Written By | Evan Sande Ndahura
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate
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In the early 1960s through the 1980s, a Ugandan one-hundred-shilling note was not pocket change. It could buy farmland, more than two cows, start a business, fund a wedding, build a house, or even secure an air ticket. The shilling was not merely a medium of exchange; it was value itself.
Today, that same 100 shillings can barely buy a matchbox, the smallest sweet, or a polythene paper, items of little or no economic significance. What once built livelihoods now buys litter. The contrast is stark and painful.
In the early 1990s, my father bought land capable of grazing more than 10 cows at UGX 450,000. Today, that same amount can only purchase a suit or a dress, a mere piece of cloth. The land remains productive. The money has been stripped of its worth.
To the ordinary Ugandan, this appears like progress. Salaries have more zeros, prices are higher, and government budgets are announced in trillions. Many assume this means people are richer. But wealth is not measured by how much money circulates. It is measured by what that money can buy. Inflation disguises poverty in numbers, creating an illusion of growth while silently eroding purchasing power.
To economists, Uganda’s shrinking shilling is not accidental or natural. It is the outcome of reckless governance, corruption, and unproductive public expenditure. A currency loses value when it is not backed by production, discipline, and accountability. Uganda imports far more than it produces, industrialises slowly, tolerates corruption, and spends extravagantly without scrutiny.
Much of the corrupt, stolen, and unaccounted-for public money is not invested in agriculture, manufacturing, health, or education. Instead, it is consumed through luxury. Public funds are used to purchase private high-end vehicles, burn fuel endlessly, construct bungalows and mansions that generate no productivity, and finance frequent foreign trips with bloated delegations. These expenditures create no jobs, no exports, and no lasting economic value. They only weaken the shilling while enriching a small elite.
One of the most wasteful yet normalised expenditures is the cost of presidential movements. A single presidential convoy often involves more than thirty vehicles, massive fuel consumption, security and protocol allowances, advance deployments, and extensive logistics. Conservative estimates place the cost of a presidential movement at between UGX 500 million and UGX 700 million, or more, depending on mileage, purpose, and duration. That amount could construct two fully functional Health Centre IIIs, tarmac a kilometre of road, extend electricity to several rural communities, or provide safe national water to thousands of citizens. Yet such movements occur frequently, sometimes several times a week, turning public funds into motion rather than development.
The waste does not stop there. Uganda spends billions on non-developmental public celebrations, independence anniversaries, liberation days, national prayers, political commemorations, and excessive public holidays. A single major national celebration can cost between UGX 3 and 6 billion, excluding the enormous productivity losses caused by work stoppages. When public holidays are multiplied across the year, the economy loses hundreds of billions of shillings in output. An economy that celebrates excessively while producing little cannot sustain a strong currency.
Uganda is also among the East African countries experiencing severe traffic congestion, particularly in Kampala. While poor infrastructure is often blamed, the deeper issue is economic behaviour. The increase in private vehicle ownership is largely fueled by luxury preferences, leisure activities, and political patronage, rather than productive economic activity. These vehicles increase fuel imports, drain foreign exchange, waste working hours, and add no export value. Traffic jams have become a daily symbol of an economy burning fuel while standing still.
Under the National Resistance Movement (NRM), Uganda has perfected a model of consumption without production. Public expenditure prioritises political survival, patronage, and prestige over long-term economic sustainability. Budgets expand, yet industries stagnate. Money circulates, but value disappears. The shilling weakens because it is backed not by factories, farms, and exports, but by convoys, ceremonies, corruption, and waste.
Uganda’s crisis is not the absence of money. It is the destruction of value. What once bought land now buys wrappers. What once secured futures now finances luxury for a few. The layman sees more money. The economist sees economic collapse. Until corruption is punished, waste is eliminated, and public spending is redirected toward health, roads, electricity, water, and production, Uganda’s shilling will continue to shrink—quietly punishing the many for the excesses of the few.
About the Author
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate. His writings focus on governance, constitutionalism, democracy, and the political economy of power in Africa. Writing from a Pan-African critical perspective, he interrogates the failures of state institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens under entrenched systems of power. He believes that the liberation of Africa will occur through a mighty pen, not the gun.
