Yoweri Museveni
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tibuhaburwa is a Ugandan politician and former military officer who has served as the president of Uganda since 1986. Born in Ntungamo, Uganda, Museveni studied political science from the University of Dar es Salaam where he initiated the University Students' African Revolutionary Front. In 1972, he joined the failed invasion of Uganda against Idi Amin's dictatorship.
The next year, Museveni established the Front for National Salvation and fought alongside Tanzanian forces in the Tanzania–Uganda War, which overthrew Amin. Museveni contested the subsequent 1980 general election on the platform of Uganda Patriotic Movement, though claimed electoral fraud after losing to the unpopular Milton Obote. Museveni unified the opposition under the National Resistance Movement and started the Ugandan Bush War. On 30 January 1986, after the decisive Battle of Kampala, Museveni was sworn as president.
As president, Museveni suppressed the Ugandan insurgency and oversaw involvement in the Rwandan Civil War and the First Congo War. He ordered an intervention against the Lord's Resistance Army in an effort to halt their insurgency. His rule has been described by scholars as competitive authoritarianism, or illiberal democracy. The press has been under the authority of government. His presidency has been characterized by relative economic success and, in its later period, an upsurge in anti-homosexuality activity alongside numerous constitutional amendments, like the scrapping of presidential term limits in 2005 and age limits in 2017.
On 14 January 2021, Museveni was re-elected to a sixth term with 58.6% of the vote, despite many videos and reports showing ballot box stuffing, over 400 polling stations with 100% voter turnout and human rights violations. In response to protests during the 2026 Ugandan general election, Museveni has reportedly deployed the military, sent special military forces to jail opposition leader Bobi Wine, and deployed "snatch squads" to kidnap protesters.
Early life
Museveni is estimated to have been born on 24 September 1944 to parents Mzee Amos Kaguta, a cattle keeper, and Esteri Kokundeka Nganzi, in Ntungamo. He is an ethnic Hima of the kingdom of Mpororo. According to Julius Nyerere, Museveni's father, Amos Kaguta, was a soldier in the King's African Rifles' 7th battalion during World War II. When Yoweri was born, relatives used to say, "His father was a mu-seven". This is how he obtained the name Museveni.His family migrated to Ntungamo in 1960s, then within the British Protectorate of Uganda. Museveni attended Kyamate Elementary School, Mbarara High School, and Ntare School for his primary and secondary education. He attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for his tertiary education, where he studied economics and political science. While at university, he formed the University Students' African Revolutionary Front student activist group and led a student delegation to FRELIMO-held territory in Portuguese Mozambique where they received military training. Studying under Walter Rodney, among others, Museveni wrote a university thesis on the applicability of Frantz Fanon's ideas on revolutionary violence to post-colonial Africa.
Career
1971–1979: Front for National Salvation and the toppling of Amin
Museveni eventually began to gather a group of left-leaning intellectuals who were ready to engage in militant operations against the Ugandan government of Milton Obote. When Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin during the 1971 Ugandan coup d'état, however, Museveni's group allied with Obote's exiled loyalists to oppose Amin. Based in Tanzania, Museveni's group repeatedly entered Uganda to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage missions. In August 1971, Museveni's force unsuccessfully attempted to set up a guerrilla base on Mount Elgon.The coalition of exile forces opposed to Amin invaded Uganda from Tanzania in September 1972 and were repelled. Museveni's group suffered heavy losses during this failed operation. In October, Tanzania and Uganda signed the Mogadishu Agreement that denied the rebels the use of Tanzanian soil for aggression against Uganda. Museveni broke away from the mainstream opposition and formed the Front for National Salvation in 1973. In August of the same year, he married Janet Kainembabazi.
In October 1978, Ugandan troops invaded the Kagera Salient in northern Tanzania, initiating the Uganda–Tanzania War. Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere ordered the Tanzania People's Defence Force to counter-attack and mobilized Ugandan dissidents to fight Amin's regime. Museveni was pleased by this development. In December 1978 Nyerere attached Museveni and his forces to Tanzanian troops under Brigadier Silas Mayunga. Museveni and his FRONASA troops subsequently accompanied the Tanzanians during the counter-invasion of Uganda. He was present during the capture and destruction of Mbarara in February 1979, and involved in the Western Uganda campaign of 1979.
In course of these operations, he alternatively spent time at the frontlines and in Tanzania. While in Tanzania, he discussed the cooperation of various anti-Amin rebel groups as well as the political future of Uganda with Tanzanian politicians and other Ugandan opposition figures such as Obote. He played a significant part in the Moshi Conference which led to the unification of the opposition as the Uganda National Liberation Front. Yusuf Lule was appointed as UNLF chairman and the potential President of Uganda after Amin's overthrow. Museveni felt dissatisfied with the results of the conference, believing that he and his followers were not granted enough representation.
1980–1986: Ugandan Bush War
Obote II and the National Resistance Army
With the overthrow of Amin in 1979 and the contested election that returned Milton Obote to power in 1980, Museveni returned to Uganda with his supporters to gather strength in their rural strongholds in the Bantu-dominated south and south-west to form the Popular Resistance Army. They planned a rebellion against the second Obote regime and its armed forces, the Uganda National Liberation Army. The insurgency began with an attack on an army installation in the central Mubende district on 6 February 1981. The PRA later merged with former president Yusufu Lule's fighting group, the Uganda Freedom Fighters, to create the National Resistance Army with its political wing, the National Resistance Movement. Two other rebel groups, the Uganda National Rescue Front and the Former Uganda National Army, engaged Obote's forces. The FUNA was formed in the West Nile sub-region from the remnants of Amin's supporters.In June 1985, a group of NRA/NRM members including Museveni met in, Austria, where they penned a manifesto and developed a "Ten-point Programme" for Uganda's future. The ten points encompassed proposed policies for: democracy; security; consolidation of national unity; defending national independence; building an independent, integrated, and self-sustaining economy; improvement of social services; elimination of corruption and misuse of power; redressing inequality; cooperation with other African countries; and a mixed economy. The Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook estimates that the Obote regime was responsible for more 100,000 civilian deaths across Uganda.
1985 Nairobi Agreement
On 27 July 1985, sub factionalism within the Uganda People's Congress government led to a successful military coup against Obote by his former army commander, Lieutenant-General Tito Okello, an Acholi. Museveni and the NRM/NRA were angry that the revolution for which they had fought for four years had been "hijacked" by the UNLA, which they viewed as having been discredited by gross human rights violations during Obote II.Despite these reservations, the NRM/NRA eventually agreed to peace talks presided over by a Kenyan delegation headed by President Daniel arap Moi. The talks, which lasted from 26 August to 17 December, were notoriously acrimonious and the resultant ceasefire broke down almost immediately. The final agreement, signed in Nairobi, called for a ceasefire, demilitarization of Kampala, integration of the NRA and government forces, and absorption of the NRA leadership into the Military Council. These conditions were never met.