World Bank says all Ugandans must benefit from its financing

Local leader of World Bank breaks silence on AHA and lending to Uganda

Mukami Kariuki, the World Bank’s country manager for Uganda. (Photo courtesy of New Vision)

The World Bank’s outgoing country manager for Uganda Mukami Kariuki explained in an interview published by New Vision why the Bank has renewed relations with the Ugandan government after a two-year lending freeze on new projects imposed over the enacting of the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023. Business between the two development partners now is back to normal, she said.

The decision, announced in June, to resume lending to Uganda by the World Bank  did not go down well with human rights activists, who had hoped that the pause would put pressure on the regime to a point where it would drop the draconian law.

Kariuki said the lending freeze put in place in August 2023 was never about repealing the AHA but was aimed at giving the Bank time to engage the authorities and come up with mitigation measures that would facilitate the resumption of projects financing. The size of the World Bank Portfolio of projects in Uganda now stands at $4.7 billion.

She said that it was more about raising awareness that everybody needs to be given access to services and to be provided with support.

“All Ugandans must benefit from the financing we provide. So we worked with the government, development partners, civil society and the private sector to identify what needs to be done to make it possible for us to continue, and we have now rolled out those mitigation measures reaching 4,000 contractor workers with codes of conduct that ensure that they know what nondiscrimination and inclusion means, and I think this is also enshrined in the Uganda constitution,” Kariuki stated.

The Ugandan constitution does not include explicit protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Kariuki revealed that the Bank is will soon have another 2,000 service providers trained in non-discrimination and inclusion.

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During the nearly two-year-long freeze, the World Bank did not pause financing for projects that were already underway.

“We continued through this period to implement projects that existed before the pause. We resumed lending to the government in April 2025,” she said.

Since then, the World Bank Board has approved three new projects: a Northern Uganda Action Fund IV project, Uganda Learning Acceleration Program, and Development Response to Displacement Impacts project phase II.

Mukami began her role as World Bank Country Manager in Uganda in August 2021 when the COVID 19 pandemic was still serious, and will conclude her tenure next month.

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