Uganda wants to grow its economy from about $50 billion to $500 billion by 2040.
It is one of the country’s most ambitious targets since independence. The government has laid out the path through the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), whose key pillars include industrialization, value addition, innovation, export growth and a more productive population.
But behind every factory, every innovation, every new technology and every good policy is one resource that cannot be imported or borrowed from human knowledge.
That is why the success or failure of Uganda’s tenfold growth strategy will depend heavily on an institution that gets far less attention than roads, electricity or investment incentives: the university. Universities do far more than award degrees.
They train the scientists who improve agriculture, the engineers who design industries, the doctors who strengthen public health, the lawyers who shape policy, the teachers who raise the next generation, and the entrepreneurs who create jobs.
If Uganda is serious about transforming its economy, strengthening its universities is not optional. It is a national necessity. This is not a new lesson. Uganda’s own history shows that national development has always moved alongside the growth of higher education.
For some background, Uganda’s journey in higher education began in 1922, when Makerere University opened as a small technical school with just 14 students learning carpentry, mechanics and building.
Within a few years it had expanded into medicine, agriculture, veterinary science and teacher training, before growing into one of Africa’s most respected universities. By the late 1980s, the country still had just one public university. That changed quickly from the 1990s onward.
Today, Uganda has more than 40 chartered and accredited universities, public and private, spread across the country. That transformation mirrors Uganda’s own journey from colonial administration, through years of political instability, to today’s ambition of becoming an upper middle-income economy.
As the country’s priorities changed, its universities changed too, moving from producing artisans to training the researchers, innovators, policymakers, and professionals whose work increasingly shapes national development.
STRUCTURE IS EASY TO DESCRIBE
It is easy to list what the tenfold growth strategy wants; exports up, savings up, a bigger formal economy, more manufacturing. Those are the numbers.
But the real spirit behind the plan is a refusal to keep doing things the same way and hoping for a different result. Take Makerere University’s strategic plan (2025–2030), which offers a practical example of what this looks like in action.
Rather than focusing only on teaching, the university has placed research, innovation, partnerships and societal transformation at the center of its mission.
Through the Makerere Research and Innovations Fund (Mak-RIF), researchers are developing solutions in agriculture, engineering, health, environmental conservation, and digital technology.
For example, at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), scientists continue to strengthen Africa’s ability to respond to public health emergencies through research, disease surveillance, and innovation.
International partnerships matter too. Makerere University’s exchange agreements with the University of Padova and the University of Perugia in Italy have opened the door for students and staff to study, teach and research abroad and for Italian researchers to work alongside Ugandan ones here.
Under the Padova partnership alone, Ugandan students in fields like statistics and environmental science have spent semesters training at a university with far deeper research funding and more advanced labs than most of what is available locally.
Yet Uganda faces an uncomfortable contradiction. While it expects universities to produce evidence-based solutions, leadership positions in some public institutions are still handed to people without the relevant professional background.
So, Uganda’s journey towards a $500 billion economy will not be won through infrastructure projects alone. Universities should therefore be seen not simply as centers of learning, but as national development institutions.
If Uganda is serious about achieving tenfold growth by 2040, its universities cannot stand on the sidelines. They must stand at the very center of the country’s development agenda.
The author is a concerned citizen.