Your Excellency, The Numbers Do Not Lie: A respectful response to the President

Kampala, Uganda | COMMENT |  President Yoweri Museveni, your response to Andrew Mwenda, published recently and widely circulated, was characteristically vigorous. At 82, your energy remains undiminished. You cited figures, invoked proverbs, named factories, and challenged your critics to visit them. We accept the invitation — not physically, but forensically. What follows is not a defence of any individual. It is a defence of the numbers, and of the principle that public accountability is not sabotage.

I. On the Question of Criticism

You described Mwenda and those who share his concerns as traitors, foreign agents, and saboteurs of Uganda’s growth. You accused him of causing the 2005 load-shedding by undermining the Bujagali partnership. These are serious allegations. They were made without evidence. An allegation without evidence, however forcefully stated, remains an allegation.

There is a long and honourable tradition — in Uganda and everywhere — of distinguishing between the critic and the enemy. The critic asks: are the numbers real? Are the projects working? Is public money being spent wisely? These are not the questions of a traitor. They are the questions of a taxpayer, a citizen, and — in a democracy — a right. Your Excellency, you have governed Uganda for four decades. Your record can withstand scrutiny. It does not need to be shielded from it.

The Runyankore proverb you offered was apt: Ebikorimo by’enkoko, tebitta Kamunye — the curses of the chicken do not kill the kite. If that is so, then the kite has nothing to fear from the chicken’s questions. Let the questions be answered.

II. On Gold: Gross Receipts Are Not Net Gains

Your Excellency cited USD 7.48 billion in gold exports as evidence of your industrialisation agenda bearing fruit. The headline is impressive. The full picture is more complex.

Independent data from the Bank of Uganda shows gold export earnings of USD 5.8 billion for the year to November 2025 — a record, and a genuine achievement. But the figure requires two important qualifications that your statement omitted.

First, Uganda’s gold export surge is substantially a re-export story. Uganda has positioned itself as a regional refining and transit hub, processing gold originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and other neighbours. The gross export figure includes the cost of that imported gold. The net value retained in Uganda — after deducting import costs — is materially lower than the headline suggests. Independent analysts and international watchdogs have raised this concern consistently. A country that imports raw gold, refines it, and re-exports it is performing a valuable service. But the full USD 7.48 billion is not Uganda’s wealth creation. It is partly Uganda’s throughput.

Second, Uganda Revenue Authority data reveals that of taxes assessed on gold exports between June 2023 and June 2024, only 9.74% was actually collected — with over USD 2.66 billion worth of gold exports generating unpaid taxes of Shs 31.38 billion. Your Excellency, if the gold industry is generating USD 7 billion in gross receipts but the government is collecting less than 10% of assessed taxes on it, then the fiscal benefit to ordinary Ugandans is a fraction of what the headline implies.

The policy direction — banning raw mineral exports, establishing refineries, insisting on value addition — is correct. The vision is sound. But vision and current reality are different things, and conflating them misleads the public.

III. On Coffee: Credit Where It Is Due, and Where It Is Not

On coffee production, Your Excellency, you are on firmer ground. Uganda’s coffee exports have grown dramatically — from roughly 3 million bags to 8.4 million bags for the year ending October 2025, earning USD 2.4 billion, the highest in the country’s history. Uganda has overtaken Ethiopia to become Africa’s leading coffee exporter. This is a milestone worth celebrating.

But the credit belongs primarily to Uganda’s smallholder farmers — the millions of households in Bugisu, Rwenzori, Kibale, and across the country who have planted, tended, and harvested coffee across generations. It belongs to quality improvement programmes implemented through the Uganda Coffee Development Authority over many years. It reflects, too, a global price windfall driven by drought in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest producers, which drove international coffee prices to record highs.

This is not to diminish the enabling environment your government has provided. But it is to say that the coffee boom is a market story, not a factory story. And that distinction matters enormously when we examine the factory at the centre of your narrative.

Inspire Africa Coffee — Nelson Tugume’s project in Ntungamo — has received Shs 179 billion in public funds. It had a completion deadline of December 2024. It remains unfinished. An oversight visit by the Leader of Opposition found no Memorandum of Understanding between the government and this private entity. Shs 179 billion of taxpayer money was disbursed to a private company with, in the words of the parliamentary report, “no clearly defined binding relationship and no documentation whatsoever.”

Your Excellency, you cited Uganda’s coffee earnings and you cited Tugume’s factory in the same breath. The earnings are real. The factory is not yet operational. They are not the same story.

IV. On Magoola and Atiak: The Factories That Consume and Do Not Produce

You invited Mwenda and his colleagues to visit Magoola’s factories in Matugga and Kamuli. We take note of the invitation. But a visit to a building is not the same as evidence of production.

Dei BioPharma, Magoola’s pharmaceutical plant in Matugga, was commissioned in 2021. By 2023, the proprietor had approached Cabinet seeking a bailout of USD 1 billion — USD 400 million to service existing loans and a further USD 600 million to operationalise the project. Parliament subsequently approved Shs 578 billion in additional public funding. The government has already invested Shs 165 billion. The factory, despite years of promises regarding cancer drugs, malaria vaccines, and Covid-19 treatments, has not produced a single drug cleared for public use.

Magoola’s original introduction to Uganda’s establishment was a spray he presented during the Covid-19 pandemic as a treatment — later described by commentators as hand sanitiser sold as a miracle cure. This is the foundation on which hundreds of billions of public shillings have since been stacked.

Then there is Atiak Sugar Factory — the project of Amina Moghe Hersi’s Horyal Investment Holdings in Amuru District. This factory was commissioned by Your Excellency in October 2020. It suspended production in March 2022 and has not produced sugar since. Total public and private investment has now reached approximately USD 204 million — UGX 769 billion. Of this, the government through the Uganda Development Corporation has contributed UGX 554 billion. Amina Hersi has contributed UGX 125 billion — and holds 60% of the company.

Read that ownership structure carefully. The majority private shareholder controls 60% of the enterprise having contributed roughly one sixth of the total investment. The Ugandan taxpayer has effectively capitalised the majority stake of a private entrepreneur. This is not a public-private partnership in any conventional sense. It is public funding of private ownership.

When confronted by Members of Parliament in October 2024, Ms Hersi did not defend the project’s record. She asked for forgiveness. The factory’s production timeline has since been reset — again — to September 2026, and independent reports suggest it may slip further to 2027 or 2028.

Your Excellency, the Banyankore proverb about the baby learning to walk is beautiful, and we understand its spirit. We encourage the baby. But a baby that has been walking for six years and keeps falling deserves not only encouragement but also an honest assessment of whether the ground is the problem, or the walker.

V. The Larger Question: What Is Industrialisation For?

Behind these specific cases lies a structural question that Your Excellency’s letter does not address: who benefits from Uganda’s industrialisation?

Uganda’s genuine development successes — the dairy boom from 200 million to 5.3 billion litres, the coffee production surge, the growth of palm oil and fruit industries — share a common characteristic. They were driven by dispersed, private initiative across thousands of households. They required no individual bailouts. They generated no parliamentary scandals. They distributed their gains broadly.

Uganda’s industrial policy failures share a different characteristic. They are concentrated in individual, privately owned enterprises. They have absorbed hundreds of billions in public funds. They have produced promises, timelines, commissioning ceremonies, and ministerial tours — but limited output. And in each case, the private proprietor retains majority ownership of an asset substantially built with public money.

The question is not whether Uganda should industrialise. It should, and must. The question is whether channelling public funds into individually owned private enterprises — without enforceable agreements, without equity proportional to investment, without accountability mechanisms — constitutes an industrialisation strategy or a different kind of redistribution.

Andrew Mwenda, whatever his faults, has consistently asked this question. Calling him a traitor does not answer it.

Conclusion

Your Excellency, Uganda has real achievements. The coffee production record is genuine. The dairy transformation is remarkable. The push for mineral value addition is directionally correct. These deserve celebration.

But the Magoola factory has not produced drugs. Tugume’s coffee factory has not produced coffee. Atiak has not produced sugar. Together they have consumed well over UGX 1 trillion in public funds. The individuals who own the majority of these enterprises have not contributed proportionally to that investment.

The chicken’s questions have not killed the kite. But the kite would do well to answer them.

Aluta Continua — and so does the right to ask.

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Mr Mwenda, thank you for declaring me incapable of judging right