COMMENTARY | By the time President Museveni and First Lady Janet arrived in Kamwenge last Thursday, the message had already been written in the dust. Here, Uganda’s longest-serving leader was not looking down on the country through the safety and comfort of a chopper window.
Instead, he was right in it—windows up, AC humming, but still unable to escape the dry, choking red earth that rose in clouds around his convoy.
yes, this was no state visit; this was a reality check.
The slow crawl along the cratered Kyenjojo–Kamwenge Road laid bare a truth that the elite bubble often insulates against. The President, clad in his signature white cotton shirt and flanked by his equally stoic spouse, wore a face mask inside his air-conditioned luxury car—not for COVID, not for pollution, but probably to escape Uganda itself.
For 40 years, Museveni has told Ugandans he was transforming the country from chaos to prosperity, rust to trust, and dust to gloss. For much of that time, he floated above the problems—literally. From the comfort of helicopters and chartered planes, he flew over villages sinking deeper into poverty, peered down at broken roads that only got patched when presidential visits were imminent, and missed the very terrain that tells the truest story of Uganda.
But gravity has caught up.
Since cutting back on flying to avoid the physical toll of air turbulence, the President is now being forced to taste the Uganda his foot soldiers have sugarcoated for decades. It is a Uganda where rural roads are treacherous, not just during rainy seasons but even in dry ones. It is a Uganda where the luxury of mobility—the very ability to move from one district to another—is a daily gamble for millions.
And Kamwenge is no outlier.
Despite boasting one of the largest road budgets in East Africa, Uganda still struggles to deliver a truly modern transport infrastructure. According to the African Development Bank and World Bank data:
- Uganda has constructed approximately 6,000 km of paved (tarmac) roads in the last 40 years under the NRM regime.
- In comparison, Kenya has built over 22,000 km in the same period, while Tanzania’s network exceeds 14,000 km.
- Less than 25% of Uganda’s total road network is paved, leaving the majority of rural areas—where most Ugandans live—barely accessible.
So when Museveni expressed shock at the deepening poverty in Busoga in 2022, it wasn’t because the poverty had just appeared—it was because, for the first time, he was looking at it not from 10,000 feet above, but from eye level, through a dusty windscreen.
“I kept wondering to myself, how do these people live through this sort of poverty?” he asked at a function in Mayuge.
Well, the answer was always there—on the ground, in the villages, along the broken roads, in the abandoned markets, and under the rusted roofs. He just hadn’t seen it well enough, because he wasn’t there. Not really.
There’s a certain poetic justice in the President experiencing the country in a slower, rawer form. The same way Ugandans queue up for hours to vote in elections that promise services but deliver speeches. The same way mothers ride on bodabodas in labour over potholes to clinics that have no medicine. The same way teachers walk to schools whose classrooms are still held up by logs and prayer.
He’s lucky it didn’t rain. Kamwenge under a downpour would not have made for a mere delay—it would have been a disaster. That is if his minders pushed ahead with the program rather than conveniently cancel it.
In the end, what Museveni now faces is not just the crumbling state of roads, but the crumbling façade of progress. For a man who once believed flying high meant moving fast, the slow drive through Kamwenge may be the most important journey of his political life.
Because if you're not willing to walk Uganda, then maybe you shouldn’t be leading it.
Mr Museveni, what do we do now? Well, at least we can thank you for enduring it all, for dedicating your time to this PDM cause while plying these really bad roads.