How a ban on charcoal threatens survival for urban vendors

Parliament has temporarily slammed the brakes on the enforcement of Uganda’s controversial charcoal trade ban, offering a brief window of relief to thousands of traders, food vendors, and low-income households.

The intervention, announced by Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oboth-Oboth during a plenary sitting on October 14, 2026, halts the crackdown until October 21. Lawmakers stepped in to force a pause because the government has yet to demonstrate how ordinary citizens who rely on charcoal can affordably switch to alternative cooking fuels.

The temporary suspension halts Presidential Executive Order No. 3 of 2023, which restricts commercial charcoal burning and trade across northern Uganda, West Nile, Karamoja, and the Teso sub-region to curb rapid deforestation.

For years, the state has struggled to balance environmental conservation with the stark economic realities of everyday life. Data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics highlights the immense scale of this challenge: roughly 94 per cent of Ugandan households depend on biomass for cooking.

Firewood accounts for 73 per cent, while charcoal fuels 21 per cent of homes. In contrast, electricity makes up only 1.4 per cent, kerosene sits at 0.6 per cent, and liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, and other fuels account for about 3.9 per cent.

When a policy targets a resource used by more than a fifth of the population, the ripple effects are immediate and severe. Before Parliament intervened, the police crackdown was hitting the ground hard.

Uganda Police Force spokesperson Assistant Commissioner of Police Rusoke Kituuma noted that inter-agency operations were aggressively targeting trans port routes, roadside vendors, and even motorists carrying charcoal for personal home use.

Security teams had already impounded 270 bags of charcoal in a short span, with Kituuma warning that anyone caught transporting the fuel risked arrest and prosecution.

That aggressive enforcement sent waves of panic through urban working-class neighborhoods where charcoal is the lifeblood of daily commerce.

Ivan, a charcoal seller in Kamwokya, explained that many vendors took out loans through government poverty-alleviation initiatives like the Parish Development Model to stock their businesses.

If the trade is abruptly outlawed, he warned, traders will default on those loans, lose their livelihoods, and find themselves unable to pay their children’s school fees. Small-scale food vendors face an equally grim financial squeeze.

Abed, a chapati and rolex vendor in Kamwokya, spends about Shs 50,000 every two weeks on charcoal, fearing that shifting to gas will inflate his overhead costs. Similarly, Scovia, who runs a small eatery in Kiira, spends roughly Shs 30,000 a week on charcoal.

Juggling three separate loans while supporting her family, she warned that forcing her to adopt gas would destroy her razor-thin profit margins and drive her out of business, leaving her with no choice but to abandon the city and return to her village.

Higher operational costs would inevitably force vendors to raise food prices, punishing low-income customers who rely on an affordable plate of beans for Shs 3,000. The government maintains that the environmental toll of deforestation leaves them little choice.

During the parliamentary debate, the Minister of State for Mineral Development, Phiona Nyamutoro, defended the government’s push toward clean energy, pointing to promotional campaigns for electricity, biogas, ethanol, and LPG.

Nyamutoro shared that she personally stopped using charcoal after joining the energy ministry, adding that the state has introduced a special electricity cooking tariff and is distributing free LPG cylinders and accessories.

She also pointed to future domestic production pipelines from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil and gas projects as a long-term solution to lower fuel costs. However, skepticism remains high under the Capitol dome.

Members of Parliament challenged whether these interventions are realistic for citizens who cannot afford the upfront cost of cooking appliances or the recurring price of gas refills.

Critics pointed out that simply handing out gas cylinders solves nothing if families lack the cash to refill them when empty. Furthermore, switching centuries-old cooking habits requires navigating deep-seated cultural preferences, safety anxieties, and infrastructural barriers like unreliable electricity.

All eyes now turn to October 21, 2026, when the executive branch is expected to present a comprehensive report to Parliament detailing how it plans to roll out clean energy access without crushing vulnerable small businesses and households.

Until then, the smoke from charcoal stoves continues to rise across urban centers, marking a temporary truce in Uganda’s high-stakes battle between protecting its vanishing forests and feeding its people.

The post How a ban on charcoal threatens survival for urban vendors appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.