Overview:
With the country inching closer to commercial oil production, the stakes could not be higher. Without fundamental reforms, Uganda risks repeating a familiar African tragedy—discovering wealth underground while remaining fiscally poor above it.
Uganda sits atop vast reserves of oil, gas, and minerals. Yet for decades, that natural wealth has generated more controversy than cash for public services. As public debt rises, donor support shrinks, and pressure mounts to fund health, education, and infrastructure, one reality is no longer in dispute: Uganda must raise more money at home.
With the country inching closer to commercial oil production, the stakes could not be higher. Without fundamental reforms, Uganda risks repeating a familiar African tragedy—discovering wealth underground while remaining fiscally poor above it.
At the centre of that risk lies a simple but uncomfortable truth: Uganda’s problem is no longer a lack of resources, but how much of that wealth escapes formal systems before it can be taxed, shared, or invested.
Transparency as fiscal reform, not public relations
Some analysts—and increasingly, officials within the Ministries of Finance and Energy—argue that if Uganda is serious about domestic revenue mobilisation, transparency in the extractive sector must be treated as a core fiscal reform, not a public relations exercise.
The role of oil, gas, and mining in raising domestic revenue is already acknowledged in Uganda’s Domestic Revenue Mobilisation Strategy and the ambitious Ten-fold Growth Strategy, which seeks to expand the economy from USD 59.3 billion to USD 500 billion by 2040. If realised, that growth could significantly raise per-capita incomes and unlock greater investment in public services.
Under the Fourth National Development Plan (NDPIV), economic transformation is anchored on four pillars: agro-industrialisation, tourism, mineral-based development (including oil and gas), and science, technology, and innovation.
But macroeconomic ambition alone will not deliver results. A joint report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) warns that Uganda’s vast mineral endowment—gold, cobalt, iron ore, copper, and rare earth elements among them—will only drive growth if governance gaps are closed.
The report recommends strengthening transparency and accountability in the mining sector to boost investor confidence and ensure mineral wealth benefits the country.
What the EITI report revealed
Uganda’s latest Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) report laid bare the scale of the challenge.
Gold exports that do not match production figures. Oil contracts shielded from public scrutiny. Mining operations functioning beyond the reach of regulators. Together, these gaps raise a fundamental question: can transparency help Uganda avoid the resource curse and mobilise domestic revenue?
That question dominated discussions at the release of the report, where government officials, multinational companies, tax authorities, miners, and civil society confronted an uncomfortable reality—too much extractive wealth disappears before it reaches the tax net.
Contracts, secrecy, and lost trust
For TotalEnergies, one of Uganda’s largest oil investors, transparency begins with contract disclosure.
“We’ve been pushing for contract disclosure since 2020,” a TotalEnergies representative told participants. “If I had a magic wand, we would have this published tomorrow.”
The applause that followed reflected frustration more than surprise. Contracts determine how much revenue the government earns, what communities receive, and what obligations companies must meet. When they remain secret, public trust erodes—and so does confidence that extractive wealth will translate into development.
In a country preparing for oil production, undisclosed contracts are not merely a governance concern; they are a domestic revenue risk. Without scrutiny, loopholes that reduce taxable income can remain hidden indefinitely.
When transparency stops at the top
Civil society actors argue that transparency has often failed because it does not reach the people most affected—or most capable of demanding accountability.
“Many things about extractives remain very illicit,” said Winnie Ngabirwe, Executive Director of Global Rights Alert. “They remain in corporate boardrooms and international reports, yet host communities—the ones affected and meant to benefit—are rarely part of it.”
Ngabirwe called for EITI to evolve into a bottom-up process rooted in mining and oil-producing communities. Transparency that does not empower citizens to ask questions, she argued, ultimately fails to protect public revenue.
“When corruption happens, that corruption takes away money from communities,” she said. “It takes away money from education, from health, from fuel service delivery.”
Who owns the companies—and who pays the price?
Civil society’s push has expanded beyond revenue figures to beneficial ownership disclosure—knowing who truly owns extractive companies.
“We want to understand who owns the companies operating in mining, oil, and gas,” Ngabirwe said. “Because when money is extracted illegally or corruptly, it is women, young people, and poor communities who suffer most.”
Uganda’s adoption of beneficial ownership rules under EITI is widely seen as one of the initiative’s strongest contributions to domestic revenue mobilisation, helping to close channels for illicit financial flows that drain the tax base.
When compliance does not pay
Yet transparency faces resistance. Uganda’s EITI secretariat has repeatedly noted that many mining companies are reluctant to report production, earnings, and payments to government.
From the mining sector, the debate turned to incentives.
“From a business perspective, compliance is a constant cost,” said Kenneth Asiimwe, CEO of the Uganda Association of Artisanal and Small-Scale Miners. “No one is willing to waste money on it.”
Asiimwe argued that transparency must make economic sense. “If being transparent means I get priority access to Parish Development Funds, I would submit my reports immediately,” he said. “If I spend 10 percent on compliance, it should return 20 or 30 percent.”
His proposal reframes transparency not as a moral obligation alone, but as a tool to formalise businesses, expand the tax base, and reward those who operate within the law.
URA admits coordination gaps
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) acknowledges that weak coordination among state agencies has undermined transparency—and revenue collection.
“My magic word is: let’s work together,” said Lawrence Muwonge, URA’s Manager for Extractives. “We have discrepancies. We point fingers at URA, at ministries, at artisanal miners.”
EITI has exposed how fragmented data systems—three databases, none aligned—create confusion, weaken public trust, and open space for tax evasion.
“If we work together,” Muwonge said, “we can hit the road running through EITI implementation.”
The gold problem: where revenue disappears
Nowhere is the cost of opacity clearer than in Uganda’s gold sector.
David Ssebagala, Commissioner at the Mineral Development Program, explained persistent discrepancies between gold production and export figures bluntly.
“Eighty percent of operations are illegal. They are unlicensed,” he said. “What we report is only what comes from formal licences.”
Much of Uganda’s gold exports originate from operations that cannot legally report production—and therefore cannot be properly taxed.
“This discrepancy comes from production outside the formal system,” Ssebagala said. “We cannot report what we cannot legally capture.”
When one arm of government enables leakage
Ssebagala was particularly critical of internal government failures.
“I can’t be fighting illegal mining as the mines department,” he said, “but then URA allows illegally mined products to access the market.”
He called for joint enforcement, including halting exports from illegal operations and operationalising a long-promised “single window” linking the mines department, URA, and customs.
“We are the same government,” he said. “There is no reason why our data should not match.”
Regional consequences
Uganda’s transparency gaps extend beyond its borders. Discrepancies in gold exports are already causing concern within the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).
“This could have serious financial implications if illegal trade is confirmed,” Ssebagala warned.
Failure to address these gaps risks undermining Uganda’s credibility in regional mineral certification systems—threatening legitimate exports and future revenue.
Can transparency break the resource curse?
Uganda’s EITI experience shows that transparency alone is not enough—but without it, domestic revenue mobilisation is impossible.
Contract disclosure can prevent revenue loss before it begins. Beneficial ownership can close corruption loopholes. Coordinated data can expose illegal trade. Incentives can formalise businesses. Community participation can sustain accountability.
Together, these reforms challenge the logic of the resource curse—the idea that natural wealth must inevitably breed poverty, corruption, and conflict.
As Uganda prepares to pump oil and export more minerals, the question is no longer whether transparency matters. It is whether Uganda can turn transparency into taxes—and taxes into the public services that finally allow its natural wealth to benefit its people.