Uganda government reaffirms commitment to fund Dei BioPharma project

Uganda’s government says it will keep backing the Dei BioPharma pharmaceutical and biotechnology project until construction and commissioning are complete, according to Secretary to the Treasury and Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary Ramathan Ggoobi.

Ggoobi disclosed that the state has already channelled close to sh700 billion into the facility, which sits in Kigoowa, Matugga, in Wakiso District. The update came after an inter-ministerial team spent Monday touring the site on a fact-finding visit, during which company technical staff answered questions from officials about the project’s progress and value for money.

Describing the scale of the operation, Ggoobi remarked that it ranked among the biggest manufacturing setups he had come across anywhere in the country. Speaking to journalists after the tour, he said the visit had left him convinced that government was backing the right kind of emerging, knowledge-driven manufacturing sector.

The delegation that accompanied him included members of Parliament, health ministry officials, Permanent Secretary for Health Dr Diana Atwiine, and National Medical Stores General Manager Moses Kamabare.

Ggoobi framed the investment as a deliberate experiment in doing things differently from Uganda’s traditional economic playbook, pointing to advanced scientific manufacturing and biotechnology as sectors the country has reason to be proud of. He tied the decision back to President Yoweri Museveni’s long-standing position that science and technology-driven ventures deserve state backing precisely because they belong to the small group of industries capable of accelerating national development.

On why the funds were justified, Ggoobi argued that Dei BioPharma offers Uganda a genuine opportunity for import substitution — reducing the country’s reliance on imported medicines — while also promising thousands of jobs, both directly and through satellite factories expected to spring up once the wider campus is finished. He said such investment opportunities do not come often.

He added that government intends to account fully for every shilling put into the project, stressing that the clearest measure of accountability will be whether locally manufactured medicines actually reach the shelves of Ugandan pharmacies. Those sales figures, he said, would ultimately demonstrate the return on the state’s investment.

Ggoobi further revealed that the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has been allocated sh1.14 trillion in the 2026/27 national budget, and that funds would be released to the project once the relevant works are verified.

Dr Atwiine, for her part, said her team was encouraged by the progress made so far and confirmed that government is committed to procuring a range of products that Dei BioPharma has already developed and secured regulatory approval for.

Dei BioPharma founder Dr Matthias Magoola told reporters the full project requires an estimated $1.13 billion (about sh4.13 trillion) to complete, of which roughly $700 million (about sh2.56 trillion) has been raised to date.

He expressed confidence that once the remaining funding gap is closed, the facility could be finished before the end of next year, paving the way for production of high-value pharmaceutical products.

Magoola also flagged operational hurdles facing the plant, chief among them an unreliable electricity supply — the facility needs more than 80 megawatts to run at full capacity. On water, he said the company has had to rely on its own boreholes, since it currently has no connection to the national water grid.

The Dei BioPharma campus in Matugga sprawls across more than 250 acres and is designed to house around 30 manufacturing units once fully operational. Planned production lines span a wide range of therapeutic categories, including treatments for malaria, HIV/AIDS and cancer, along with generics, beta-lactam and non-beta-lactam antibiotics, hormone-based products, liquids, nutraceuticals, parenteral drugs, heparin, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), insulin glargine, vaccines, cephalosporins, monoclonal antibodies and mRNA-based therapeutics.

So far, nine of the company’s products have received approval for sale, 35 have been cleared for manufacture, and a further 64 are currently under review by the National Drug Authority.