Prime
Sizing up hits, misses in Museveni 2022 address
President Museveni and First Lady Janet welcome Rwanda President Paul Kagame at State House in April. PHOTO/ PPU
What you need to know:
- Mr Museveni had invited observers to judge his performance this year on three broad counts: the coronavirus pandemic, security and the economy.
As President Museveni and his minders embark on the task of piecing together the New Year Address for 2023, a look back at what was delivered on December 31, 2021, yields a mixed scorecard.
Mr Museveni identified five “trials and tribulations” that the country had faced not just in 2021 but also 2020. They included “…locusts; the floods and rising [water] levels; landslides in mountain areas; floating islands that were threatening the hydro dams; and the…pandemic.”
“Uganda, under the NRM, has overcome almost [all] four of these. The only exception that we are still struggling with, is the corona pandemic,” he said.
After going through nearly 6,000 words of the speech, Mr Museveni had invited observers to judge his performance in 2022 on three broad counts: the coronavirus pandemic, security and the economy. How has he fared on all counts?
Coronavirus
After taking “tough measures … in order to buy time … [to] find better solutions” in 2020 and 2021, Mr Museveni used his New Year Address to offer assurances that “we have found some solutions.” Key to the solutions was inoculating “all the Ugandans above 18 years old.”
President Museveni would go on to fully reopen the economy in January. Despite removing all pandemic curbs, he continued wearing his mask in public. Together with the Covid-19 jabs, Mr Museveni revealed that the mask helped shield him from the virus when “I sat with … a man from Tuvalu … [who] had Corona.” This was during the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda, Kigali, during late June.
By the time Mr Museveni delivered his 2022 New Year Address, Uganda was in the midst of a third Covid-19 wave fuelled by the Omicron variant.
The Health minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, announced that the country had emerged out of the wave in mid-February. The wave did not leave the trail of destruction that its predecessor—fuelled by the Delta variant—did in mid-2021.
While Covid-19 has largely been an afterthought this year, flare-ups of the virus across the region forced Mr Museveni to reinstate a raft of tough pandemic curbs during a December 2 televised address.
Security
Looking back at 2021, Mr Museveni declared that his security operatives had soundly tackled the problem of crime and terrorism perpetuated by a machete-wielding (bijambiya) racket in the greater Masaka area. Museveni said 21 suspects had been arrested and were being subjected to court processes.
The President also addressed himself to the rebel outfit Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) that had tried to assassinate Gen Katumba Wamala and were deemed to be responsible for two suicide bombings in Kampala that claimed five lives.
Operation Shujaa, launched with the blessing of the DR Congo on November 30, 2021, was intended to land a devastating blow on the Islamist rebel group. A report released by the Congo Research Group (CRG) at New York University and Ebuteli in June concluded that “it is clear the military operations are not the success they are portrayed to be in the Ugandan press.”
In a December 2 address, President Museveni blamed—among others—the ADF for the recent spate of attacks on security personnel and establishments in the country. Mr Museveni said that the ADF staged attacks this side of the year to “try to rob money because they are in a bad situation in Congo.”
Other “rogue elements” blamed for attacks on security infrastructures in the country this year—be they in Busiika, Nakulabye, Kyanja and Gaddafi military barracks—are army deserters, active servicemen, police officers and even someone alleged to have been a member of leading Opposition party National Unity Platform.
Economy
After being battered by pandemic curbs for two years on the bounce, 2022 was supposed to chart a different path from 2020 and 2021.
Mr Museveni noted in his New Year address that despite the pandemic curbs, Uganda’s economy grew at the rate of 3.4 percent in 2020 and 3.8 percent in 2021.
The President used his address to laud the inroads made by the Operation Wealth Creation programme, adding that it was “the first time in human history that the majority of Ugandans have joined the money economy.”
While he was hoping for better in 2022, with another poverty alleviation programme (Parish Development Model) expected to wave a magic wand in the fight against subsistence production, a perfect storm that was brewing had other ideas.
The Russia-Ukraine war negatively impacted food security in the country by triggering steep rises in fuel and food prices.
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics’s consumer price index (CPI) print for September indicated that inflation had breached double digits even as wages stagnated. The central bank’s hawkish stance seen in a string of rate rises has done little to change what is by all measures a grim outlook.
While Mr Museveni made clear his intention in 2022 to help businesses “by lowering costs of production by dealing with the three cost pushers [of] transport, electricity, and money for industries, agriculture and some services”, this has not materialised in part due to exogenous factors.
The tough economic climate created saw the government fail to bind itself to strict borrowing limits. This ultimately saw Moody’s—a credit rating agency—downgrade Uganda’s debt status in November from stable to negative.
