Research desk
Foreign direct investment, refineries and processing capacity, critical minerals and the capital moving into Uganda's mineral belts.
24 published items
Diesel is eating margins at rural processing plants, so more operators are putting solar and batteries beside the generator. The savings look real, the maintenance question is not settled.
David Mubiru · August 16, 2026
Government messaging this month places minerals alongside oil as a driver of industrialisation. The ambition is coherent. The delivery record on value addition, licensing capacity and revenue collection is what will decide it.
Charity Mugisha
Gold accounts for more than three-quarters of export earnings, but a large share of the value still comes from refining and re-exporting metal sourced outside Uganda.
Charity Mugisha
Firmer tin and tungsten prices have brought medium-scale underground operations in the south west back into production. Grid reliability and the road to the Ruti smelter still decide whether the ore is worth lifting.
Moses Byaruhanga
Kinshasa has stopped exports of copper and cobalt concentrates with immediate effect and added new taxes on by-products. For Uganda, which is drafting its own value-addition rules, the question is whether processing capacity can be built before export restrictions bite.
Timothy Waiswa
With bullion pinned near 4,000 dollars an ounce and 10-year real yields at about 2.41 per cent, Jefferies argues the metal can rally again once rate-hike pressure fades. For Uganda's licensed producers, the call matters more than the headline price.
Charity Mugisha
A 532 million tonne ionic clay resource with an unusually heavy rare earth basket has moved from development curiosity to strategic asset. Funding, not geology, is the constraint.
Timothy Waiswa
Even so, ionic Rare Earths has opened a strategic review of the Makuutu rare earths project, putting funding, partnership and development options for one of Uganda's most advanced critical-minerals assets back on the table.
Timothy Waiswa
With around 260 million tonnes of proven reserves across Muko, Bukusu and Sukulu, Uganda has the ore. Smelting economics depend on electricity tariffs and haulage.
Moses Byaruhanga
Commissioned at Ruti in Mbarara, the country's first tin smelter changes the economics for tin, tungsten and tantalum producers in Kisoro, Ntungamo and Rukungiri.
Prossy Kansiime
Tororo hosts one of East Africa's largest phosphate deposits. Domestic fertiliser use remains low, which makes the plant's economics a farm policy question as much as a mining one.
Fred Etyang
Construction across the region has lifted clinker output, and with it dust, blasting and haulage disputes in host sub-counties.
Moses Byaruhanga
Rehabilitation of the flooded Kasese workings is the precondition for everything else. State participation clarifies ownership after years of contested concessions.
Moses Byaruhanga
Central and western occurrences are being sampled for flake quality. Anode-grade qualification is a long, expensive road that most projects do not finish.
Timothy Waiswa
Ceramics, drilling fluids, paper and pharmaceuticals give these deposits a steady domestic market that gold-focused policy tends to overlook.
Fred Etyang
Domestic refining capacity is rising as plants in Busia and Entebbe scale output, shifting more of Uganda's gold value chain onshore and strengthening the case for formalised supply from licensed concessions.
Prossy Kansiime
On the ground, industrial minerals in Karamoja are attracting investment as cement and construction demand rises, but local leaders warn that land agreements must be settled before quarries scale.
Loyce Nakut
A mid-scale iron ore beneficiation plant in Kabale District has entered commissioning, targeting regional steel mills and marking a rare step toward domestic value addition outside the gold sector.
David Mubiru
Government negotiators confirmed material progress in 2025 on a new concession for the Kilembe copper-cobalt complex in Kasese, ending a decade of stop-start talks.
Moses Byaruhanga
Rwenzori Rare Metals confirmed completion of a demonstration processing plant at Makuutu in late 2024, a milestone for one of Africa's few advanced ionic-adsorption-clay rare earth projects.
Timothy Waiswa
Negotiations to revive the Kasese Cobalt Company complex have advanced through 2023, with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development pointing to firm international interest in the tailings and pyrite stockpile resource.
Moses Byaruhanga
Rwenzori Rare Metals' Makuutu project in Bugweri secured a 21-year large-scale mining licence, potentially making Uganda one of the few African producers of ionic-adsorption-clay rare earth elements.
Timothy Waiswa
Now, ASX-listed Sipa Resources' Akelikongo project has continued to generate encouraging drill intercepts, adding a nickel-copper-cobalt story to Uganda's growing critical-minerals prospectus.
Aine Kansiime
Now, a decade after Tibet-Hima's concession collapsed, Kilembe Mines in Kasese remains dormant, and the district's economic planners are still waiting for a credible partner to bring the copper-cobalt complex back to life.
Moses Byaruhanga
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