During the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world was groping in the dark for answers, I watched President Museveni’s national addresses religiously.
I was in London, working at the BBC, watching one of the wealthiest nations on earth struggle to make sense of what was unfolding. Despite allocating nearly 15 per cent of its GDP to fighting the pandemic, the UK was reporting hundreds of deaths every day.
Sometimes thousands. Ambulances became a constant on my street — I stopped counting after a while. And when lockdown finally eased, many of the elderly neighbours I used to pass on their evening walks were simply gone.
The ones with the dogs. The ones who always nodded hello. They had died quietly, in one of the most resourced countries in the world, and life had moved on almost as if they hadn’t existed.
It didn’t make sense to me. And frankly, if this were happening there, I feared for Uganda. Then President Museveni spoke. He said he was going back to what he knew — the methods that had served the NRA during the bush war.
To accurately assess an adversary, you stop, you observe, and only then do you act. You let the picture become clear before you commit. Something clicked for me in that moment.
Here was a leader reaching into unconventional, hard-won experience to navigate a crisis that had already humbled far more sophisticated systems. I became convinced, from that point, that Uganda had a more grounded handle on what this pandemic actually required.
The numbers, as it turned out, supported that feeling. Uganda confirmed its first Covid-19 case in March 2020 and its first death — a 34-year-old woman — on 23rd July 2020. By late September, 75 deaths.
Just over 8,000 cases. Even by the end of that year, total fatalities were still in the low hundreds. In England and Wales alone, official figures from March to early May put deaths at around 47,000.
Some estimates placed the UK’s first-wave toll above 50,000. Uganda — many times poorer, with a fraction of the health infrastructure — was holding its own against something that had broken wealthy nations. That wasn’t luck or coincidence.
That was a considered response, rooted in a very particular kind of strategic thinking. And it was, I kept thinking, an extraordinary story. One the world needed to hear. Because no African country was featuring meaningfully in the global Covid-19 conversation.
The narrative was being written elsewhere, about elsewhere. Yet here was Uganda offering something genuinely useful — proof that resources alone don’t determine outcomes. That leadership and local wisdom count for something.
So I pushed for a BBC interview with President Museveni. The newsroom was interested. Editors were on board. For once, the world seemed ready to look at Africa not as a problem to be managed but as a place with actual answers.
The interview didn’t happen. I won’t go into why. But that story was never told — and the outlets that would have carried it, the shift in perception it might have caused, all of that evaporated.
This was not a one-off. It is, I’m afraid, a pattern. The NRM is not a propagandist movement by nature. Guerrillas keep things close to their chests — they move quietly, act decisively, and rarely stop to explain themselves.
In the bush, that instinct kept people alive. In today’s world, where perception shapes investment and policy and partnerships, that same silence becomes a liability nobody can afford. Uganda cannot keep winning quietly and expect the world to notice.
As I said at my inauguration as Executive Director of the Uganda Media Centre, this is not about public relations. It is nation-building — and there is a difference. Uganda has set its sights on a $500 billion economy by 2040.
That is achievable. But only if we own our narrative, push back against those who misrepresent us, and make sure that when this country does something remarkable, the world actually hears about it. We have the stories. We have the evidence. We just need to start telling them.
The author is the executive director of Uganda Media Centre
President Museveni, indeed, did provide strong leadership during the COVID-19 response. However, it is overly simplistic to attribute the outcomes primarily to his bush-war experiences. Several structural and epidemiological factors must be considered in an in-depth and honest analysis.
First, Uganda likely recorded far more COVID-19 cases than were officially reported, largely due to inherent weaknesses in health data systems and surveillance capacity.
Second, Uganda’s population (like much of Africa) is relatively young, while COVID-19 mortality disproportionately affected older populations.
Third, although non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer are increasing, their prevalence remains lower than in many high-income countries, where these comorbidities significantly contributed to COVID-19 mortality.
Fourth, Uganda’s predominantly rural population and lower levels of population density reduced transmission risk compared to highly urbanized settings wherepopulation densities are substantially high. Measures such as social distancing were, to some extent, naturally facilitated by these conditions.
Fifth, limitations in road infrastructure or connectivity may have constrained population movement and interaction, thereby reducing opportunities for viral spread.
These factors, among others, help explain the observed patterns and should be taken into account in any balanced analysis. For your information, Uganda’s experience was not unique; it was broadly consistent with trends observed across many African countries, some of which reported even lower case numbers and deaths without similar historical bush-war contexts.
A comprehensive assessment should therefore consider the full range of determinants influencing SARS-CoV-2 transmission and outcomes. This was a good attempt, but do better next time or leave matters of generals to generals.