Uganda’s ambassador to Moscow Moses Kizige (left) and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gen Jeje Odongo (2nd left) hold bilateral talks with Russia’s Foreign Affairs minister Sergei Lavrov (second right) in Moscow, Russia, on June 18, 2025. PHOTO/HANDOUT
The year is 2006 and Uganda has kicked off preparations for the 20th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm), the biennial conference of former British colonies, slated for November 2007. In one of the preparatory meetings, one diplomat reminisced that President Museveni floated a proposal to cut down the number of Uganda’s missions abroad to adjust their scope based on the host country’s nature of diplomatic ties and potential.
Nine years later, the subject of reducing the missions abroad resurfaced. This time around, during discussions on the implementation of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party manifesto for the 2016 elections. As the Head of State grumbled about the puffy size of Uganda’s Foreign Service, one diplomat present recounted, the then head of Public Service, Mr John Mitala reminded him that it was him who “filled it and keeps sending people there”.
But it wasn’t the first nor second time. Earlier in 1987, the new government mooted a plan to close its mission in Tokyo, Japan. Barely two years later, Kampala was reopening its Tokyo mission. In November 1999, a similar plan was mooted to close all missions with the exception of Pretoria, Geneva, London, New York, Brussels, and Washington DC. The missions in Canberra, Australia, and Havana, Cuba, were once closed for cost-cutting measures, only to be reopened. After 2015, the subject appeared to have been shelved only to be resurrected during a Cabinet meeting on March 31 this year. The President lamented about the huge allowances drawn by Foreign Service officers (FSOs), some of whom he said are posted abroad with extended family members, putting more burden on taxpayers.
The President also wondered what exactly Uganda reaped out of destinations like Canada, which mid-last year kicked out Uganda’s High Commissioner Joy Ruth Acheng over misconduct, or far-flung destinations like Australia.
Uganda’s former envoy to Canada, Joy Ruth Acheng. PHOTO/FILE/COURTESY
The mission in Canberra also oversees New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, the Republic of Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Uganda, High Commissioner to Australia Dorothy Hyuha, told an introspection meeting of ambassadors abroad last August, had exported goods worth $8.9m (Shs31b) mainly coffee, tea, and spices by the end of 2023, drawing 8,636 tourists, among other small feats, amid a mélange of challenges, especially financing and understaffing.
Merger blues
Like all embassies, poor financing is a major challenge. This is aggravated by the appointment of an incompetent lot as ambassadors, and a coterie of lazy or entitled staff, many smuggled in as a result of nepotism and cronyism eating away public service. Since the 2006 elections, President Museveni stepped up by appointing election losers and acolytes as his representatives abroad. By 2012, out of the 34 Heads of Missions, only eight were career diplomats. In 2025, there is only one career diplomat—one who has grown through the ranks—heading a diplomatic mission; Isaac Ssebulime in Saudi Arabia. During the March 31 Cabinet sitting, President Museveni cited the example of “rich Norway” which closed its embassy in Kampala at the end of last July.
The President directed that no additional finances be allocated towards the increase of allowances for FSOs, and further directed the ministry’s top technocrat, Mr Vincent Bagiire, to urgently work on a cost-benefit analysis of Uganda's 40 missions abroad with the intention of closing some as part of the wider rationalisation of government agencies. After back and forth, Mr Bagiire last Wednesday convened a consultative town hall meeting of the ministry’s staff to discuss an implementation framework and strategic considerations for the rationalisation of missions that will undoubtedly result in casualties. The plan to merge government agencies, ministries, and departments was first mulled in 2018. As a result, several agencies and departments have since been subsumed in their parent ministries, with many jobs lost.
For instance, out of the former 1,400 staff employed by Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra), only 700 have been absorbed so far. The junior Foreign Affairs minister for Regional Integration, Mr John Mulimba told Parliament on April 17 the working plan is to reduce the embassies from 38 to 15. “There’s a clear directive to examine which missions offer the greatest return on investment and to scale down accordingly,” Mr Mulimba said.
State Minister for Foreign Affairsin-charge of Regional Cooperation, M John Mulimba. PHOTO/FILE
On May 21, Mr Bagiire while appearing before the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) could not authoritatively comment on reducing the number to 15 missions. “The President tasked the ministry to prepare a paper, which we are working on. The proposals may include closing some missions where Uganda derives no strategic value—but only after a thorough study,” he noted.
Slash first, fix later
The plan is to close or merge some embassies, the proposed list to be first discussed with the President and Cabinet, and then plot to merge or reopen large missions elsewhere depending on the country’s strategic considerations. This, as anxiety and apprehension have engulfed the ministry’s cloistered halls and missions abroad since discussions on swinging the axe started. “What is even worrying is that given the number of their cronies parked in the ministry, when the axe starts to swing they will take out competent people and leave behind their kith and kin,” one diplomat said, which sentiment is shared widely by colleagues abroad and at the headquarters in Kampala.
Internecine dog fights, turf wars, fight for the meagre financial resources, tribalism and nepotism, and the attendant employment and posting of unsuitable or incompetent people, and toxic working environment, are commonplace problems in Uganda’s Foreign Service. Name any mission; Brussels, Washington DC, Ankara, Beijing, name it, it’s the same template.
Such endless squabbling promotes unprincipled rivalry and lower morale, and sometimes even embarrasses the country.
Uganda House in London. A report of the Auditor General for the period ending June 2023 says the state of the buildings in question do not reflect a good image of the country. PHOTO | FILE
With the embassy staff spending a lot of time fighting concerns abound of when and how they can execute their mandate of advancing the country’s interests abroad. In Ankara, for instance, there are about five diplomatic staff. The rest, about 16, were parachuted in by the current embassy leadership. The state of affairs at the embassy in Washington DC, which oversees key financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, alongside countries in South America, is more laughable. During the last ambassadors’ reshuffle in December 2021, President Museveni appointed Ms Robbie Kakonge, whose immediate recent employment was at Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology (UICT) Nakawa, as ambassador to DC, in place of Ambassador Mull Katende, who was one of the remaining two career diplomats heading a diplomatic mission.
In contrast, the former US President Joe Biden administration last February reassigned a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Ambassador William Popp, then serving as ambassador to Guatemala, to represent Washington’s interests in Uganda, a key ally running security errands in the restive Great Lakes region. Even as the US government mulls adding Uganda onto the partial or full travel restriction dragnet as part of President Donald Trump’s executing orders signed in January to limit entry from countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension” of entry into the US, Kampala’s diplomatic sparkle in DC had waned. With the President’s choices of ambassador appointments stark, and so likely will their performance report card be.
This also has a bearing on how the embassy staff are mobilised to work towards the country’s strategic objectives. Ambassador James Mugume, the former Foreign Affairs ministry PS, described rationalising missions as not a good idea. “This is not the time for retreating from global engagement. Instead, we should seek to engage especially in deepening relations with more African countries to give effect to/promote African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and strengthen Asia- Africa strategic partnership,” he said.
Tricky issue
The trick in the new proposal is also that some of the missions are already serving a number of countries amid a cocktail of challenges, especially chronic understaffing and financing. For instance, the mission in Abuja, Nigeria, serves 15 Economic Community of West African States, and Equatorial Guinea. The High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia represents Uganda to Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and Brunei. As such, several diplomats talked to argue that the issue has to be “handled logically” putting all this context into perspective. “By any measure, 38 missions is such a small number given their coverage. The key challenge is the quality of people we send to there and expect magic suddenly. This ineffectiveness is worsened by the incompetent leadership at the ministry,” a senior diplomat said.
The fractured working relations are not just among staff at Uganda’s missions abroad. At the ministry’s headquarters, the working relationship among the four principals—Minister Gen Jeje Odongo, Mr Oryem Okello, the state minister for International Relations, and Mr Mulimba, and the PS, Mr Bagiire—is one that is reportedly not cordial. The result, according to sources, has been a series of unfortunate turn of events; the principals blitzing each other with silent treatment, dismay, low morale and resentment among staff, and a general lack of direction bordering on a “diplomatic vacuum” in the once coveted Foreign Service.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Henry Okello Oryem. PHOTO | FILE
Mr Harold Acemah, who retired in 2007 as Uganda’s deputy ambassador to Brussels, likewise told Daily Monitor that the proposal to reduce missions is “ill-conceived and not advisable”.
