KAMPALA, UGANDA — In 2021, the Ugandan government announced a policy that the military would take on all new government-funded construction projects in the health and education sectors. In the years since, the scope of the directive has unofficially widened to include most public-sector projects, and private contractors say they’re struggling to maintain their businesses. There’s growing concern that the directive is the latest in a series of moves to consolidate and centralize power.
DN, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation from the government, says his construction company was working on a project at a public institution when he was notified that the Ugandan military would take it over — even though work at these institutions was exempt from the policy. He had to lay off his workers.
“About 20 of them all lost their jobs,” he says.
The government says delays in the work led to the contract’s termination, but DN believes it was due to the presidential directive that sends all construction work at government education and health facilities to the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) Engineering Brigade and the National Enterprise Corporation, the business arm of the country’s military. Existing projects, DN says, were supposed to be exempt.
DN’s experience is not an isolated incident. Uganda’s prime minister, Robinah Nabbanja, transferred the construction of Luweero General Hospital and the Luweero District Administration headquarters from private contractors in March 2024 to the UPDF Engineering Brigade. The contractor for Luweero General Hospital had been working on it for about 12 years. The government cited delays as the reason for the transfer of work.
Multiple sources from construction companies, all of whom were concerned about being named publicly, confirmed the trend of the government taking over their public-sector projects.
Felix Kulayigye, a brigadier general and official spokesman for the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, says the directive prevents corruption and bloated project budgets, and eliminates unnecessary delays that chronically crippled work done by private contractors.
“[They] were affecting the president’s manifesto implementation,” he says, referring to the promises that Uganda President Yoweri Museveni made to provide better services to citizens.
The directive tightens the military’s grip on Uganda’s civil infrastructure. Already, the country’s military and political power are fused. The military holds parliamentary seats, as well as key roles in government. It plays an increasingly large role in the fisheries and agricultural sectors. More controversially, it has made inroads into the judiciary and the electoral process.
There’s “no accountability,” says Zahara Nampewo, deputy principal of the Makerere University School of Law and co-author of a study on the militarization of Uganda’s economy. “Who is [the army] reporting to? This undermines civilian oversight.”
The problem is much bigger than the monopolization of one sector, she says. Over the last four decades, the role of Uganda’s military has expanded beyond its traditional defense roles to other aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life.
“There is lack of a clear framework at both the local and institutional level. The army and civilians should be able to work together. We are building a culture of ‘Musevenism,’ and institutions are not working as they should,” Nampewo says, referring to an ideology associated with the president, which she describes as “a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”
James Katongana, public relations officer for the National Enterprise Corporation, denies that his division of the military lacks accountability. Its representatives appear before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises, which oversees and ensures accountability within the government. That’s in addition to internal audits, which are submitted to the auditor general, he says.
Kulayigye, the military spokesman, says he isn’t sure whether those audit results are public, and declined to share them with Global Press Journal. But, he says, military engagement in construction projects has proven effective in saving money and delivering work on time.
He cites the renovation of Entebbe Airport, Uganda’s only international airport, for which he says a private contractor quoted 425 billion Ugandan shillings (about 114 million United States dollars). It cost the military just 195 billion shillings (about 52 million dollars), he says. And that project, he adds, is one of more than 100 like it.
But revelations of the military’s financial mismanagement have cast doubt over these cost-cutting claims.
The Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises is under the purview of the Public Accounts Committee, which oversees financial aspects of various government institutions, including the military. During a parliamentary session in October 2024, the Public Accounts Committee reported that the military lost 28.9 billion shillings (around 7.8 million dollars) in a government farming project launched in 2022 to address food shortages.
In the same parliamentary session, the committee also reported delays in the completion of projects, including work at the UPDF National Referral Hospital in Mbuya.
According to a 2024 study published by the Human Rights Peace Center, a semi-autonomous department of Makerere University’s School of Law, as of 2023, there was little evidence supporting the cost efficiency of employing the UPDF Engineering Brigade for construction projects, and significant concerns — including fair procurement and competition, transparency, work quality and the exclusion of local suppliers and businesses — remain regarding the near-monopoly granted to the UPDF in public and semi-public construction.
Holding the military accountable is generally challenging, says Muwada Nkunyingi, an opposition member of Parliament. Government officials, he says, often avoid questioning military generals, fearing repercussions.
Many private construction companies have responded negatively to the military construction directive, but others have a rosier outlook.
Rogers Segawa, an engineer and managing director of Nexus Construction, says there’s no problem with the military taking on government projects. Most private contractors can’t afford them because they require multiple financial guarantees to ensure a project will be completed. There are lots of opportunities in the private sector to keep private contractors busy, he says.
And at least some people who benefit from the military’s construction work appreciate the change. Livan Ayebare is a student at Makerere University and lives in a university hostel that the government renovated in 2023. She thinks the work, had it been done by a private company, would have taken longer than the three months it took the military.
The government can’t let private construction companies fail people, says Kulayigye, the military spokesman.
“We respect the private sector,” he says, “but if the private sector means stalling services to the people, we have no choice but to circumvent them.”
Nakisanze Segawa is a Global Press Journal reporter based in Kampala, Uganda.
Patricia Lindrio contributed to this article.