Yoweri Museveni

Yoweri Museveni took power in Uganda in 1986 after five years in the bush and has held it ever since, having once said that the problem of Africa is leaders who overstay. He studied at Dar es Salaam under the influence of Frantz Fanon and the southern African liberation movements, trained in Mozambique with FRELIMO, and fought in the Tanzanian-backed war that removed Idi Amin in 1979. When the 1980 election returned Milton Obote in a poll he considered rigged, he went into the Luwero Triangle with a few dozen men and built the National Resistance Army, which is one of very few African insurgencies to have won outright. In power his early reputation was high: he restored order, rebuilt an economy that had collapsed, and made Uganda the first African country to reverse an AIDS epidemic through a blunt public campaign, with prevalence falling from around fifteen per cent to five. He also invaded Congo twice, and the International Court of Justice ordered Uganda to pay reparations. Presidential term limits were removed in 2005 and the age limit in 2017, both by parliamentary vote. He signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023. He has won every election since 1996, none of them judged free by international observers, and is among the longest-serving leaders in the world. His son Muhoozi Kainerugaba commands the land forces and has spoken publicly about succeeding him. Uganda hosts around 1.6 million refugees, more than any other African country, under a policy unusually generous by any standard - one of several reasons Western governments have been slow to press him on anything else. He has been in power longer than most Ugandans have been alive.

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