Uganda's Minister for the Presidency, Babirye Milly Babalanda, has called for a fundamental overhaul of the country's development financing architecture to support its ambitious goal of growing the economy tenfold to US$500 billion by 2040. This goal is part of the Tenfold Growth Strategy, which aims to drive sustained double-digit growth and transformation of the productive sectors. The strategy identifies four key sectors: agro-industrialisation, tourism development, mineral development, and science, technology, and innovation.
Minister Babalanda commended President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni for his strategic leadership in advancing Uganda's socio-economic transformation. She noted that the Tenfold Growth Strategy requires a significant expansion in productive capacity, investment, value addition, exports, and employment. To achieve this, the Minister emphasized the need for a financing architecture capable of mobilising and deploying capital at a much greater scale. This involves exploring new financing mechanisms and strengthening existing ones.
The Minister highlighted that the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) requires approximately UGX 593.6 trillion in funding over five years, with 69.6 percent expected from the public sector and 30.4 percent from the private sector. She stressed that delivering NDP IV and the Tenfold Growth Strategy will require significant resources from both government and the private sector. The Minister acknowledged that Uganda cannot finance its transformation through the national budget alone.
Minister Babalanda outlined several strategies to broaden Uganda's financing base, including mobilising domestic capital, strengthening development finance, deepening capital markets, expanding Public-Private Partnerships, and attracting private investment. She also suggested exploring opportunities in pension and insurance funds, climate and green finance, blended finance, and Islamic finance. The Minister emphasized the need to increase national savings to 40 percent of GDP by 2040.
The Minister posed four critical questions for the High-Level Policy Dialogue on Uganda's Development Financing Architecture: How can Uganda convert growing domestic savings into productive, long-term investment? How can the country deepen its capital markets to access long-term financing? How can development finance institutions be strengthened to support productive sectors? How can instruments be created to enable pension funds and other institutional investors to participate safely in financing national development?
Minister Babalanda stressed that the Tenfold Growth Strategy cannot be delivered by government alone and requires the private sector to be a central investment and financing partner. She noted that government resources must be used strategically to leverage and crowd in private capital. The Minister also emphasized the importance of partnerships with development partners and international financial institutions, but noted that such partnerships must evolve to support investment, trade, and technology transfer.
The High-Level Policy Dialogue brought together various stakeholders, including Members of Parliament, government officials, and representatives of development partners and financial institutions. The Minister tasked the dialogue with providing clarity on the financing architecture required to implement the Tenfold Growth Strategy, policy and regulatory reforms needed to mobilise capital, and immediate reforms and actions required to accelerate implementation. The dialogue aimed to provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss and address Uganda's development financing challenges.
Key points
- The Minister for the Presidency, Babirye Milly Babalanda, calls for a re-engineered development financing architecture to support Uganda's goal of growing its economy to US$500 billion by 2040.
- The Tenfold Growth Strategy identifies four key sectors: agro-industrialisation, tourism development, mineral development, and science, technology, and innovation.
- The Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) requires approximately UGX 593.6 trillion in funding over five years.
