KAMPALA – The former Deputy Attorney General, Hon. Mwesigwa Rukutana, has warned that passing the Sovereignty Bill 2026 would reverse Uganda’s hard-won progress and send the country backwards.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Rukutana, who is also a former Minister and Member of Parliament, shared his strong concerns during an engagement with this reporter about the bill currently before Parliament that has raised concerns over Uganda’s economy.
He recalled a difficult time when he served as Minister of State for Finance, a period during which Uganda was classified as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) for five years.
Hon. Rukutana described that categorization as a nightmare, because more than half of Uganda’s budget came from foreign sources such as the World Bank, the IMF, and donor countries.
“Why should we now throw away the cloth that has carried our baby all this long? We have fought hard to move from a nightmare of foreign control to middle-income status. Let us not reverse a journey that has brought us this far,” Mwesigwa Rukutana stated.
The former minister stated that Uganda could not decide its own priorities, since its budgets, development plans, and national projects all had to be approved by the World Bank, the IMF, and the donor community.
He later advised that Uganda increase production, grow exports, reduce luxury imports, control inflation, and fully liberalize capital flows, allowing foreign money to enter and investors to take their profits out freely.
“Back then, Uganda could not decide its own future. Our budgets, our plans, and our projects all needed a stamp of approval from the World Bank, the IMF, and donors. To break free, Uganda has to produce more, export more, cut luxury imports, tame inflation, and open doors to foreign money and investors,” Rukutana advised.
The Protection of Sovereignty Bill 2026 was tabled in Parliament on April 15, 2026, by Internal Affairs State Minister David Muhoozi for its first reading.
The Cabinet approved the bill, and the NRM Parliamentary Caucus later endorsed it at State House Entebbe on March 27, 2026.
The bill aims to protect Uganda’s sovereignty, regulate foreign influence, control foreign funding, and operationalize Article 1(1) of the Constitution, which states that all power belongs to the people.
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