KAMPALA, UGANDA — In 2021, the Ugandan government announced a policy that the military would take over all new government-funded construction projects in the health and education sectors. Since then, the scope of the directive has unofficially expanded to include most public sector projects, and private contractors say they are struggling to maintain operations. There are growing fears that this directive is the latest in a series of measures aimed at consolidating and centralizing power.
DN, who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals from the government, says his construction company was working on a project at a public institution when he was informed that the Ugandan army would take over. relay – even if work in these institutions was exempt from the police. He had to lay off his workers.
“About 20 of them all lost their jobs,” he said.
The government claims that delays in the work led to the termination of the contract, but DN believes this is due to the presidential directive which entrusts all construction works in public education and health facilities to the brigade of engineering of the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and the National Enterprise Corporation. , the commercial arm of the country’s military. Existing projects, DN said, were supposed to be exempt.
DN’s experience is not an isolated incident. Ugandan Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja transferred the construction of Luweero General Hospital and Luweero District Administration Headquarters from private contractors in March 2024 to the UPDF Engineering Brigade. The Luweero General Hospital contractor had been working there for about 12 years. The government cited delays as the reason for the work transfer.
Numerous sources from construction companies, all wary of being publicly named, have confirmed the government’s tendency to take over their public sector projects.
Felix Kulayigye, brigadier general and official spokesperson for the Uganda People’s Defense Forces, says the directive prevents corruption and inflated project budgets, and eliminates unnecessary delays that chronically cripple work done by private contractors.
“(They) were affecting the implementation of the presidential agenda,” he said, referring to promises made by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to provide better services to citizens.
The directive strengthens the military’s hold on Uganda’s civilian infrastructure. The country’s military and political powers are already merging. The military holds parliamentary seats as well as key roles in government. It plays an increasingly important role in the fishing and agricultural sectors. More controversially, it has made inroads into the justice system and the electoral process.
There is “no accountability,” says Zahara Nampewo, deputy director of Makerere University’s law school and co-author of a study on the militarization of Uganda’s economy. “Who does (the army) report to? This undermines civilian control.
The problem is much bigger than the monopolization of an industry, she says. Over the past four decades, the role of the Ugandan military has expanded beyond its traditional defense roles to other aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life.
“There is a lack of a clear framework, both at the local and institutional level. The military and civilians should be able to work together. We are building a culture of ‘musevenism’ and the institutions are not functioning as they should,” says Nampewo, referring to an ideology associated with the president, whom she describes as “a military dictatorship disguised as democracy”.
National Enterprise Corporation public relations manager James Katongana denies that his military division lacks accountability. Its representatives appear before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises, which oversees and ensures accountability in government. This is in addition to internal audits, which are submitted to the auditor general, he said.
Kulayigye, the military spokesman, said he was not sure whether the results of the audit would be public and declined to share them with the Global Press Journal. But, he says, military involvement 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 has proposed a sum of 425 billion Ugandan shillings (about 114 million US dollars). It only cost the army 195 billion shillings (about $52 million), he says. And this project, he adds, is one of more than a hundred similar projects.
But revelations about the military’s financial mismanagement have cast doubt on these cost-cutting claims.
The Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises falls under the Public Accounts Commission, which oversees the 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 (about $7.8 million) under a government agricultural project launched in 2022 to address food shortages.
During the same parliamentary session, the committee also reported delays in the completion of projects, including works 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 Faculty of Law, in 2023 there was little evidence to support the cost-effectiveness of employing the peace brigade. UPDF engineering for construction projects, and significant concerns — including fair procurement and competition, transparency, quality of work and exclusion of local suppliers and companies — remain regarding THE quasi-monopoly granted to the UPDF in public and semi-public construction.
It is generally difficult to hold the military to account, explains Muwada Nkunyingi, an opposition MP. Government officials, he said, often avoid questioning military generals, fearing reprisals.
Many private construction companies have reacted negatively to the military construction directive, but others have a more optimistic view.
Rogers Segawa, engineer and managing director of Nexus Construction, says there is no problem with the military taking over government projects. Most private contractors cannot afford this because they need multiple financial guarantees to guarantee the completion of a project. There are plenty of opportunities in the private sector to keep private entrepreneurs busy, he says.
And at least some people who benefit from military construction welcome the change. Livan Ayebare is a student at Makerere University and lives in a university residence that the government renovated in 2023. She believes the work, if carried out by a private company, would have taken more than three months than the military .
The government cannot let private construction companies let people down, said Kulayigye, the military spokesman.
“We respect the private sector,” he said, “but if the private sector wants to block services to the population, we have no choice but to circumvent them. »
