Uganda’s costly defence belt around $20bn oil infrastructure and trade routes
UPDF troops preparing to deploy to South Sudan as part of Operation Mlinzi wa Kimya. Uganda’s costly foreign military ventures are draining taxpayers as troops return home in body bags.
Eyebrows are being raised around Uganda’s ‘Napoleonic military adventures,’ with over 15,000 troops in the Great Lakes Region and beyond, fighting in wars and battles whose mission, funding and benefits remain a mystery.
Officially, the government says it deploys in foreign countries to support pan-African stability and to pursue terrorist threats to Uganda, but security experts argue that the country is drawing on its “military machismo” to ring-fence its $20 billion oil infrastructure, while also securing trade routes and its economic sphere of influence.
