Uganda is an east African country ruled by Yoweri Museveni, who has been president since 1986. Before him, the country was ruled from 1971 to 1979 by Idi Amin, a dictator who expelled roughly 50,000 Asians, murdered thousands and left Uganda poorer and more lawless. Mr Museveni is 81 and stood for a seventh term on January 15th 2026. His authority is beginning to slip, and some observers reckon that fear of an uprising has prompted his regime to crack down harder on opponents.
Uganda's security forces have been accused of colluding with neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania to crush dissent. The most prominent case is Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate who was kidnapped on a visit to Kenya in November 2024 and unlawfully rendered to a military jail in Uganda. Kenya has admitted that it co-operated with the Ugandan authorities.
Amin's rule devastated the country's wildlife as well as its people. After his fall, zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton was invited to become honorary chief warden of Uganda's three national parks in 1980. He organised air and ground patrols to fight poaching gangs operating from neighbouring Sudan, raising the elephant population from a few hundred to several thousand.
TotalEnergies is building the world's longest heated pipeline (1,443km) to carry Ugandan oil to the sea. Engineering is mostly done, with first oil expected to flow in 2026. Oil revenues could add $1bn-2bn a year to government coffers—not substantial given GDP of about $60bn, but more than the country used to receive in American aid. Western banks declined to finance the pipeline; African lenders have filled some of the gap, with China one possibility for the remaining shortfall. Scores of Ugandans have been arrested for protesting against the project. The government has established a fund for fossil-fuel revenues, but the money will start to flow just as the authoritarian regime looks shaky, with a messy succession looming.
Uganda, with 50m people, produces less electricity than Latvia, which has a population of 1.9m. In 2005 the government granted a near-monopoly on electricity distribution to Umeme, a private firm created for the purpose. Efficiency rose and finance flowed in. The catch was that the government had guaranteed a 20% return on investment to win over wary funders. The terms proved so politically unpalatable that distribution was taken back into state hands when Umeme's concession expired in 2025.
Chapter Four, a human-rights group, says its budget has halved since the Trump administration closed USAID. Western diplomats who once pushed for tweaks to draconian laws or helped endangered dissidents get to safety have pulled back. Mr Museveni is "an example and encouragement" to his regional peers, according to a member of the National Unity Platform, a Ugandan opposition party.
The January 15th 2026 presidential election was Museveni's seventh. He was declared the winner with almost 72% of the vote. Half the electorate did not vote, according to official figures—a sign not of apathy but of resignation in a country where power has never changed hands at the ballot box. Bobi Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi), a singer-turned-politician, was the most popular opposition candidate. After the vote Wine went into hiding; Kizza Besigye remained in prison, reportedly seriously ill.
Human-rights activists think more than a thousand people may have been detained since polling day. The most outspoken civil-society groups have been suspended. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the army chief and president's son, boasted on social media that his men had killed 22 opposition supporters, a number he deemed "too low". The last time there were mass demonstrations, in 2020, security forces shot scores dead—memories that haunt the opposition and make it hard to sustain protests.
At 81 Museveni can no longer maintain his schedule of late-night meetings with his old vigour; relatives pick up the slack. His son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, commands the army. His brother, Salim Saleh, a general, is a ubiquitous if shadowy presence in public life, almost a co-president. Together they form an all-powerful trinity in Ugandan politics. Kainerugaba has pushed aside rivals in the army and his acolytes are rising in government. Kristof Titeca of the University of Antwerp suggests Museveni might make him vice-president. The question is how other army officers feel about their country being passed on like a family heirloom.
Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.