Despite pressure from politicians, economists and the media, Museveni has remained undeterred.
Uganda is close to achieving something no free country in peacetime has managed in the modern era. In under three months on January 24, 2025, it will notch three years without a substantive Central Bank governor.
Ever since the long-serving, cerebral and combative economist Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile who was Governor of the Bank of Uganda (BoU) died on January 23, 2022, President Yoweri Museveni has not appointed a successor.
Politicians, economists, and the media have made a lot of noise about it, but Museveni has been singularly deaf to their whining, and now he seems to have exhausted them.
One reason he has gotten away with it is that Uganda’s economy has gotten on fairly well without the governor. It has continued to post the second-lowest inflation in the East African Community after Tanzania.
At the beans and potatoes level, it can brag about Africa’s lowest food inflation. The exchange rate of the Uganda Shilling against major international currencies has remained remarkably stable since Tumusiime-Mutebile, a famed fiscal conservative, passed on.
Some commentators have argued it is proof that Deputy Governor Michael Atingi-Ego is doing something right, and the stability proves that the Bank of Uganda has institutional depth. However, Atingi-Etoo has not undertaken any major policy shifts, and only recently did he make minor personnel changes. Perhaps he should most be credited with holding his nerve.
Critics say that Museveni, in power for nearly 39 years, hasn’t been able to appoint a governor because he is politically weak, afraid to cast the dice and anger the factions angling for the job. The secret, however, is to be found further back.
After the late-1980s to early-1990s radical economic reforms and market liberalisation, the Museveni government mostly left the economy alone.
Museveni has a big phobia of inflation. He is at his most derisive when criticising the 1970s runaway inflation and commodity shortages of military dictator Field Marshal Idi Amin’s regime, and a similar spectacle in the early 1980s during Milton Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress rule.
The economy has been pillaged by politicians and regime cronies since then, but Museveni has been most consistent in two things: Don’t meddle with the economy and exchange rate.
One of the most striking things about Museveni’s government is just how untalented or unsuitable for their jobs most of his ministers are.
Ugandans on X (formerly Twitter) who delight in mocking him on this, love to draw contrasts between Rwanda’s youthful minister of ICT and Innovation Paula Ingabire, 41, a technology professional and graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the far much older Joyce Ssebugwawo, who is the current Minister of State for Information Communication Technology and National Guidance.
A former owner of a salon, they snigger that her technology expertise is braiding hair.
However, there is a method to this seeming Museveni madness. He picks a few smart ministers, and for the rest, he appoints those who will do nothing, useful only for winning political support from their constituents for him.
It is a very old-fashioned approach, much like the ancient Arab kings, princes, and wealthy men who assigned eunuchs to guard and serve in their harems, thus ensuring that they wouldn’t have affairs with their wives, concubines, sisters, or daughters.
He has not hidden this strategy. After yet another controversial re-election in 2021, by the standards of his unremarkable cabinet, he still surprised many by going lower.
Calling them “fishermen”, he explained that he was inspired by the example from the Bible of the four humble fishermen, who were the first disciples Jesus called to his side. Many understood him to say he was appointing them because of loyalty, not their management or technical competence.
But ministers cannot sit in office all day playing games on their mobile phones and reading horoscopes; and there is paperwork to be done, bureaucracies to supervise, and government programmes to oversee. To ensure that ministers don’t actually do their jobs, Museveni took most of their work away.
First, for almost every ministry, he set up a parallel office in State House, which wields more or equal power. He then went further and appointed enough presidential advisers to fill a medium-sized auditorium.
There are so many, it is said on the rare occasion when some of them meet him, some once in five years, they have to introduce themselves and explain who they are. There are 30 Cabinet ministers and 50 Ministers of State in Museveni’s Cabinet, but he has over 160 presidential advisers.
Some of the ministers are his relatives, who call him “Uncle Museveni”. With this level of reverence, they cannot assert themselves too much as ministers. The minister of Education is First Lady Museveni, so they live under the same roof and eat at the same dinner table.
On September 14, a weary-looking Museveni celebrated his 80th birthday with some funfair. His withering ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) particularly came out and tried to put a fine foot forward.
Most of the pretenders to his throne from inside the party and family, have thrown in their towels, and all signs are that he will stand as their sole candidate in 2026 when he seeks a record-shattering ninth term.
Erecting hollow men and women has served Museveni well. Now he has entered the inevitable transition period, some think it might serve Uganda well too. “With so many hollow men, there might be no people strong enough to fight for the crown when he leaves, as we feared”, one remarked.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3