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Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni has led the country for more than four decades, making him one of the world’s longest-serving rulers with no clear plan to step down.
Since seizing power in 1986 and ending years of conflict, Museveni warned that leaders who stay in office too long hinder Africa’s progress. But four decades on, that self-critique has faded. Once lauded in the West as a model of governance, he has joined the ranks of Africa’s long-serving leaders who resist retirement.
Museveni’s affable image and folksy anecdotes cloak a past as a guerrilla fighter and a shrewd political survivor. Over his 40-year rule, he has merged state and party and crushed opposition so effectively that challengers to him or his National Resistance Movement (NRM) found little space to operate.
At 81 (with some opponents arguing he is older), he says he is fit for a seventh term if he wins the upcoming election.
Internal Challengers
In lengthy, rhetoric-filled speeches, often sprinkled with peasant lore, Museveni has repeatedly urged patience, likening himself to a farmer who leaves a plantation just as it begins to bear fruit. His 2026 campaign carries the slogan “Protecting the gains.”
Rarely does the man known as “the old man who saved the country” miss an opportunity to recount his bush-war exploits, sometimes trading his safari hat for camouflage fatigues.
Museveni studied in Dar es Salaam in the 1960s, when the university served as a training ground for anti-colonial activists.
British journalist William Pike, who interviewed Museveni in 1984, recalled a man with a distant, dreamer-like look in his eyes. He spoke seriously yet intermittently showed humour, and his officers were deferential, with Museveni’s confidence affecting everyone around him.
From Reform to Consolidation
Early international perceptions praised Museveni’s progress in economic growth, poverty reduction, and HIV/AIDS control. A skilled strategist, he has sought to present himself as an elder statesman and regional peacemaker, even as Ugandan security operations spread into neighbouring countries and breaches of the arms embargo occurred in South Sudan.
His open-door refugee policy and troop deployments against terrorists in Somalia earned foreign support, even as domestic corruption scandals surfaced.
Museveni’s approval of one of the world’s harshest anti-gay laws drew international criticism in 2023, but he vowed to maintain his stance.
Raised by cattle herders, Museveni once promised to retire to tend his beloved Ankole cattle, yet he has outlasted all continental peers except Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and Paul Biya of Cameroon.
