Uganda election: Museveni’s expected win will deepen succession and Gen-Z challenges

Pressure to deliver economic improvement for young people – and questions over his succession – will define the president’s seventh term if he wins as expected.

FERGUS KELL

Ugandans will go to the polls on 15 January. Two weeks after election day will mark the 40th anniversary since incumbent president Yoweri Museveni first took power in 1986. The 81-year-old Museveni is widely expected to celebrate this milestone from inside State House as president again.

Bidding for a seventh consecutive term in office, his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) is campaigning under the slogan ‘protecting the gains’.

This defensive posturing captures not only the NRM’s familiar appeals to stability and legacy, which have helped to consolidate its primary support base in rural areas, but also its ability to use state machinery to protect its own authority by suppressing alternative centres of power.

As with the 2021 elections, supporters of Museveni’s leading challenger Robert Kyagulanyi (a musician-turned-politician widely known as Bobi Wine) have reported abductions, arbitrary detention and violence at the hands of security forces.

Another opposition figurehead, Kizza Besigye, remains detained in a Ugandan prison on treason charges after his abduction in Nairobi in 2024.

Ahead of an expected new term for Museveni that could include major economic milestones, this election campaign has so far generated little fresh clarity on how the NRM will manage his succession, amid longstanding speculation over the positioning of his eldest son.

Neither has it offered much for Uganda’s discontented young urban population, who have seen seismic demonstrations elsewhere in East Africa in recent years.

Opposition and the Gen-Z factor

Ugandans watched significant protest movements erupt in Kenya in 2024 and around Tanzania’s election in 2025. The protests were led by the ‘Gen-Z’ demographic that makes up around a third of the population in these countries.

Uganda does share some important conditions with these neighbors: a rapidly growing young urban population more instep with online influencers than narratives of liberation; a political climate in which opposition political leaders and activists face abduction and detention; and a sense of opportunity among young people borne out of solidarity with Gen-Z protesters elsewhere.

Yet other factors are different. Kenya’s protests were leaderless, renouncing the influence of the late Raila Odinga; and Tanzania’s erupted while polling stations were still open and the main opposition leader Tundu Lissu was in prison.

In contrast, in Bobi Wine, young Ugandans have a genuine opposition figurehead present on the ballot. Unlike in Tanzania, where legal challenges to the election results were forbidden, the possibility of a court petition to challenge the results may act to dilute potential flashpoints in Uganda, even if it is highly unlikely to succeed.

Ugandan politics also remains heavily militarized. Protests in November 2020 saw 54 demonstrators killed by security services. Speaking last month about possible election demonstrations, President Museveni reminded citizens that ‘one soldier carries 120 bullets’.

Even if military intervention and illusory electoral institutions again combine to restrain widespread disorder in these elections, the conditions for potential unrest will remain. Many young urban Ugandans remain critical of the perceived lethargy of the NRM and repeated corruption scandals that sparked protests in 2024.

Unless these issues are addressed over the next presidential term, there is the risk that they could manifest in unrest during a potentially difficult political succession.

NRM renewal and succession

The longstanding question of Museveni’s succession remains dominated by his son, the chief of Uganda’s defence forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

Muhoozi leads a civic movement, the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), which has been influential in the wider repositioning of ruling elites in the NRM and military.

The PLU claims to hold an allied majority within the NRM’s central executive committee following internal party elections in 2025, which included high-profile upsets of established party figures at the hands of PLU-affiliated candidates.

Muhoozi has also partly tempered his famously provocative public outbursts in recent months, intensifying speculation over his next political move.

The national election itself is a sideshow to succession issues and wider competition among Uganda’s elite. As President Museveni’s capacity for unilateral decision-making reportedly declines, he has drawn his family closer to the centre of power.

Simultaneously, the wider NRM is facing increasing polarization, reflected by the reported disquiet among the losers in party primaries.

This context also helps explain why recent years have seen renewed efforts by the ruling party to co-opt and divide elements of Uganda’s political opposition – forestalling the emergence of any real alternative power centre for more moderate NRM elements, who question the logic of a dynastic succession.

New government appointments that emerge from the election will be seen in relation to the succession, reflecting a political system under strain more than one empowered by stability.

High stakes for Uganda’s future

These political dynamics may have greater consequences for Uganda’s long-term trajectory than in most previous presidential terms.

Speaking at Chatham House back in 2012, President Museveni said ‘Uganda is at a take-off stage’ – highlighting the country’s oil discoveries and planned infrastructure investment.

In the 14 years since, Uganda has shown steady economic growth and resilience to significant external shocks, but many citizens feel they are still waiting for that promised boom to materialize.

Uganda is now preparing for its first oil production and revenues in 2026-27, with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) progressing despite financing difficulties and environmental concerns.

Other strategic infrastructure projects are moving forward, including a $4 billion oil refinery and a long-awaited new railway to Kenya.

When Museveni pictured these projects might ‘take-off’ over a decade ago, Uganda was poised to benefit from the peak of Chinese infrastructure lending, and from deepening Western security and development cooperation.

The picture now is far more diversified, with Gulf state partners playing an increasingly significant role. The refinery, seen as a cornerstone for Museveni’s personal legacy and narratives of self-reliance, is being pursued with a UAE investment firm and a loan from a Bahrain-based private financier.

The influence of Western governments has also wavered. Uganda had already clashed with the US and other development partners well before the Trump administration’s major cuts to USAID. Ahead of the elections, reduced engagement is evident in the closure of governance programmes and lack of large-scale election observation.

However, last month the US agreed $1.7 billion in healthcare funding to Uganda under its new strategy – adding to an agreement in mid-2025 for Uganda to admit third-country US asylum claimants. World Bank lending to Uganda has also now resumed after a two-year freeze in 2023.

President Museveni has deftly managed the competing strategic interests of external partners. But this is an increasingly complex balancing act to sustain in a fragmented global context – and one that will intensify the demands on his eventual successor.

Though these elections may not be a tipping point, they also will not remove the converging pressures of an uncertain political succession and the need to deliver economic results for Uganda’s vocal youth. On these issues at least, the stakes remain high.

Chatham House