By Henry Okurut The African Union has declared water and sanitation the defining priority for 2026, elevating the resource from a basic service to what leaders describe as the cornerstone of Africa’s transformation. Speaking at a media briefing at the African Union Commission headquarters in Addis Ababa on February 12, Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment, H.E. Moses Vilakati, laid out the urgency behind the decision. “It is estimated that over 400 million people in the African continent lack water for their daily livelihood and over 800 million still lack basic hygiene services,” Vilakati said. He…
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By Flight Captain; Mike Mukula The assumption that multiparty democracy is the inevitable pathway to prosperity and progress in Africa deserves serious re-examination. While multiparty politics has delivered stability and growth in some societies, its transplantation into African contexts has often produced the opposite: political fragmentation, social regression, and weakened state capacity. To insist that one political model is universally valid, regardless of history, social structure, or stage of development, is both misleading and intellectually lazy. Africa’s political challenge has never primarily been the absence of elections; it has been the absence of cohesion, effective authority, and development-oriented governance. Multiparty…
By Henry Okurut A renewed African-led effort to end decades of instability in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) took centre stage in Uganda on Tuesday as the African Union, East African Community and SADC Panel of Facilitators held high-level talks with President Yoweri Museveni at State House Entebbe. The delegation, led by President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé of Togo, formed part of a joint continental and regional initiative aimed at advancing dialogue and forging a comprehensive, African-owned solution to one of the continent’s longest-running conflicts. Addressing the meeting, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, a key member of the facilitation…
By Henry Okurut Uganda’s ambition to deliver faster, cheaper and more transparent public services is steadily being realised through the expansion of the National Backbone Infrastructure (NBI), a flagship government project that is now entering its most ambitious phase yet. Launched in 2006 ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), the NBI has evolved over nearly two decades through multiple phases, gradually laying the digital foundation upon which government services, innovation and the private sector now depend. According to Dr Hatwib Mugasa, the Executive Director of the National Information Technology Authority–Uganda (NITA-U), the country is currently implementing Phase…
By Henry Okurut As the National Resistance Movement marks 40 years of liberation, Minister Hellen Adoa has credited the government under President Yoweri Museveni for bringing peace to Uganda, calling it the nation’s greatest achievement. In a candid interview, Adoa reflected on her personal experience growing up amid insecurity, recalling nights spent in bushes with her siblings during times of unrest. “The biggest achievement President Museveni and NRM have brought to Uganda is peace,” she said. “Peace allows people to wake up, go to their gardens, run businesses and send children to school even if government support is limited.” Adoa,…
By Henry Okurut A state-of-the-art ethanol manufacturing plant in Luwero District is emerging as a flagship example of Uganda’s push to stop exporting raw materials and instead add value locally, in line with recent directives by President Yoweri Museveni. PRO Industries, a family-owned investment under the Oswal Group, is producing Extra Neutral Alcohol (ENA) and ethanol from maize grain a first of its kind in East Africa, where most ethanol plants rely on molasses. According to the company’s Director, Riddhi Oswal, maize-based processing delivers the highest purity alcohol currently available in the region. “DNA, the highest purity alcohol you can…
The United Nations General Assembly has elected former President of Iraq, Barham Ahmed Salih, as the next United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees marking a new chapter for the UN agency at a time of unprecedented global displacement. Salih was chosen following a competitive selection process in New York that attracted candidates from several countries. He will assume office on 1 January 2026 for a five-year term and will be based in Geneva, succeeding Italy’s Filippo Grandi, whose decade-long tenure ends on 31 December 2025. Welcoming the decision, Grandi praised his successor’s extensive public service and lived experience. “Barham Salih…
Former Kiboga Woman Member of Parliament and current Energy and Mineral Development Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa, has spoken candidly about her 2021 election loss, describing the National Unity Platform (NUP) surge as a moment she believes was divinely timed to mark her exit from elective politics. Nankabirwa lost the Kiboga Woman MP seat in the 2021 general elections to NUP’s Kaaya Christine Nakimwero, amid a strong opposition wave that swept across much of Buganda and urban Uganda. Reflecting on the outcome, Nankabirwa said the scale of the political shift caught many leaders unprepared. “I am a believer, and the wave caught…
As Uganda intensifies preparations to co-host AFCON 2027, the Bunyoro sub-region set to host games in the new Hoima International Stadium is facing an urgent accommodation shortfall estimated at 800 hotel rooms. Hoteliers and leaders say this gap, far from being a setback, represents one of the region’s biggest economic opportunities in decades made possible by massive infrastructural transformation under the NRM government. According to Dr. Fred Kabagambe-Kalisa, Chairman of the Bunyoro Hotel Owners’ Association and Presidential Advisor on Oil and Gas, the region is experiencing a level of attention and growth never seen in its long history. “For a…
State Minister for Housing Persis Namuganza Princess has defiantly ruled out withdrawing from the Bukono County parliamentary race, insisting she cannot support the official NRM flag bearer after what she describes as the most chaotic and fraudulent primaries Namutumba has ever witnessed. Her hardline stance comes just days after State Minister for Works Musa Ecweru bowed out of the Amuria County race a move welcomed by NRM Secretary General Richard Todwong, who urged other ministers and independents to follow suit in order to strengthen party cohesion ahead of the 2026 general elections. But Namuganza says withdrawing is not an option,…