When Gen. Caleb akandwanaho (Rtd) Salim Saleh presented his long, detailed analysis of Uganda’s economy and structured recommendations for improvement in the form of the Third National Growth Plan (NDPIII) to President Museveni, he laid out the kinds of problems that many Ugandans feel every day but rarely see captured in one place.

He was doing what he has done for years: breaking down the problems holding back ordinary Ugandans. He talked about distortions in factors of production such as land conflicts that choke investment, the high cost of finance for ordinary peopel, the shortage of skills among youth, the slow pace of value addition, and the gap between production in the villages and the factories in industrial parks. It was the kind of diagnosis a technocrat offers when trying to get a country unstuck.

The President’s reply was striking in its simplicity: “I know what Uganda needs.”
At first, to others it might have sounded almost dismissive. But when placed in the context of 40 years of state rebuilding, economic reform, and political stability, it revealed something deeper: a belief that Uganda’s path to transformation has been consistent, deliberate, and informed by lived experience rather than theory. His confidence is not based on guesswork; it’s based on the journey already travelled.
He always stresses that any serious revolutionary discussion about the economy of Uganda or, indeed, much of Africa, should include the following questions:
What was the economy of Uganda like in 1900, at the dawn of colonialism?
What was the economy of Uganda like in 1962, at the sunset of colonialism?
How and what was the magnitude of the collapse of the Ugandan economy between 1971 and 1986 (Idi Amin, Obote II, Okello)?
What, therefore, was the economy of Uganda like in 1986?
What is the Ugandan economy like today and why?
What should the Ugandan economy be like when our country is a fully modern economy?

Modern economics talks of the five factors of production: land, labor, capital, knowledge, and entrepreneurship. We should then ask ourselves, “What was the state of these factors of production at each of the five stages that we have already gone through, and what will be the state of these factors in the sixth anticipated stage?” H.E. always asks.

few countries in Africa have undergone the kind of recovery Uganda has achieved.
before 1900, Uganda’s economy was simple but functional, rooted in subsistence production, barter, and community trade.People produced what they ate and exchanged what they had: milk for salt, cow for land, cereals for labour. Then came colonialism and everything changed.

The economy was restructured to serve others from away: Uganda became a supplier of raw materials; coffee, cotton, copper, and the 3 Ts (Tea, Tourism and Tobacco).

By independence, 94% of our exports were raw, processed abroad, and our people remained in perpetual survival mode. Basically, the system was designed to extract, not empower.In the mid-1980s the economy was in ruins.Banks had collapsed, factories had died, inflation was wild, and the country was working mainly for survival.

By 1986, over 90% of parastatals were loss-making, inflation had exceeded 300%, and the formal private sector had virtually disappeared. The new Government found an economy were the state owned everything but produced nothing.The treasury was empty.Wage arrears had piled up for years. The structural adjustment agenda was already being dictated by the Bretton Woods institutions across Africa. as one senior insider often recalls, “NRM did not even participate in the formation of that first economic team and cabinet, we inherited a collapsing house with the roof already caving in.”

This meant that President Museveni’s decision to liberalise, despite his own earlier socialist leanings, was not an ideological surrender but a choice between economic life and death. Uganda had run out of oxygen. Liberalisation was the life-support machine.

By returning Asian properties, compensating former owners, reopening markets, removing price controls, floating the exchange rate, and allowing private enterprise to breathe, the President rebuilt the arteries of

Uganda’s War on Subsistence

A young man in Ankole once struggled to convince his own people to abandon nomadism and embrace settled, commercial agriculture. As he often said, “How can a family prosper when it keeps only cattle for prestige and not for income?” That early battle with the Ankole mindset became the template for his national economic ideology: defeat subsistence or remain trapped in poverty forever.

When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took power in 1986, over 80% of Ugandan households were fully subsistence, producing only what they ate and selling almost nothing. in some regions like Karamoja, the figure was above 90%. Subsistence was not just an economic problem; it was a serious national structural trap. The long march to monetization began in the 90s with the revival of cooperatives and other targeted agricultural initiatives,which led to the formation of the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) in the early 2000s. NAADS introduced modern farming inputs, extension services, and improved seeds. Operation Wealth Creation later expanded that mission, pushing inputs deeper into villages and millions of households.

emyooga has been targeting the informal sector, bringing artisans, boda riders, welders, and market vendors into finance and savings. And the Parish Development Model, the most ambitious of all, seeks to commercialize all 10,694 parishes, turning each into a local production and enterprise unit.

Today, the results are visible. The share of households stuck in pure subsistence has fallen from 68% to below 17%, according to recent estimates, and in some districts even lower. Millions now participate in Savings and Credit Cooperative organizations (SACCOs), sell to markets, process produce, or use micro-capital to start enterprises that simply did not exist before.

This sustained war on subsistence is the backbone of President Museveni’s economic thinking: no country can modernize when its people work only for survival.

The famous “4-acre model” is simply a household version of the same doctrine: diversify, commercialize, and stabilize cash flow. Industrial parks in Namanve, Kapeeka, Mbale, Jinja, and Soroti were built to link farmers to factories. The big push for value addition in coffee, dairy, fruits, cassava, steel, and pharmaceuticals follows President Museveni’s blunt warning: “Africans hemorrhage money by exporting raw materials. Add value!”

Coffee is perhaps the clearest example. The distribution of hundreds of millions of seedlings is not just about boosting harvests; it’s about building an industry.

When Uganda roasts, grinds, packages, and exports branded coffee instead of raw beans, more money stays at home, jobs multiply, and farmers earn more. It is the same logic behind the push for agroindustrial zones and the revival of development banks like the Uganda Development Bank (UDB) and the uganda Development Corporation (UDC) to provide patient, affordable capital.

It’s the same approach that guided Worldwide Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE). bonna Basome was never a social giveaway; it was an economic equalizer designed to overhaul uganda’s human capital. Universal Primary Education now enrolls more than 8.8 million learners, and USE/UPPET brings another 2.2 million students into lower secondary – the largest mass-education expansion in East Africa. By putting millions of children into classrooms, the NRM broke