Every election season in Uganda blooms with promises of transformation.
Candidates unfurl manifestos brimming with pledges to create jobs, industrialize, end poverty, and modernize agriculture.
Yet beneath the familiar rhetoric lies a deeper question: Will any of these promises align with Uganda’s long-term growth blueprint?
NDP IV and the 10×10 growth strategy
Uganda’s newly unveiled Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), covering 2025/30, defines the economic direction for the next administration.
It operationalizes the country’s 10×10 Growth Strategy, an ambitious framework designed to make the economy ten times larger by 2040.
This plan, not the next manifesto, will determine whether Uganda sustains its economic trajectory.
“Any manifesto that ignores this roadmap risks steering the country off-course before the journey even begins.”
The 10×10 strategy aims to double GDP every five years, requiring consistent double-digit annual growth and deep structural transformation.
If achieved, Uganda would multiply its economy tenfold by 2040, lift millions out of poverty, and accelerate its path to middle-income status.
To deliver this, NDP IV identifies five strategic growth anchors: agriculture and agro-industrialization, tourism, minerals and oil and gas, ICT and innovation, and financial services, supported by cross-cutting enablers like infrastructure, energy, education, and good governance.
Its premise is simple: Uganda cannot grow everything at once, but it can grow the sectors that grow everything else.
Focus and fiscal realism
Unlike earlier development plans, NDP IV is built on discipline, value addition, productivity, and fiscal realism.
It explicitly rejects the tendency to scatter resources across numerous projects and instead concentrates spending on high-impact flagship programmes.
These include industrial value chains in agriculture and mining, the oil refinery and petrochemical industry, the revitalization of the national railway and logistics corridors, and the urban transformation of the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area into a regional productivity hub.
At the grassroots, the plan scales up the Parish Development Model and Emyooga, aiming to monetize rural households and integrate them into the cash economy.
This focus is born of necessity. With Uganda’s debt stock approaching UGX 96 trillion by the 2024/25 financial year, fiscal discipline is no longer optional.
NDP IV targets a reduction of the fiscal deficit below 3% of GDP, a domestic revenue ratio of 18.3%, and tighter limits on supplementary budgets.
In essence, fiscal realism is now Uganda’s new economic religion.
Why manifesto alignment matters
When political manifestos promise expansive subsidies, blanket tax cuts, or unfunded new programmes, they risk undermining the very fiscal anchors that sustain growth.
Investors read such inconsistencies as warning signs.
Uganda’s private sector makes long-term decisions based on predictable policy signals.
A manifesto that reinforces NDP IV, focusing on industrialization, value addition, digital transformation, and exports, assures markets of stability and continuity.
A manifesto that deviates sends the opposite message.
Thus, the real test is not in who promises tax cuts or subsidies, but in who can make Uganda’s economy competitive.
The continuity candidate
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) manifesto mirrors NDP IV’s priorities almost line for line.
Its economic promise is one of continuity: industrialization, agro-processing, value addition, and mineral beneficiation.
It commits to “vertical and horizontal value addition to provide market for PDM products”, echoing NDP IV’s call for strong value chains from production to export.
It also pledges to deepen access to patient capital through Uganda Development Bank, Uganda Development Corporation, and Agricultural Credit Facility, the same financial tools the plan designates as catalysts for private-sector-led–led growth.
In agriculture, NRM promises to consolidate Operation Wealth Creation and PDM to shift 33% of households from subsistence to commercial farming.
It also supports agricultural research through NARO and NaCORI, targeting drought-resistant crops, vaccines, and pest control, all in line with NDP IV’s vision of “productivity-led growth.”
In energy, the alignment continues. The manifesto lists an expansive portfolio, from Buyende Nuclear Power Plant (8,600 MW) to Kiba Hydropower (400 MW), and aims to lower industrial tariffs to 5 US cents per kWh.
This dovetails perfectly with NDP IV’s infrastructure and energy affordability goals.
NRM’s focus on science, technology, and innovation, from hi-tech cities to EV charging infrastructure, mirrors NDP IV’s recognition of innovation.
However, the party’s biggest challenge is execution within fiscal limits.
The plan caps deficits below 3% of GDP, yet NRM’s ambitious infrastructure commitments will demand billions in sustained public investment.
Without accelerated private-sector mobilisation, delivery could strain the macro framework.
The rhetoric aligns. The question is whether the execution will.
Diageo to Exit East African Breweries as Asahi Takes ControlReformist energy, fiscal risk
National Unity Platform (NUP) approaches the 10×10 vision from the opposite direction — with reformist energy rather than continuity.
Beneath its populist tone, however, the party’s economic priorities often align with NDP IV.
Its pledge to create 10 million jobs by 2032, 60% in manufacturing, 25% in tourism, and 15% in the creative industries, echoes NDP IV’s focus on industrial and service-led growth.
Likewise, its proposal for school feeding to enhance agricultural markets and food security complements the plan’s call for robust value chains.
Where NUP diverges is in governance reform. The proposal to abolish RDCs and RCCs and devolve fiscal authority to local councils could improve service delivery.
However, it risks fragmenting the plan’s coordinated programme-based model.
The party’s emphasis on digital transformation, ICT hubs, and renewable power access fits well with NDP IV’s sustainability pillars.
Yet its timelines are highly ambitious, connecting all off-grid communities within two years, and lack cost clarity.
Ultimately, NUP converges with NDP IV on economic structure but diverges on fiscal realism. Its strength lies in governance reform; its risk lies in affordability.
Governance realism, technical gaps
Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) positions itself as a reformist force seeking to “fix the economy” by restoring institutional integrity.
Its proposed revival of cooperatives, re-establishment of Cooperative Bank, and fertilizer subsidies align strongly with NDP IV’s goals of financial inclusion and aggregation.
In education, FDC pledges to improve teacher pay, reform the competence-based curriculum, and introduce a national school feeding program.
This echoes NDP IV’s human capital priorities. But again, it lacks detailed costings or funding frameworks.
Where FDC stands out is in governance realism. Its critique of the PDM’s inefficiencies and its call to rebuild rationalized agencies align with NDP IV’s demand for stronger policy coherence.
However, without clear sequencing or timelines, the manifesto remains more aspirational than executable.
Law, continuity, and credibility
Despite their ideological differences, all major parties share a rhetorical commitment to industrialization, agriculture, and job creation.
The real divergence lies in execution, governance, and fiscal management.
Under the Public Finance Management Act, every incoming administration must produce a Charter of Fiscal Responsibility consistent with the National Development Plan.
That legal requirement binds all future governments to NDP IV’s fiscal and economic objectives.
Dr Henry Sebukeera, Technical Advisor on Budget at Ministry of Finance, says: “The law has already provided for alignment of party manifestos to NDP.”
This legal architecture assures investors of continuity. Manifestos may differ in tone, but their fiscal and development goals must remain tethered to NDP IV.
The real growth test
Dr Sebukeera argues that Uganda’s challenge is not tax cuts, but competitiveness.
“The issue is not tax rates,” he says. “It’s the high cost of power, transport, and capital that stifles business growth.”
Uganda already loses UGX 2–3 trillion annually in tax exemptions.
NDP IV’s focus on infrastructure, energy, logistics, and human capital aims to fix these structural constraints and create a genuinely competitive business environment.
“You can’t be taxed on what you haven’t earned,” Sebukeera says, a line that captures the plan’s essence.
Reading the signals right
For investors, NDP IV sends clear market signals through “ATMs”: Agro-industrialization, Tourism, Minerals, and Science, Technology & Innovation.
Each is backed by major public investment, offering predictable opportunities for private capital.
But as Dr Sebukeera warns, Uganda’s private sector must overcome fragmentation and short-termism.
“Oil and gas alone will generate thousands of spin-off activities. The question is whether local firms will position themselves to supply those needs,” he says.
Public investment, he insists, should de-risk, not replace, private enterprise.
Government’s role is to lower business costs, while the private sector drives production, exports, and jobs.
Vision over politics
Uganda’s economic future will be determined less by who wins in 2026 and more by how faithfully the next government implements NDP IV under the discipline of the 10×10 Growth Strategy.
The test for the next leader is not to produce another vision document — but to make the existing one work.
