Beyond BUBU:

Walk through a supermarket in Kampala, scroll through an online marketplace or visit one of the growing weekend exhibitions for small businesses, and the “Made in Uganda” label is increasingly difficult to miss.

It appears on bottles of liquid soap and detergents, packaged foods, cosmetics, clothes, jewellery, furniture and other household products.

For entrepreneurs such as George Odong, founder of Mzuri Soaps and Detergents, getting Ugandans to pick these products from the shelf is about more than making a sale. It means convincing consumers that a locally manufactured product can compete with an imported one.

That has not always been easy.

For years, imported products have occupied a privileged place in Uganda’s consumer market. For some shoppers, foreign brands are associated with better packaging, reliability, durability and quality.

“Sometimes products that are made locally, are weaker than those imported, Jackline Assimwe, a local product consumer says sharing her frustration further that “the problem I’ve realized with Uganda, we want to make things but not to perfection. They make something that they want to benefit from but don’t consider durability.”

Local manufacturers have therefore had to fight not only for space on supermarket shelves, but also for consumer confidence.

“Changing the perceptions of the consumers has mainly been through customer service,” Odong says.

For him, the strongest indication that perceptions are changing is not when someone buys his product for the first time, but when they return.

“When a customer comes back more than once, then it is more than just support. The customer genuinely likes the product they are using,” he says.

Across Uganda, entrepreneurs like Odong are at the centre of a broader attempt to persuade Ugandans to consume more of what the country produces.

On the other hand, the government has promoted this through the Buy Uganda Build Uganda (BUBU) policy with intent to boast local manufacturing.

It has allocated UGX 1.03 trillion specifically for manufacturing and industrial development. This follows a steady upward trajectory over the 5-year block, where direct sub-program funding for manufacturing hovered between UGX 300 billion to UGX 500 billion annually.

The primary hurdle for local manufacturers has been the high cost of credit. Over the last five years, the government heavily recapitalized the Uganda Development Bank (UDB). In recent national budgets, additional injections—including a UGX 415.7 billion capital boost—were granted to UDB.

This money is deployed to provide credit to local factory setups at very low interest rates of 10% to 12%. The government is also finalizing an additional $175 million (UGX 647 billion) loan to expand this credit line.

Besides the government policy, local initiatives such as Tubayo Market Day, Quonnect Market Day and other Made-in-Uganda exhibitions have given small businesses opportunities to meet customers directly, display their products and build their brands.

However, local product makers are facing stiff competition from subsidized imported foreign goods often retail at lower prices than domestic products. Also, the long consumption of these products has biased locals causing doubt to local brands.

A consumer choosing between two bottles of detergent is unlikely to buy the Ugandan product simply because it carries the national flag. The product must perform.

That reality has forced some Ugandan manufacturers to rethink how they package, market and support their products.

For Odong, customer feedback has become part of that process.

His experience suggests that patriotism may persuade someone to try a Ugandan product once, but quality determines whether they buy it again.

This is where the success of the Buy Uganda Build Uganda agenda may ultimately be decided: not in government slogans, but in the everyday decisions consumers make at supermarket shelves, markets and online stores.

Uganda has consequently placed industrialisation and domestic manufacturing at the centre of its economic ambitions.

But increased manufacturing output alone does not necessarily answer the deeper question of how much value remains within Uganda.

If manufacturers continue to depend heavily on imported machinery, packaging and raw materials, part of the money generated by domestic production still leaves the country.

The challenge for policymakers is therefore not simply to increase the number of products carrying a Made-in-Uganda label, but to progressively deepen local value chains.

Beyond asking Ugandans to buy local

The responsibility cannot rest entirely with consumers.

Government can encourage Ugandans to buy locally produced goods, but manufacturers need an environment in which they can compete on price and quality.

That means addressing the conditions under which Ugandan businesses operate: access to affordable financing, electricity costs, taxation, certification, technology, standards, raw materials and access to markets.

A successful Made-in-Uganda movement requires products that consumers can trust, manufacturers that can compete and a regulatory system that ensures claims about origin and quality mean something.

For businesses like Mzuri Soaps and Detergents, every returning customer is evidence that this confidence can be built.

For government, however, the test is larger.

The real measure of Buy Uganda Build Uganda will not simply be how many products carry a Ugandan label, but how much Ugandan value sits behind that label—and whether the country’s growing manufacturing sector translates into stronger businesses, decent jobs and more money circulating within the Ugandan economy.

Until then, the question consumers are increasingly entitled to ask remains simple:

When a product says “Made in Uganda”, how much of it really is?