An Open Letter To His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

They called it sovereignty. We call it hunger

An open letter to President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on the law that broke the shilling and the warning buried in April.

By Mukama Phillip Kahigiriza

Your Excellency,

I am writing this at 2:17am. I cannot sleep. A colleague — an Uber driver from Kampala — called earlier to borrow Shs 10,000 for fuel. Last month he borrowed 5,000. He said quietly, “Mukama, petrol is now 8,000.” He did not complain about the government. He just sounded tired.

Mzee, that tiredness is the subject of this letter.

On 28 April 2026, a man you trust with our money spoke like a prophet. Bank of Uganda Governor Michael Atingi-Ego sat before the Joint Committee and did not shout. He said plainly: “A country without reserves is not sovereign.” He explained that the previous year Uganda had recorded a surplus of $1.5 billion — not because the country had sold more coffee, but because Ugandans in Dubai, London and Boston had sent money home. From that love, the country had built $6 billion in reserves. “The moment you tamper with these inflows,” he warned, “we risk running down our reserves, and that is economic disaster.”

Then came the sentence that demanded the longest pause: “Bank of Uganda was never consulted.”

Mzee, how does a government write a law about money without consulting the keeper of money?

The legislation was the Protection of Sovereignty Bill, 2026, tabled on 15 April by Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka. Its name is attractive. But as Frantz Fanon warned, nationalism that does not include the economic liberation of the people is an empty shell. Under the Bill, any person receiving more than Shs 400 million from outside Uganda without ministerial permission would be classified as a foreign agent — required to register, disclose funding and obtain a certificate. Failure: 20 years in prison. Influencing public opinion against government policy on behalf of a foreigner: criminal.

Mzee, in 2025, the Ugandan diaspora sent home $2.5 billion. That money is not foreign. It is Ugandan — earned by a mother in Qatar who sleeps on a concrete floor so her daughter in Kabale can sleep under a roof.

The warnings came from across the political spectrum. Job Kiija cried: “You are giving the power of the Constitution to the Minister.” Ssemujju Nganda, who has observed Ugandan parliaments for three decades, said: “This is coming mainly to regulate political funding.” Lawyer Godber Tumushabe was unsparing: “We literally no longer have the 1995 Constitution.” Isaac Ssemakadde, president of the Uganda Law Society, speaking from exile because he fears to return home, called it simply: “An announcement of departure.” Joel Ssenyonyi argued the law was redundant — treason already criminalised, anti-money laundering laws already in place. Medard Sseggona noted the absence of public consultation. Jonathan Odur reported that microphones had been switched off.

After seven hours on 6 May, it passed. On 22 May, it became law.

The government then amended it — remittances exempted, foreign direct investment exempted. On paper, safe. But Adam Smith observed 250 years ago that money does not like to be frightened. Money does not read footnotes. It reads fear. When a government calls its own people foreign agents, their relatives abroad stop sending.

What the governor predicted in April came to pass exactly as he said it would. On 8 October, Reuters reported the Ugandan shilling had fallen 11 per cent since January — the worst depreciation in modern history. From 3,604 in March to 4,040, then 4,090, then 4,100. Offshore investors sold treasury bills and fled to Kenya and Tanzania. Manufacturers bought dollars in panic. Energy companies needed more as global oil prices climbed.

On 6 October, Ssenyonyi rose in parliament again — not triumphant, but sad. He quoted the governor’s April warning back to the chamber, then said simply: “It is biting hard.”

Let me translate that into the language of daily life. It is traders in Kikuubo unable to clear containers from Mombasa — one container now costs millions of shillings more than six months ago. It is petrol at Shs 6,529 in August and 8,000 yesterday. A boda boda rider works an entire day to buy enough fuel to work tomorrow. As the novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi observed: in Uganda, people do not die of politics. They die of transport costs.

On 9 October, Independence Day, you spoke in Entebbe. You said you were “totally against” the governor’s proposal to deploy reserves to stabilise the shilling, calling it squandering resources to help people “importing dead people’s hair.”

Mzee, I paused the television there.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote that poverty is not simply the absence of money — it is the absence of the capability to be heard. The woman importing hair extensions does not think of herself as importing dead people’s hair. She thinks of herself as importing her livelihood. When you reduce a national currency crisis to wigs, she does not hear economic policy. She hears her president laughing at her small business.

You said a weak shilling helps exporters. That is true. But Uganda’s coffee farmer receives more shillings per dollar while buying fuel at 8,000 per litre to transport that coffee to Kampala, and fertiliser and medicine priced at 4,100 to the dollar. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o asks: how can a country export what it cannot afford to produce?

Mzee, I am 30. I was born in the Uganda you rebuilt. My father tells me that in 1986 there were no reserves — zero. You built $6 billion from zero. You know what zero means. Do not let seven hours in May unravel forty years.

I beg you, not as opposition, but as your muzukulu, to consider three things. Recall the Protection of Sovereignty Bill for genuine review — with the diaspora, with traders, with the Bank of Uganda. Let the governor deploy reserves prudently to calm the market, not to subsidise imports, but to show that $6 billion is real. And come to Kikuubo. Without convoy. Ask that mama selling hair what her exchange rate means this week.

Your Excellency, our elder Ali Mazrui wrote that Africa’s sovereignty is not in its flags, but in its stomachs. Uganda was warned in April. The warning became law in May. The country is weeping in October. There is still time for history to record that when the shilling bled, Mzee listened.

Yours faithfully,

Mukama Phillip Kahigiriza
Author and journalist
mukphix@gmail.com

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