Uganda Vision 2040
The Country's Plan, and Ours
Counsel for the build-out to 2040.
Uganda Vision 2040 is the country's long-term blueprint: the transformation of Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country. The Fourth National Development Plan now carries it, and the Government's Tenfold Growth Strategy sets the destination in numbers: an economy expanded to five hundred billion dollars by 2040, led by agro-industrialisation, tourism, minerals including oil and gas, and science, technology and innovation.
Each of those programmes is delivered through land acquisitions, financings, procurement, licences and, when projects go wrong, claims and litigation. The firm's practice areas were organised around that work. We have prepared claims on the country's largest water project and on its road and rail contracts, documented its bank financings and appeared before its tax tribunals.
Where the Work Is
Infrastructure & Energy
FIDIC and bespoke contracts for roads, rail, water and power; extension of time and payment claims; DAAB proceedings; EPC and project development agreements.
Minerals, Oil & Gas
Exploration and mining licences, development agreements and the sale of production under the Mining and Minerals Act, 2022, and the petroleum regime beside it.
Agro-Industrialisation
Governance, restructuring and finance for the agricultural enterprises the strategy depends on, including member-owned companies with thousands of shareholders.
Science, Technology & Innovation
Data protection, payment licensing and regulatory strategy for a digital economy, advised across a dozen African markets.
Capital & Land
Syndicated and bilateral lending, project finance and security over land for the projects above.
When It Is Contested
Negotiation, arbitration and litigation up to the Supreme Court. A thirty-year programme will produce disputes, and the firm is built to run them.
Framework references: Uganda Vision 2040 and the Tenfold Growth Strategy (National Planning Authority); Fourth National Development Plan. Firm experience as published in our people's biographies.
Agenda 2063
The continental horizon beyond Vision 2040.
Agenda 2063 is the African Union's fifty-year development framework, adopted in 2013 at the Union's fiftieth anniversary and carried by two ten-year implementation plans, the first from 2014 to 2023 and the second from 2024 to 2033. It is written as seven aspirations: a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development; an integrated continent, politically united and based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism; an Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law; a peaceful and secure Africa; an Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values and ethics; an Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of its people, especially its women and youth; and Africa as a strong, united, resilient and influential global player and partner.
For a business in Uganda the framework arrives as instruments. The African Continental Free Trade Area, which Uganda ratified in 2018, now has protocols on trade in goods and in services, on investment, competition policy and intellectual property rights, and on digital trade. The Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa plans and finances the corridors, railways and power interconnectors that reach Uganda. The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, the Single African Air Transport Market and the continental financial institutions and payment arrangements complete the set. Uganda's route into each of them runs through the East African Community, whose Customs Union and Common Market are the building blocks on which the continental framework rests.
The work this generates is cross-border by definition, and the firm is organised for it: partners and consultants admitted in Kampala, Nairobi, Kigali, London and New York, claims prepared in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, group structures that hold an operating subsidiary in Kampala within a parent that investors abroad recognise, and licensing run across several East African markets for the same client.
The African Continental Free Trade Area
Rules of origin, tariff schedules and customs treatment under the goods protocol; establishment and licensing in other member states under the services protocol; the guarantees and dispute settlement of the investment protocol; merger and conduct rules under the competition protocol alongside the East African Community Competition Authority; registration and enforcement under the intellectual property protocol and through ARIPO; and the data, consumer and payment obligations of the digital trade protocol.
The East African Community
The Customs Union and Common Market under which goods, services, capital and workers move between Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia: cross-border employment and work permits, establishment in Nairobi or Kigali, regional licensing of payment and insurance businesses, and proceedings before the East African Court of Justice.
Infrastructure corridors and energy
The Northern Corridor, the standard gauge railway, the regional power interconnectors and the water and road programmes planned under the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa and financed by the African Development Bank and its partners: FIDIC contracts, claims and dispute boards, concession and project agreements, and the environmental and social frameworks the financiers require.
Free movement of people
The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, the African passport it anticipates, and the East African Community's own arrangements for citizens and workers: expatriate employment, work and residence permits, the tax and social security position of staff who move between offices, and the immigration consequences of a regional structure.
Continental finance and payments
Afreximbank, the African Development Bank and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, and the development finance institutions that lend against the framework's priorities: financing documentation and enforceability opinions in the form international lenders expect, the governance and compliance conditions that attach to their funds, and the licensing of remittance and payment businesses that settle trade across borders.
Framework references: Agenda 2063 and its Second Ten-Year Implementation Plan (African Union Commission); the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area and its protocols; the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community and its Customs Union and Common Market Protocols.