Museveni to receive an independence medal
By Our reporter
ENTEBBE – President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is among the 20 medallists set to be honoured during Uganda’s 64 the Independence Day celebrations on October 9, 2026, at State House Entebbe.
The development was confirmed by Hajjat Zamina Malole, Chancellor of the Presidential Awards Committee in the Office of the President.
President Museveni will receive the Order of the Commander-in-Chief (Uganda Prisons Service Medal) in recognition of his leadership and contribution to peace and security.
According to the Presidential Awards Committee, the medal is awarded to heads of State and heads of government in recognition of visionary leadership and championing peace and security in the country, the East African region and Africa.
The award is pursuant to Section 3(2), Second Schedule, Part I of the National Honours and Awards Act, 2001, as amended.
The medals will be presented as part of the national celebrations marking Uganda’s Independence Day.
Yoweri Museveni (born 1944, Mbarra district, Uganda) is a politician and former rebel leader who has served as president of Uganda since 1986. Though he has been praised for restoring political stability and promoting economic growth during his presidency, he has also been criticized for government corruption, an increasing intolerance of dissent, and his unwillingness to relinquish power.
He was most recently re-elected in the election held on January 15, 2026.
Early life and resistance activity
Museveni was born to cattle farmers and attended missionary schools. While studying political science and economics at the University of Dar es Salaam (B.A., 1970) in Tanzania, he became chairman of a leftist student group allied with African liberation movements. When Idi Amin came to power in Uganda in 1971, Museveni returned to Tanzania in exile. There he founded the Front for National Salvation, which helped overthrow Amin in 1979. Museveni held posts in transitional governments and in 1980 ran for president of Uganda.
When the elections, widely believed to have been rigged, were won by Milton Obote, Museveni and former president Yusufu Lule formed the National Resistance Movement (NRM); Museveni led the NRM’s armed group, the National Resistance Army, which waged a guerrilla war against Obote’s regime. The resistance eventually prevailed, and on January 26, 1986, Museveni declared himself president of Uganda.
Presidency over the next several years,
Museveni focused on rebuilding the economy and tamping down pockets of resistance in the country. A new constitution was promulgated in 1995, and elections were held in 1996 in which he was elected president in May and his backers won control of the National Assembly in legislative elections held the following month.
Museveni was re-elected in 2001 and again in 2006 after a constitutional amendment passed the previous year had eliminated established term limits for the presidency. He was re-elected again in 2011 and 2016, although the opposition and international observers noted problems with the polling process in both elections.
A constitutional amendment passed in 2017 removed the age limit for presidential candidates that had been set at age 75 while also reimposing a limit of two terms, clearing the way for an aging Museveni to stand for the next two presidential elections.
He was re-elected in 2021 and 2026, but the campaign period prior to the polls were criticized as being repressive.
As president, Museveni helped revitalize the country, providing political stability, a growing economy, and an improved infrastructure. He instituted a number of capitalist reforms and supported a free press.
Although Museveni initially rejected multiparty democracy, arguing that it would degenerate into tribal politics in a poor African country, he accepted the results of a 2005 referendum that overwhelmingly supported a return to multiparty politics; the next year the country held its first multiparty elections since 1980.
Museveni also implemented measures to combat AIDS. Uganda, in fact, was one of the first African countries to have success battling the illness.
In 2021 Museveni appointed Robinah Nabbanja as prime minister; she was the first woman to hold the position in Uganda.
Corruption, however, was an issue in Uganda under Museveni. Over the years, foreign and domestic support for Museveni waned in some quarters, corruption being cited as one of the problems.
Museveni’s growing intolerance with dissenting views was another commonly cited criticism: as he continued to cling to power, there were increasing reports of opposition figures notably, Kizza Besigye and, later, Bobi Wine and their supporters allegedly being harassed, detained, and even abducted.
He also came under fire for his lack of success with eliminating the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a militia led by Joseph Kony that terrorized northern Uganda for decades. Although the LRA was largely forced out of the country by 2006, the group continued to commit atrocities in neighboring countries.
In his foreign policy, Museveni garnered praise for contributing troops to the African Union’s force in Somalia but elicited some criticism for supporting the government of South Sudan in the civil war that erupted in that country in late 2013.
