclear-armed.
Naked Machiavellianism in Doctrine
The NSS’s grandiosity is welded to a naked Machiavellianism. The question it asks is not how the United States and other countries can cooperate for mutual benefit, but how American leverage—over markets, finance, technology, and security—can be applied to extract maximal concessions from other countries.
This is most pronounced in the NSS discussion of the Western Hemisphere section, which declares a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The United States, the NSS declares, will ensure that Latin America “remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets,” and alliances and aid will be conditioned on “winding down adversarial outside influence.” That “influence” clearly refers to Chinese investment, infrastructure, and lending.
The NSS is explicit: US agreements with countries “that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage” must result in sole-source contracts for American firms. US policy should “make every effort to push out foreign companies” that build infrastructure in the region, and the US should reshape multilateral development institutions, such as the World Bank, so that they “serve American interests.”
Latin American governments, many of whom trade extensively with both the United States and China, are effectively being told: you must deal with us, not China—or face the consequences.
Such a strategy is naive. China is the main trading partner for most of the world, including many countries in the Western hemisphere. The US will be unable to compel Latin American nations to expel Chinese firms, but will gravely damage US diplomacy in the attempt.
Thuggery So Brazen Even Close Allies Are Alarmed
The NSS proclaims a doctrine of “sovereignty and respect,” yet its behavior has already reduced that principle to sovereignty for the US, vulnerability for the rest. What makes the emerging doctrine even more extraordinary is that it is now frightening not only small states in Latin America, but even the United States’ closest allies in Europe.
In a remarkable development, Denmark—one of America’s most loyal NATO partners—has openly declared the United States a potential threat to Danish national security. Danish defense planners have stated publicly that Washington under Trump cannot be assumed to respect the Kingdom of Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, and that a coercive US attempt to seize the island is a contingency for which Denmark must now plan.
This is astonishing on several levels. Greenland is already host to the US Thule Air Base and firmly within the Western security system. Denmark is not anti-American, nor is it seeking to provoke Washington. It is simply responding rationally to a world in which the United States has begun to behave unpredictably—even toward its supposed friends.
That Copenhagen feels compelled to contemplate defensive measures against Washington speaks volumes. It suggests that the legitimacy of the US-led security architecture is eroding from within. If even Denmark believes it must hedge against the United States, the problem is no longer one of Latin America’s vulnerability. It is a systemic crisis of confidence among nations that once saw the US as the guarantor of stability but now view it as a possible or likely aggressor.
In short, the NSS seems to channel the energy previously devoted to great-power confrontation into bullying of smaller states. If America seems to be a bit less inclined to launch trillion-dollar wars abroad, it is more inclined to weaponize sanctions, financial coercion, asset seizures, and theft on the high seas.
The Missing Pillar: Law, Reciprocity, and Decency
Perhaps the deepest flaw of the NSS is what it omits: a commitment to international law, reciprocity, and basic decency as foundations of American security.
The NSS regards global governance structures as obstacles to US action. It dismisses climate cooperation as “ideology,” and indeed a “hoax” according to Trump’s recent speech at the UN. It downplays the UN Charter and envisions international institutions primarily as instruments to be bent toward American preferences. Yet it is precisely legal frameworks, treaties, and predictable rules that have historically protected American interests.
The founders of the United States understood this clearly. Following the American War of Independence, thirteen newly sovereign states soon adopted a constitution to pool key powers—over taxation, defense, and diplomacy—not to weaken the states’ sovereignty, but to secure it by creating the US Federal Government. The post-WWII foreign policy of the United States government did the same through the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization, and arms-control agreements.
The Trump NSS now reverses that logic. It treats the freedom to coerce others as the essence of sovereignty. From that perspective, the Venezuelan tanker seizure and Denmark’s anxieties are manifestations of the new policy.
Athens, Melos, and Washington
Such hubris will come back to haunt the United States. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides records that when imperial Athens confronted the small island of Melos in 416 BC, the Athenians declared that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Yet Athens’ hubris was also its undoing. Twelve years later, in 404 BC, Athens fell to Sparta. Athenian arrogance, overreach, and contempt for smaller states helped galvanize the alliance that ultimately brought it down.
The 2025 NSS speaks in a similar arrogant register. It is a doctrine of power over law, coercion over consent, and dominance over diplomacy. American security will not be strengthened by acting like a bully. It will be weakened—structurally, morally, and strategically. A great power that frightens its allies, coerces its neighbors, and disregards international rules ultimately isolates itself.
America’s national security strategy should be based on wholly different premises: acceptance of a plural world; recognition that sovereignty is strengthened, not diminished, through international law; acknowledgment that global cooperation on climate, health, and technology is indispensable; and understanding that America’s global influence depends more on persuasion than coercion.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-national-security-strategy-memo
No sane parson can follow this convulted analysis but what is clear is the hangover that AM has after the Umeme exit. And nobody expected miracles from UECDL right fro the top minister to the lowest technician. The Energy sector today like the rest of the economy is back to the stone age and there is no question about that. Funny enough those complaining loudest are those looking to cut a deal with this ailing parastatal including the self confessed free market advocates who never miss a chance to jump on state protection and tax avoidance.
Andrew, u raise valid issues but then again u sit at the hightable with many decision makers in this country. As a ‘patriot’ do u ever discuss some of these issues with them.
Thank you. Unfortunately the so called elites are just protecting their gains and wanting them to be protected. Contributing to crazy ideas on how Kampala will burn and so forth. If you warn someone how they will end up in Luzira for doing their job and in a good way, then we don’t have a country really.
AM is the very definition of double standards and inconsistent/incoherent analysis. In his December 02 piece titled ‘The paradox of M7’s failure’, AM pleads ‘guilty to having been part of the ideological vanguard that led to the disaster of gangster capitalism’ which he blames for the social infrastructure and public service delivery meltdown we are experiencing in Uganda.
And just one week later – 08th Dec 2025, the gallant AM is back villifying the same state in its attempt to take over electricity power distribution from the private sector in an endeavour to provide affordable electricity. So which one is which? Did you unapologetically plead to being a vanguard for the ideological position that ushered gangster capitalism to Uganda as a way of informing us about your continued association and effort to entrench the said approach in running the affairs of Uganda? Coz it surely seems that you are still a very long way from encountering your Saul-Paul moment.