When Juliana Kagwa assumed office as Chief Executive Officer of Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) in June 2025, she stepped into one of the most demanding leadership roles, one defined by…
If the first four parts of this MadMen, Dreamers and Deal-Makers series were about the machine, how it was built from accidents, battered by economics, bruised by burnout, and handed to a new generation, this part is about something stranger. What happens when the machine learns to think? Not “think” like a creative director pacing in Kololo at 2 am, or a media buyer staring at a GRP spreadsheet. Think in code. In predictions. In prompts. When the tools you once used to execute your ideas start quietly suggesting ideas of their own. For nearly four decades, Uganda’s advertising engine…
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The first three parts of MadMen, Dreamers and Deal-Makers were about how the machine was built, broken, and survived. This part is about who is going to drive it next. Not the men who stumbled into advertising from pharmacies, cricket grounds, and cyber cafés. Not the founders who mortgaged their futures on six-month UMA leases and second-hand laptops. They are still here, still at the wheel, but there is a new crowd climbing aboard. They were born after the first MTN billboard went up. They grew up with Facebook, not 30-second TV spots. They have never known a world where…
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If the first part of this series was about how the madmen stumbled into the machine, and the second about how the money broke it, this part is about what the machine does to the people inside it. Not the awards. Not the case studies. The bodies. The marriages. The minds. On a pitch night in Kampala, somewhere between midnight and 3 am, the city goes quiet, but the minds behind the advertising agencies get louder. A designer is on revision 17 of a key visual. A copywriter is arguing with themselves over whether “unlock” or “unleash” feels more premium….
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If part one of MadMen, Dreamers and Deal-Makers was about how Uganda’s advertising giants stumbled into the industry, this part, which is precisely part two, reminds you of what happened after they got in, and what it feels like to keep the machine running now that the fuel is running out. There was a time when this business felt almost decadent. Retainers were thick. Media commissions flowed. A small set of agencies handled a small set of giant brands, and the money felt endless. Today, many of those same people sit behind the same desks, staring at three-page scopes and…
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If Uganda had built a proper advertising pipeline, this story would be very boring. There would be brochures in Senior Six career offices defining “account management.” Parents would nod proudly when their children said, “I want to be a copywriter.” Makerere would have a Faculty of Integrated Communications and Creative Strategy. There’d be a predictable path: degree, internship, junior role, promotion. Instead, the people who built this industry came in through side doors. One thought “copywriting” was about copyright law. Another was meant to be a pharmacist. One was headed for law before veering into fine art. Another walked into…
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When I sit down with Moses Lutalo, the Managing Director of Broll Uganda, the conversation quickly settles on the forces reshaping Uganda’s real estate landscape: financing pressures, currency volatility, talent flight, and the urgent need to reinvent business models across the region. Broll operates from a distinctly different vantage point. It is not a developer, not a landlord, not a builder of malls or apartments. It is a real estate services company, an identity that gives it a panoramic view of the industry’s strengths and stress fractures. “We don’t own property,” Lutalo says. “We manage. We are consultants. If we…
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On most weekends in Nakabugu, a small village in Luuka District, you will not find Apollo Gabazira in Kampala’s quiet suburbs or relaxing at home. You will find him on his farm; in mud-caked overalls, walking between zero-grazing units, checking fodder plots, or demonstrating how to mix a feed ration to a group of students from St. Joseph Technical College. The air hums with the rhythm of a place that knows exactly what it’s doing. Ayrshire cows chew calmly in their stalls. A worker pushes wheelbarrows of manure toward the manure bank. Casual labourers slash fodder while farmers from nearby…
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Real estate markets are, at their core, mirrors of the economies they sit within. In advanced economies, that mirror reflects a relatively stable image: steady credit markets, predictable consumer demand, mature institutions, and long-established urban growth patterns. But in developing countries like Uganda, the mirror behaves differently. It shifts quickly, exaggerates shocks, and amplifies every policy misstep, every currency wobble, and every change in global liquidity. This is a sector whose fortunes rise and fall not on neighbourhood gossip but on macroeconomic tides. “In Uganda, the macro is the weather system,” says Moses Lutalo, Managing Director of Broll Uganda. “It…
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dfcu Bank, in partnership with Monitor Publications Limited, is steadily deepening its investment in women-led enterprises through the Rising Woman Expo. The flagship platform has grown into one of Uganda’s…
