The $4 billion-plus pipeline, now about seventy 9% entire, is designed to export coarse from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga
Kampala, Uganda | JULIUS BUSINGE | Uganda is drawing near a pivotal economic 2d, in maintaining with Stanbic Bank Uganda Chief Executive Mumba Kalifungwa, who talked about the nation have to actively convert rising macroeconomic momentum into gargantuan-based prosperity somewhat than treat disclose as an summary headline figure.
Speaking on the fifth Stanbic Financial Forum in Kampala, held below the theme “Uganda’s Inflection Point: Competing in a Rewired Global Economy,” Kalifungwa pointed to the terminate to completion of the East African Indecent Oil Pipeline because the one most consequential pattern in Uganda’s popular economic historical past.
The $4 billion-plus pipeline, now about seventy 9% entire, is designed to export coarse from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga. With an estimated 1.6 billion barrels of recoverable reserves and projected height manufacturing of 230,000 barrels a day, first oil—anticipated later this year—can also materially alter Uganda’s fiscal and external space.
“Here’s now not right about barrels per day,” Kalifungwa told policymakers, merchants and exchange executives gathered on the dialogue board. “It is about reshaping Uganda’s fiscal space, industrial functionality and regional standing.”
Oil as catalyst, now not treatment
Kalifungwa pressured that the oil and gasoline sector’s long-time length tag extends beyond export receipts. He cited job creation all the map by the provision chain, native explain pattern, talents transfer and domestic dealer disclose because the deeper structural features.
Uganda’s technique has centred on constructing domestic means alongside infrastructure funding, an map the authorities argues will anchor industrialisation somewhat than assemble a slim enclave economy.
Kalifungwa moreover framed Uganda’s opportunity internal a shifting global panorama, citing present-chain realignments, evolving exchange regimes and uncertainty around the kind forward for the African Boost and Different Act (AGOA). He flagged synthetic intelligence as both a threat and an opening, noting forecasts that Africa’s AI market can also almost quadruple by 2030.
“AI isn’t any longer a some distance-off frontier,” he talked about. “The quiz is now not whether or now not Uganda participates, but how inclusively and competitively it does so.”
Stanbic, a subsidiary of South Africa’s Long-established Bank Community, has operated in Uganda for more than 35 years. Kalifungwa talked about the lender’s technique is anchored in financial inclusion, project pattern, infrastructure finance, native climate resilience and company philanthropy, with some degree of curiosity on women folk, formative years and smallholder farmers.
Boost momentum constructing
The dialogue board’s keynote speaker, Jibran Qureishi, Head of Africa Regions Financial Research at Long-established Bank Community, outlined an more and more optimistic macroeconomic trajectory.
Following disclose of roughly 6.3% within the 2024/25 financial year, Qureishi projected growth of between 6.5% and 6.7% in 2025/26, with output potentially drawing near or exceeding 7% in 2026/27.
The acceleration is anticipated to be driven largely by oil-sector funding and sustained public infrastructure spending.
Peaceable, he cautioned that basically the most pronounced macroeconomic features from oil—particularly fiscal revenues, international-exchange earnings and enhancements within the balance of payments—are likely to emerge closer to 2030, reflecting the unhurried ramp-up identical outdated of global manufacturing cycles.
Qureishi credited the authorities for affirming fiscal discipline over the final decade, particularly its decision to assign some distance from in advance monetising anticipated oil revenues. That restraint, he talked about, has helped support macroeconomic balance and investor self belief at a time when many resource-prosperous economies possess struggled with debt and volatility.
FX buffer strengthens
Uganda’s external space has moreover improved sharply. Substandard international-exchange reserves possess risen from around $3 billion on the stop of 2024 to almost $6 billion by December 2025, in maintaining with Qureishi, bolstering import veil and reflecting a stronger balance of payments.
The recovery offers policymakers with a buffer in opposition to global shocks, along with commodity-tag swings and tightening global financial prerequisites.
However solid headline indicators discontinuance now not robotically translate into improved residing standards. Qureishi warned that capital-intensive disclose, a monumental informal sector, inflation shocks for the reason that Covid-19 pandemic and financial adjustments supported by the Worldwide Monetary Fund possess widened the gap between macroeconomic growth and household welfare.
“The explain we face is more and more about asset holders versus non-asset holders,” he talked about, cautioning that unresolved economic disparities can evolve into social and political pressures.
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