KAMPALA’S PARADOX: BROKE, BUT EVERYTHING IS BOOKED
Kampala defies economics. Every weekday morning, timelines are full of “money has refused,” “ground is tight,” and screenshots of empty Mobile Money wallets. Ask ten friends for 50k to fix your car and nine will send ICU-level voice notes about money “stuck on the high seas” or a relative struck by lightning. The tenth will blue-tick you forever. Online, the city looks one bad day from returning to the village to farm.
Then Friday 11:30 PM arrives. Try finding parking near a bar in Nakawa, Kololo, Bugolobi, or Kira Road. You won’t. The jam inside the parking lot beats Jinja Road at rush hour. Who’s buying pork platters that wipe out a pig family tree? The same people who were begging in your inbox at 9 AM. We’re a city of professional mourners who cry poverty while holding premium beer. Broke, but broke with class.
Weddings explain it. A couple on entry-level salaries with no savings for a sofa will plan an 80-million-shilling event. They create a WhatsApp group, hold weekly meetings, and pressure friends to pledge 500k. Skip it and you’re labeled a witch. On the day, decorations cost more than the groom’s annual salary. By Monday, the couple is back in their rented house with zero balance, wondering about charcoal.
Funerals are worse. They’re now high-budget productions. People who never sent money for hospital bills chair the burial committee. Budgets cover sound systems, five tents, city caterers in the village, and gold-handled caskets. Thirty Subarus and Harriers burn fuel like water to Budaka or Masaka. We can’t afford healthcare alive, but we’ll spend millions for a luxury send-off.
Church completes the cycle. The same people dodging landlords Saturday show up Sunday in designer suits, cars running on fumes. Celebrity pastors say your business is failing because your tithe lacks “spiritual weight,” then ask for a 500k “prophetic seed.” A man owing school fees will empty his pocket at the altar, convinced a miracle will hit his Mobile Money by Monday.
School fees season is psychological warfare. A kindergarten circular reads like a national budget. Beyond tuition, parents must bring army-sized toilet paper, brooms, reams of paper, and sugar. Graduates haul brooms like herbalists. We curse the schools, but opening day brings a traffic jam of fuel-guzzlers dropping off kids with snacks for a village. We pay because an expensive school is 70% education, 30% status.
Kampala survives on side hustles, selective broke-ness, and rotating debt. No one lives on salary alone. The HR manager imports iPhones by 2 PM. We move landlords to tears over rent, then spend 250k on concert tickets that night. Money just circulates from Airtel Money to MTN Mobile Money. Everyone owes everyone.
Kampala squeezes you with potholes and power cuts, then a friend calls with “two mutual bottles on the table.” We’re broke, stressed, and in the red. But with God’s grace, good music, and Ugandan audacity, we survive.
Which Kampala “scam” is draining you most: corporate loans, wedding committees, school requirements, or celebrity pastors?
✍🏼: Deox
Uganda shall always struggle to win the RRR (recycling, reuse) war, for as long as:
1) Beverage companies continue charging for empties instead of rewarding proper disposal;
2) Seperated waste is dismissively lumped into the same garbage skip by collection firms
@KCCAUG@nemaug
Happening today!
Join 3ie and What Works Climate Solutions for a panel discussion as we take stock of the evolving evidence base across climate-related sectors in low- and middle-income countries, unpacking where research is gaining traction and where critical gaps remain.
This is the opening session of our three-part Evidence Dialogues series to stimulate the cross-sector dialogue and collective action that the climate evidence agenda urgently needs.
📅 28 May 2026
⏰ 10-11 am EST | 7.30-8.30 pm IST
🔗 Register now: https://t.co/8b0aDCVH7w
#ClimateEvidence #EvidenceDialogues #ClimateAction #EvidenceSynthesis
The @DStvUganda World Cup 2026 advert portrays people "all over Africa" napping in broadday light; with a tag line "sleep can wait".
Forrus in Uganda, we have entered #KisanjaNoSleep 😁
🇺🇬 Uganda discovered around 31 million tons of gold deposits in 2022. Of this total, around 330,158 metric tons is refined gold worth about $12.8 trillion.
One day, you will pay school fees, hospital bills, and salaries.
You will stay awake calculating figures while others sleep peacefully.
It is the day you will realize your father carried a weight you never understood.
Now it is your turn,
The burden is heavy, but it is SACRED.
Your FATHER carried it, now carry it for your son.
@PostaUganda@Posta_Ugand@Posta_Uganda just the fact that you have three handles running on X explains a lot. However, this is not why I'm writing to you.
Are you aware of the vibrant online shopping community in Uganda? Jiji, for example. Plus many other online shopping platforms? And many individuals who sell their products online?
Do you want to work for Ugandans?
Each time an online transaction is made, there is a boda taking the product from the buyer to the seller, and a payment made either to the boda in cash, or to the seller via mobile money.
Do you recognise the gap that can be filled by your courier service?
Do you realise your courier can pick up the parcel, giving a receipt to the seller and a tracking number to the buyer? Then take the parcel to Posta for sorting and consolidation? Then take consolidated parcels to all Posta offices countrywide? Then last mile couriers deliver to the buyers, collect payment in cash or via merchant code? Then reconcile payments at the end of the day and remit payments to sellers, while keeping the shipping fees on Posta account?
Do you realise how you can boost online businesses countrywide with organised, reliable, and guaranteed last mile delivery?
Do you realise the parcels can be anything from slippers, clothing, tools, household items, to food and furniture, with guaranteed delivery within one to two days?
Do you have any idea how many more businesses can spring up if they know their last mile delivery is reliably sorted?
Do you have any idea how many more buyers can spring up from upcountry locations, if you give this a chance?
Just think of the role you can play. Sitting on existing infrastructure and doing nothing is probably the best. Why would you, after all, add more work and earn more money? Or, even better, why would you perform your basic duty of facilitating internal communication and trade?
Anyway, don't mind me. As you were.
Photography and patient care in a limited resource setting: Do healthcare givers professionally handle patient photographs as they do other patient records? https://t.co/Y8tNwsoPX5 via @academia
Well in @evidence_method . You, along with @EPRC_official are perhaps the most impactful policy advisory providers to Government of Uganda in present day. Keep shining that light bright 👌💯
We are pleased to announce the reconstitution of our Advisory Board.
@TamaleLillian takes over as Chairperson. @SandyColiver and @tawmug join as new members alongside continuing members @edgarkuhimbisa and @qataharraymond. @mkatagaya and @hkiragga continue to serve as ex-officio members.
This reconstitution reflects where EML is headed. Over eight years, we have delivered over 65 projects across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mauritius, and Botswana, reaching over five million citizens. Our new strategy is about working more deliberately across the continent — with the ambition to be operational in at least 8 countries across 3 regions by 2028. The Advisory Board we announce today will guide that journey.
Godber Tumushabe and Barbara Birungi complete their terms on the board after serving since our founding years. Godber’s leadership as Chairperson gave us strategic direction and institutional grounding during a formative period. Barbara’s expertise in technology, innovation, and women’s empowerment shaped our thinking and widened our networks. We are grateful for what they gave this organisation.
We also thank the partners and clients who have supported our work during the tenure of this board — your trust has been foundational to our growth.
More at https://t.co/6vI1IAHTBx
#WeShapeGov #Governance #CivicTech #AdvisoryBoard