Magoola’s pharmaceutical ambition

How a day-long visit to Dei Pharma at Matuga changed my view of what Ugandans can do

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | On Friday, June 26, I visited Matthias Magoola’s Dei Pharma plant at Matuga along Kampala-Gulu Road. It was to honour a promise I had made to President Yoweri Museveni that I would visit this plant, talk to Magoola and make a personal assessment of his work. The visit was also a professional duty because I had made judgements about Magoola and his work without talking to him. Fairness (do not judge someone without listening to their side of the story first) is a basic principle of journalism. But it is also a principle of natural justice which all of us must aspire to uphold.

In this column of April 20^th, 2026, I had called Magoola a conman and rubbished the president’s allocation of taxpayers’ money to Dei Pharma as a waste of time. Upon visiting him, I was pleasantly surprised that my views were wrong. In fact, long before Museveni’s letter to me, a couple of friends, whom I highly respect, had called me and told me that I should visit Magoola and talk to him. They had said that if I visited, my views would change; that they had visited and had themselves been impressed by what they saw. These included the former minister of finance, Matia Kasaija, the minister of security, Jim Muhwezi, etc.

Built on a 50-acre piece of land, the pharmaceutical plant itself is a gigantic structure covering six acres. It takes an entire day to walk through its various departments and sections for administration, research, laboratories, storage, manufacturing, etc. The procedures of entering its various sensitive manufacturing and storage areas can be exhausting. Magoola is an affable man. I found he had prepared himself well. He made a PowerPoint presentation about his company, his research and innovations, the existing drugs he is producing and the vision of Dei Pharma.

Dei Pharma produces many generic drugs based on licenses bought from those who hold patents. But that is a small and insignificant part of its business, or at least, its vision. Magoola is building a business that will be largely built on his innovations and inventions in medicine. He told me that he has invented a cure for cancer, for sickle cell disease, for HIV/AIDS and for Alzheimer’s. He showed me academic papers he had written and that had been published in peer review journals. He took me to his office and showed me piles and piles of research work he has done over the years on these medications. He also showed me patents on these drugs he had registered in the USA. He also showed me some approvals [for clinical trials] of some of his drugs from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Magoola told me that he envisioned Dei Pharma becoming a business with a market capitalisation of $500 billion. Now that is seven times the size of Uganda’s GDP. He said that what makes pharmaceutical companies innovative is drugs. A company can produce six hundred different types of drugs. However, one or two critical innovative drugs can contribute 90% of its revenues and explain its market cap. He said his inventions and innovations for cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s and sickle cell disease will push Dei Pharma to become a global giant in the pharmaceutical industry.

During this presentation, I was oppressed by two factors. First was the overwhelming doubt in my mind about what Magoola was saying. I wondered how it could be possible that for many decades of research by the best scientists in the best universities and pharmaceutical companies, cures for these diseases had not been found, and then a guy from Busoga, Uganda, was the one who discovered them. The doubt and even heightened suspicion of Magoola were so intense in me; I found myself confirming my initial bias that the man is indeed a con man. How can he build a $500 billion company? How can his research be the one to discover these cures?

The more this feeling oppressed me, the more the other part of my mind questioned my thinking. So, the second factor that oppressed me was the question: am I not exhibiting the typical colonised mind of many, if not most, Africans? Assuming there was a white man standing in front of me and telling me these stories, would I doubt him when he has even shown me his research work published in peer-reviewed journals? Would I doubt such a white man if he said his vision is to build a $500 billion company? Was I not using colonised mental lenses to look at Magoola? If this is the case, wasn’t Museveni right to call me an agent of neocolonialism in his letter to me?

Indeed, I was about to ask Magoola this very question: how can it be you in the world to discover these cures when the best universities and the richest pharmaceutical companies in the world have failed? I told him I would not ask my vital question because it was increasingly feeling not only racist but also stupid. Magoola insisted I nonetheless ask the question. I told him I will tell him what the question is and why I don’t want an answer. I told him my biases and the fact that I was just a Black man lacking faith in Black people, and that is why I am judging him the way I was.

I have always criticised Museveni for not supporting local, national, domestic [and most especially indigenous] people who are innovative. I have argued before that he has a colonised mind, which leads him to support businesses promoted by white people at best and Indians in the second category. But here he was pouring $700m of taxpayer funds into a company owned by an indigenous Black Ugandan who had made serious discoveries in medicine, and I am criticising him for it. Isn’t that a contradiction? As I listened to Magoola, a titanic intellectual battle between two Andrew Mwendas raged in my head: the first Mwenda with a colonialized mind and the other with strong pan-African convictions.

It is very possible Magoola will fail. It is also possible he can succeed. It will always require extraordinary faith in our people and an ability to make huge bets on them and take risks for their causes for us to ever make it. And for that, I support Museveni on Magoola not because I am sure it will succeed but because I believe it is worth a try.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug