From left: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, President William Ruto and Mr Raila Odinga in Bondo, Siaya County on January 2, 2025.
Long-serving Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was the chief guest at a cultural event in Siaya County on Thursday — whose patron is veteran opposition politician Raila Odinga — at the invitation of his host, President William Ruto.
Mr Museveni drove from Kampala through Busia border and was received by Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi on his way to the Piny Luo festival.
The visit comes weeks after a storm erupted over the abduction of Ugandan opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye in Nairobi by people thought to be security agents from Kampala.
Dr Besigye, who was in Nairobi to attend the launch of opposition politician Martha Karua’s book, was charged in a military court and remains in custody. Despite denials, Ugandan authorities said their Kenyan counterparts were part of the operation.
President Museveni has a long standing history with Kenya. His wife Janet Museveni and their children moved to Nairobi’s Shauri Moyo estate when he launched a guerrilla warfare back home that eventually saw him capture power in 1986.
However, there are many things the straight-talker does not like about Kenya and has never shied away from expressing himself about them.
At the height of the post-election violence in 2007, in his famous remarks of “kung’oa reli’ (uprooting the railway) remark, he accused Mr Odinga’s ODM supporters in Nairobi’s Kibera slums of economic sabotage for destroying the railway line that is critical to the supply of goods to Uganda.
After the truce between President Mwai Kibaki and Mr Odinga that ended the violence, President Museveni appeared to forget the ODM leader’s name during his speech at an event in State House, Nairobi. Many observers interpreted this as ill-disguised contempt from Mr Museveni, who was largely seen as supporting Kibaki in the disputed elections.
Last year, the octogenarian took on firebrand Embakasi East MP Babu Owino over his alleged meddling in Uganda’s politics. Mr Owino is known to be close to Ugandan opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine. Ironically, Mr Museveni was in Nairobi to attend the launch of Mr Odinga’s bid for the African Union Commission chairmanship.
The calling out of the youthful ODM MP opened another chapter of the love-hate relationships between President Museveni and Kenya dating back to the reign of President Daniel Moi.
From his stance on trade between the two countries and the row over Migingo Island, to the on-and-off political spats with Mr Odinga, one can never predict what the rebel-leader-turned-president will say about Kenya.
At State House to rally behind Mr Odinga’s AUC bid late last year, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) leader could not pass the chance to express his displeasure with what he termed as interference by Mr Odinga’s party in Uganda’s political affairs.
“There are some individuals in Raila’s group who I don’t think know what they are doing. I am a consumer of intelligence services. I always see intelligence reports and there is a character called Babu who always appears there,” said President Museveni. “I always see Babu dealing with anti-NRM groups in Uganda. I have never accused him, but now I am accusing him.”
President Museveni also criticised Kenya for its protectionist trade policies that had triggered disputes with Uganda and gone against the East African Community protocols.
He has never hidden his unhappiness with Kenya for denying entry of key agricultural products from Uganda such as eggs, milk and grains, and he used the opportunity to express his reservations over Kenya’s move to block sugar from his country.
“That is why in our movement, ideology number one is patriotism. Because you need Uganda for your own good, whether you like me or not you need me because I buy what you produce, I put money in your pockets,” the President said.
“When you buy our products we rise. When you close us like I have heard you have closed sugar, we fall. When you close our eggs, milk, sugar, maize ... all that blocks us.”
The two countries have intermittently sparred over trade, with Kenya on several occasions blocking entry of Uganda’s agricultural products. Over the years, Uganda has also employed retaliatory measures.
In November 2023, President Museveni defended a decision to stop the purchase of petroleum products from Kenya, accusing middlemen of inflating prices by up to 59 per cent, causing huge losses for his country. He also hit out at “internal parasites” for “cheating” Uganda.
“Without my knowledge, our wonderful people were buying this huge quantity of petroleum products from middlemen in Kenya. A whole country buying from middlemen in Kenya or anywhere else!” he said in a statement on his official X handle.
The trade rows saw Uganda sidestep Kenya for Tanzania to hold buffer fuel stocks on its behalf. Uganda has for years imported 90 per cent of its fuel from Kenyan oil marketing companies.
President Museveni and President Ruto had to sit down to resolve the impasse—which had found its way to the East Africa Court of Justice—that was threatening the relationship between the two neighbours.
Despite these hiccups, Kenya has remained one of Uganda’s major export destinations.
In May last year, President Museveni posted on X that he had been invited to Kenya “to further strengthen the strong historical ties between Uganda and Kenya”.
The two countries would later sign an agreement on the importation and transit of petroleum products. The deal enabled Uganda to import refined petroleum commodities directly from the producer countries.
The two Presidents also directed the ministers of trade in both countries to meet and resolve any outstanding barriers to trade.
“The meeting also emphasised the importance of extending the standard gauge railway from Naivasha to Malaba and all the way to Kampala and DRC as an efficient and sustainable infrastructure for the transportation of goods,” said Dr Ruto.
President Museveni emphasised the need for the two countries to eliminate barriers hindering trade, saying the EAC and Africa must deepen free market and modern economic policies for shared prosperity.
In June 2023, the Uganda leader hit out at Kenyans who alleged he was in intensive care after contracting Covid-19.
“I also noticed a few people from, I think, Kenya saying that I was in ICU etc. If I was in ICU, the government would inform the country. What is there to hide?” he asked.
In March 2019, President Museveni was the first foreign Head of State to enjoy a ride on Madaraka Express at the invitation of then President Uhuru Kenyatta.
It is during Mr Kenyatta’s tenure that Kenya failed to convince Uganda to build its crude oil pipeline to Mombasa. Instead, President Museveni picked Tanzania.
The two countries have had a long-standing dispute over arrests and detention of Kenyan fishermen on Migingo Island. The dispute revolves around fishing rights in Lake Victoria. Kenyan fishermen have faced arrest and detention for fishing in areas that Uganda claims as its territorial waters.
One time, President Museveni was quoted as having said that the island belongs to Kenya while the water surrounding it belongs to Uganda. However, he later said he was misquoted.
The tiny island has a predominantly Kenyan population.
Kenya and Uganda have also had spats over accusations of herders from Kenya straying into Uganda, with the latter’s authorities arresting the herders, accusing them of being illegally armed.
The border region is mainly occupied by the Turkana and Pokot ethnic communities in north-western Kenya, and the Karamojong in the northeast Uganda.
On the political front, President Museveni and Mr Odinga have endured an on-and-off relationship with the two rarely seeing eye-to-eye.
At the height of the post-election violence, Mr Museveni flew to Kenya to broker peace between Mr Odinga and Kibaki in the crisis that followed the disputed 2007 presidential election. But Mr Odinga was opposed to his involvement in the process, forcing the Uganda leader to return to Kampala.
“He (Museveni) had come on his own, but we thought he was conspiring with Kibaki. He had called me prior to leaving Uganda and told me Kibaki had said he could come, asking me if I had any objection, to which I said no,” wrote Mr Odinga in his book The Flame of Freedom. “But I thought his role was to scuttle the mediation process. He wanted instead a judicial commission of inquiry, with Commonwealth judges that Kibaki would appoint and who would scrutinise the ballot papers.”
The opposition then accused President Museveni of sending Ugandan troops via the Busia border to “kill and main” protesters at the invitation of Kibaki. But President Museveni denied taking sides in the dispute, saying he was only trying to help resolve a conflict that had affected the flow of goods into his country.
He would exact his revenge during the swearing-in ceremony, after the late Kofi Annan helped broker a power-sharing deal by “forgetting” Mr Odinga’s name.
Interestingly, it was President Museveni who helped Mr Odinga flee Kenya to Norway in 1991 at the height of the brutal crackdown of democracy advocates by Moi’s regime.
Before the 2013 General Election, the Observer of London ran reports suggesting that President Museveni strongly favoured the election of Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta to State House over Mr Odinga.
