Next month, the five-year tenure of Robert Mukiza, the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) director general, comes to an end.
It remains to be seen whether he will seek a reappointment, but a leaked UIA board performance review scores him at 37 per cent overall on grounds of a series of stalled industrial parks, governance failures, ministerial disputes, toxic leadership, along with a €215 million (about Shs 921 billion) flagship project plagued by cost overruns, cutbacks and illegal foreign workers.
UIA is the state agency mandated to attract and facilitate foreign and domestic investment, but according to several insider sources, it faces a looming leadership crisis. In the leaked board assessment, the crisis includes problems with governance, claims of bad management, a serious split with the overseeing ministry, and a main industrial park project that has seen its costs rise while its size has decreased, with foreign workers reportedly on site without the proper permits.
Sources within the ministry of Finance have told The Observer that top officials have already finalized plans and written to cabinet to kickstart the transfer of UIA to the ministry of Trade, Industry & Cooperatives (MOTIC) to be folded under the Uganda Free Zones and Export Promotions Authority (UFZEPA).
According to the source, the two entities have had duplicate mandates for a long time and should have been rationalised years ago.
“The looming transfer is a also consequence of Mukiza’s alleged underperformance and his poisoned relationships with Finance minister Matia Kasaija and state minister for Investment, Evelyn Anite,” said the source.
Numerous efforts to reach out to Mukiza have been futile as his known phones don’t go through.
THE NUMBERS
The leaked board review, structured as a formal performance dashboard evaluated against UIA’s own strategic plan 2020/21–2025/26, notes that of the 10 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), only two are on track, five are in partial or amber territory and three are critically off track.
The board’s overall verdict is classified as ‘Amber: Significant Progress with Key Gaps.’ While Mukiza delivered on foreign direct investment and jobs targets, which are delivered by multiple organizations including President Museveni’s efforts to woo investors, he fell materially short on UIA specific actions such as industrial park rollout, budget utilisation, domestic direct investment and diaspora investment channelling.
FLAGSHIP PROGRAMME OF INDUSTRIAL PARKS IN FREEFALL
When Mukiza assumed office in late 2020, Uganda had an ambitious industrial park programme at the centre of its economic transformation agenda.
The plan was to develop 23 Industrial and Business Parks (IBPs) and four Specialised and Thematic Industrial Parks (STIPs) by 2025, establishing a national network of investment-ready industrial zones to drive manufacturing, exports, value addition and job creation at scale.
Five years on, the board’s assessment mentions that only 11 parks are operational, and of those, at least three are private sector developments that proceeded largely without UIA’s facilitation.
The most advanced publicly-led project, the Kampala Industrial and Business Park (KIBP) at Namanve, stands at just 60 per cent completion after six years; two years behind its original schedule.
The board has concluded that reaching the target of 25 parks by 2030 is achievable in principle, but will require urgent course correction, private capital through public-private partnership (PPP) frameworks and a fundamental change in the pace and quality of delivery.
“628 companies have been allocated land in UIA parks. Only 307 are operational. That gap of 321 companies holding land without producing is the measure of the programme’s failure,” notes the report.
The board’s performance review identifies three root causes for the industrial parks failure as inadequate and unpredictable funding, with UIA chronically underfunded against a Shs 2.3 trillion five-year plan; limited PPP frameworks, with private capital not sufficiently mobilised to bridge the public funding gap; and weak accountability with no published quarterly construction milestones, no transparent project reporting, and no consequence management for delivery failures.
NAMANVE FOCUS
The Namanve industrial park, home to the Kampala Industrial and Business Park (KIBP) project, was conceived as the centrepiece of Uganda’s industrial transformation.
The €215 million infrastructure development executed under an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract by Lagan Dott, is supervised by an Owner’s Engineer consortium comprising Roughton International, Turner & Townsend, Joadah Consultants and Basic Group Ltd.
It should have been completed by 2024. Six years after commencement, it stands at 60 per cent completion. Multiple sources at UIA have revealed to The Observer that the scope of the KIBP has been materially reduced even as its costs have risen, raising questions about contract management, governance and accountability.
According to insiders, both the solid waste treatment plant and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) park; two of the project’s most economically significant components for local business development, have been removed from the project scope.
The SME park land, sources allege, was sold to private individuals for purposes entirely unrelated to the original project mandate. Further, the overpass planned on the Kampala-Jinja highway, has also been removed from the project.
Sources say UIA has simultaneously introduced payment variations to contractors that have increased input costs, deepening the budget overrun without commensurate delivery. Most seriously, the contractor Lagan Dott is accused of bringing in foreign nationals to work on the project without valid work permits.
The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) has been investigating the matter for years, but sources say progress has stalled due to a questionable loss of interest among the investigators.
For one, the Inspectorate of Government (IG) launched preliminary inquiries last year into allegations that an Irish national, Gerry Anthony Cawley, was illegally overseeing operations at Namanve.
When reached out for a comment, a top-level IG official confirmed the file remains open but declined to divulge any details due to the sensitivity of the matter.
“We are still monitoring the situation and can only reveal to the public after concrete evidence is obtained,” the official said. “We want to take action when we are sure we have a good case.”
Simon Peter Mundeyi, the spokesperson for the ministry of Internal Affairs and the DCIC, asked for more time to review the case when contacted for comment.
The laxity is reportedly claimed as one of the reasons Maj Gen Apollo Kasiita-Gowa and Brig Gen Johnson Namanya were recalled from DCIC, where they served as Director and Commissioner for Citizenship and Passport Management, respectively. Namanya was recently arrested on the orders of the CDF Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba and is yet to be formally charged.
AN INSTITUTION IN LIMBO?
With the imminent expiry of Mukiza’s five-year contract, multiple sources confirm that, as of the time of the board’s investigation, he had not submitted a formal request for contract renewal, a procedural requirement that must be initiated six months before the contract’s expiry date.
“Procedurally, the director general has to put in a request for contract renewal six months before expiry, but he has not done so. Either he doesn’t intend to serve another contract, or he despises the board, which is the most likely scenario,” said a UIA board source.
The failure to initiate renewal proceedings has created a vacuum that is already affecting UIA’s operational continuity.
“Investment promotion institutions require stable leadership to maintain investor confidence, manage long-term programmes and sustain bilateral and multilateral relationships. An institution in leadership limbo, a fractured ministerial relationship, a stalled industrial parks programme and a board that has lost confidence in its chief executive is an institution that cannot effectively discharge its mandate,” added the source.
RECOVERY AGENDA
The board’s performance review names five recommendations on the way forward. On the leadership side, the board calls for an independent human resource audit to review all staff terminations since Mukiza’s appointment, with assessment of improper dismissal cases and reinstatement needs; an emergency board-Mukiza session to restore governance protocols and establish a mandatory reporting cadence; and a mediated ministerial alignment meeting.
This would be a structured session between Mukiza, Kasaija, and the UIA board chair, Dr Robert Kyamanywa, to formally reset the chain of command. This is in the event that the imminent transfer of UIA to the Trade ministry is delayed into next financial year. In all this, it remains to be seen how the different stakeholders will come out of the impasse.
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