President Yoweri Museveni won re-election by a landslide on January 15, extending his of Uganda rule to a seventh term and that of his National Resistance Movement (NRM) to more than four decades in a contest marred by alleged widespread irregularities, intimidation and restrictions on campaigning, and violence.

Museveni, Africa's third-longest governing president, won more than 71.65% of the vote according to the official tally while the country’s most prominent opposition leader, Robert Kyagulanyi (known as Bobi Wine), took 24.72%. Voter turnout stood at 52%, the lowest level since Uganda's return in 2006 to multiparty politics.

The opposition rejected the official results, while international observer missions said the vote took place in a constrained political environment, citing restrictions on opposition activity and civil liberties. Few independent voices regarded it as free or fair.

“The just-concluded presidential election in Uganda was every bit as farcical as experts and commentators had feared,” writes Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and former underground journalist in Nigeria.

“For the opposition, the circumstances could not have been more arduous, no thanks to the raft of measures enacted by eighty-one-year-old President Yoweri Museveni, gunning for an unprecedented seventh term of office. Combining a well-timed internet blackout with a full-on assault on independent media, the regime pulled all the stops to ensure that only one outcome was guaranteed.”

Museveni and his NRM party ran on the campaign theme of “Protecting the Gains: Making a Qualitative Leap into High Middle-Income Status.” Supporters of the octogenarian president point to long-term stability, infrastructure development and prudent economic programmes as reasons for his sustained popularity, particularly in rural regions.

“His tenure began with far-reaching structural reforms backed by Bretton Woods institutions, most notably a privatisation programme of state-owned enterprises,” Capital Economics wrote in an analysis ahead of the election. “Those reforms have underpinned average growth of approximately 6% over several decades, allowing GDP per capita to roughly triple to an estimated $1,077 by 2024, although this still lags many of Uganda’s peers on the continent.”

“Growth has softened more recently. The economy slowed down from 5.5% y/y in Q2 to 4.8% y/y in Q3, the slowest rate of expansion in more than two years, reflecting underperformance in key sectors such as agriculture and industry. That said, activity appears to have stabilised towards the end of last year with both the PMI and the central bank’s business indicator in expansionary territory. Inflation has remained under control at around 3% y/y.

But, Capital Economics noted, Museveni had faced mounting criticism ahead of the election, even from more conservative quarters.

“One source of discontent is the perception that the gains from privatisation drive have disproportionately accrued to politically connected elites. Liberalisation of the energy, utility, rail and agricultural sectors has attracted foreign direct investment and yielded fiscal savings. But analysis suggests the sale of some state-owned enterprises fell short of World Bank estimates due to asset undervaluation and, more worryingly, rent seeking behaviour and corruption.”

Uganda is among the world’s ten youngest countries by median age (under 17, by some estimates) and the share of youth (15-24 years) not in employment, education or training stands at over 40%. The re-election of Museveni highlights a stark generational contrast at the heart of its politics, one that has played out in contests across the continent.

Critics say Museveni’s longevity stems from ever-growing structural imbalances in Uganda’s political system, a tightly controlled media, and the often-violent suppression of civic freedoms. But he has undeniably also stayed in power by changing the rules. Term limits (established in 2005 and 2017) and age restrictions have been removed from the constitution to his benefit, and some rivals – including Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate – have been jailed on what supporters say are bogus changes.

In the lead-up to the previous contest, in November 2020, at least 54 people were killed during protests following the arrest of the most prominent opposition figure, Bobi Wine, and the government acknowledged detaining more than 1,300 people in connection with the elections, while the opposition said it faced up to 3,000 abductions.

The 2026 election process was characterised by intimidation and violence directed against the opposition on a comparable scale. The violence was so pervasive that Wine likened the campaign to a war zone.

Two days before Museveni secured a seventh term, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) ordered telecoms providers to take the country offline, and most internet television and social media platforms ceased to operate. The UCC said state security bodies recommended the action to “mitigate the spread of misinformation and disinformation, curb risks of electoral fraud and prevent incitement to violence.”

While many saw the shutdown as orchestrated to help secure another Museveni victory, the shutdown fed voters’ suspicions about how free and fair the process would be. The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner expressed concerns about “widespread intimidation”.

Uganda’s security forces patrolled the streets in great numbers throughout the election campaign, and Wine claimed that authorities followed him and harassed his supporters, using tear gas against them.

Now, the president’s son and heir apparent, Defence Forces chief General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, 51, is spearheading a post-election crackdown on dissenters – not least against Wine, whom he has threatened to torture and kill, compelling him to go into hiding.

In a series of social media posts from January 22-23, the general claimed that state authorities had detained 2,000 opposition supporters and killed 30, accusing them of being “terrorists”, and ordered Wine to turn himself over the police, or be branded a treasonous outlaw.

The following day, Wine said his wife, Barbara Kyagulanyi had been taken to hospital after soldiers invaded their family home, beat and stripped her to force her to unlock a phone.

“If the reported killing of ten members of the campaign team of a member of parliament for the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) by security forces during the elections indicated the regime’s desperation to hold on to power, the continued harassment of perceived political enemies in the aftermath, including a premeditated attack on the residence of opposition leader Bobi Wine […] signals Mr. Museveni’s determination to take the battle to his adversaries,” commented CFR’s Obadare.

“If Muhoozi Kainerugaba (the president’s son and, from all indications, next in line) has his way, that battle will be more than figurative. In the days after his father’s tainted victory, Muhoozi, who is also the country’s army chief, posted a series of tweets in which he referred to Bobi Wine as a ‘baboon,’ boasted about having ‘killed twenty-two NUP terrorists since last week’ and prayed that ‘the twenty-third is Kabobi.’ (Kabobi is Wine’s nickname.)

“For effect, Muhoozi also threatened to ‘kill on sight all NUP foot soldiers’ until his father, the president, says otherwise. Although he later took down the tweets following public condemnation, Muhoozi has promised to ‘ban’ the opposition leader ‘from any further participation in the electoral exercises of Uganda’ in the interests of national security ‘and for the good of the commonwealth’.”

Wine, first elected to parliament in 2017 and founder of the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), has emerged as the face of Uganda’s youth-led opposition movement. He also ran for president in 2021, building a support base among urban voters, young people and pro-democracy activists.

An estimated 33 million of Uganda’s 46 million population are under the age of 30, including 10.7 million voters. While the country’s official unemployment rate stands at 12.6%, youth unemployment is at 43%. Less that 13% of 700,000 graduates each year can find employment in the formal sector. Their frustration over finding work – coupled with anger over perceived widespread corruption – has seen them at the vanguard of protest movements, but yet to translate into representation.

Museveni first came to power in 1986 and has overseen constitutional changes that removed presidential age and term limits, entrenching his long hold on power in one of the world's youngest countries.

“The election in Uganda is in many ways a microcosm of the sharp crosscurrents shaping the political space in Africa. Long-dominant parties are attempting to hold onto power despite waning popularity and growing demands for greater pluralism from a restive, youthful population that has known only one leader,” the Africa Center for Strategic Studies wrote.

According to the think tank, the normalization of violence around elections in Uganda follows a pattern in the East African region. “Tight restrictions against the opposition campaigning in the run-up to the October 2025 Tanzanian elections were followed by an unprecedented level of abductions, arrests, and killings of an estimated several thousand people” – opposition supporters and ordinary citizens alike – “belying the claim of a 98 percent electoral tally in support of incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan,” the centre noted.

“Recent years have also seen greater levels of cooperation among East African governments in restricting acts of opposition and civil society solidarity. Even though he was not expected to be a candidate in 2026, longtime Ugandan opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye was abducted in Kenya in November 2024 and forcibly transported to Uganda, where he initially faced a military trial. He remains in detention under the charge of treason and the threat of the death penalty. Kenyan and Tanzanian lawyers who have attempted to represent or observe his trial have faced a series of roadblocks from doing so.”

Obadare commented: “Uganda holds no patent on this ascendant impunity. Africa’s most recent polls (in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania, respectively) were conducted under similar moral auspices: with the incumbent using state resources—and in the case of Tanzania vicious violence—to choke life out of its adversaries as well as put potential challengers on notice.”