Pain of Uganda’s colourful, yet unfancied candidates
From left: Presidential candidates Nathan Nandala Mafabi, incumbent Yoweri Museveni, and Robert Kyagulanyi “Bobi Wine” ahead of Uganda’s 2025/26 election, highlighting the race between well-funded and under-resourced campaigns.
While the attention was focused on the display of red versus yellow crowds and their campaign paraphernalia, a subplot was unfolding involving Uganda’s colourful but unfancied and financially struggling candidates, who barely held rallies and could not match the energy of the state-funded political parties spending billions, highlighting the increasing commercialisation of elections and the repeated calls for regulation of election funding.
The balance scales in the presidential race remain tilted towards the well-resourced incumbent President Yoweri Museveni of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine of the National Unity Platform (NUP) and Nathan Nandala Mafabi of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
