An elderly leader faces a divided, prospering nation.

Yoweri Museveni, 18 years older than independent Uganda, campaigned under the slogan “Protecting the Gains” – associating himself with the economic good times and relative stability in the landlocked East African nation of 50 million people and distracting voters from his refusal to step aside after four decades in power.

Museveni is the picture of longevity: he was born under British colonial rule during the Second World War, plunged into politics while studying in neighboring Tanzania, helped overthrow the Ugandan madman-dictator Idi Amin, and led a resistance guerrilla force that toppled a successor government in the 1980s in what is known as the Ugandan Bush War.

At age 81, Museveni is almost five times older than the median age of Ugandans: 17. Most Ugandans have no memory of a leader other than the aging fighter whose signature accessory is a wide-brim jungle hat. Museveni’s main political rival, a former pop singer known as Bobi Wine (real name: Robert Kyagulanyi) was born in 1982 as Ronald Reagan began pressuring the Soviets in what would become the final years of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union would have far-reaching impact on Africa and usher in the free-market transformations that are shaping today’s Uganda.

Uganda opposition hassled

Wine and his supporters faced harassment from the Museveni regime during the last election in 2021, and the opposition leader even found soldiers surrounding his house. (Museveni won 58 percent of the votes, while Wine claimed second place with 35 percent, according to official results.) During this campaign, Wine took to the stage in a helmet and flak jacket. The Ugandan electorate, meanwhile, coped with an Internet outage and soldiers in the street. “Free and fair” isn’t the Museveni government’s electioneering ethos. Even so, 83 percent of Ugandans in an Afrobarometer survey supported elections as the best way to choose the country’s leaders, an affirmation of widespread faith in a democratic path.

Museveni’s full campaign slogan is “Protecting the Gains as We Make a Qualitative Leap into High Middle-Income Status.” While that sounds more like a speech title for a Chinese economic conference, the aim isn’t farfetched. In drilling projects led by France’s Total and China’s international oil giant CNOOC, Uganda should start pumping oil from fields in western Uganda along Lake Albert toward the end of 2026, crude heated to 50 degrees Celsius (122 F) flowing through a pipeline to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. The oil complex includes a refinery and international airport carved from rural terrain.

Forecasts turn positive

Uganda probably can tap at least 1.4 billion barrels over time, according to energy observers. S&P Global, which boosted Uganda’s outlook to positive from stable in November 2025, assumes oil output will peak at 230,000 barrels per day in 2030 – around one-fifth of major African producer Angola’s daily tally.  

“The positive outlook reflects the potential for stronger growth and per capita income than we forecast, given the favorable terms of trade and key oil projects that are set to commence operations in the next 12-18 months,” S&P Global analysts said. “Such a scenario could, in our view, help partially offset Uganda’s still elevated fiscal risks.”

Almost six in 10 Ugandan businesses are grumbling about the cost of joining an electronic system (EFRIS) mandated by the government tax authority to capture invoices and receipts for all transactions, according to a survey by one of the country’s leading think tanks, the Economic Policy Research Centre. Yet tax enforcement is less painful than no electricity: power outages are the top concern of businesses, the survey found.

Leaning on fossil fuels looked like yesterday’s gameplan while America, China and Europe pushed clean energy and electric vehicles in the past decade. Yet with Donald Trump’s fealty to crude, explosively displayed in the takedown of Nicolas Maduro in oil-rich Venezuela, Uganda’s timing looks more favorable.

Oil windfall’s downsides

Yet there is a cost in the pursuit, say environmental experts. Drilling is taking place in sensitive environmental areas, including a famed national park that’s a tourism gem, and the pipeline’s long route (mostly across Tanzania), has disrupted and possibly impoverished thousands of farmers. Human Rights Watch has said the project will displace more than 100,000 people and found that many farmers have not received adequate compensation for harm to their livelihoods.

At the end of the pipeline at the port of Tanga, Tanzania, near the border with Kenya, Uganda’s energy minister recently toured a large construction site that includes oil storage tanks and a loading jetty.

Almost 900 pipeline miles northwest in Uganda’s Bulisa and Nwoya districts along Lake Albert, France’s TotalEnergies says it is developing six fields and drilling 400 wells in a partnership with China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) known as the Tilenga project. Prospectors found black gold in a geologic formation along the lake two decades ago.

One of the fields is inside Murchison Falls National Park, the country’s oldest and largest conservation area. Southwest of Tilenga is the smaller Kingfisher project, also run by the three partners. A nearby refinery at Kabaale is being developed by a Dubai investment firm, Alpha MBM Investments, in partnership with UNOC.

Roughly the size of the United Kingdom, Uganda embraces a lush terrain of mountains and rainforests, with Lake Victoria and Tanzania and Rwanda on its southern border, Kenya to the east and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. Restive South Sudan, a source of refugees, borders the northern frontier.

Uganda is achieving “broad-based” economic growth, the International Monetary Fund assessed in November 2025 after a staff visit, a reflection of agribusiness and services growth. Uganda’s economy expanded more than 6 percent in the past year, 2 percentage points higher than sub-Saharan Africa, as inflation stayed low and foreign exchange reserves “increased significantly” due to rising exports and capital flowing into the country.

Yet the IMF cautioned that debt is weighing on this positive story as interest payments consume almost one-third of domestic revenue. And S&P Global warned that election-related political unrest could cause its upbeat assessment to be revised.

Cover photo: January 2026 rally for Museveni organized in Kampala by his National Resistance Movement, via X.