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The Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife, and Antiquities convened a top management and leadership meeting with outgoing Minister of State Hon. Martin Mugarra formally handing over to Hon. Susan Nsambu Nakawuki. the room held something rarer than a routine handover, a shared, unhurried confidence that the work already done was worth building on and that the work ahead had willing hands.
For five years, Hon. Mugarra helped lay the groundwork for a tourism sector that no longer trades solely on gorillas and savannas. Under his tenure, the ministry pushed further into cultural tourism, activating platforms like Ekyooto Ha Mpango and reimagining iconic sites such as the Source of the Nile and Mugaba Palace as world-class visitor experiences.
During this session, Permanent Secretary Doreen Katusiime, acknowledged those contributions pointedly she says,
“The work was not just about adding new products, but about repackaging Uganda’s existing richness in a language that global markets understand and pay for.”
Mugarra himself was characteristically measured in reflection. He credited the professionalism of the technical teams and the mentorship of Minister Rtd. Col. Tom Butime, and he left his successor with a simple but loaded instruction, and that is to build on what is already here. It is, notably, the kind of handover that signals institutional continuity, not disruption.
Hon. Nakawuki accepted the role with exactly the energy the moment called for. Her acknowledgement of President Museveni was brief, but her road map was not. She spoke of promoting and marketing Uganda aggressively, of reaching the right audiences through diversified products, of correcting the misinformation that erodes the national narrative before it can even be countered and of confronting the visa friction that quietly turns potential visitors into visitors who go somewhere else instead.
In the same room was Hon. Tom Butime, whose fingerprints are visible across much of the sector’s recent strategic direction which were reinforced the same logic: diversify the products, expand the markets, and build for resilience against economic pressures that no destination is immune to. From the private sector, Uganda Tourism Association President Mrs. Yogi Birigwa offered both commendation for the ministry’s hospitality investments and a pledge to deepen the public-private partnerships that will ultimately carry the Ugandan story beyond the country’s own borders.
UTB CEO Juliana Kagwa was among the senior leaders present, a quiet but significant marker of the cross-institutional alignment that any serious tourism growth strategy requires.
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What this meeting confirmed is something Uganda’s tourism industry has been slowly but deliberately building toward: the country is no longer positioning itself as a destination waiting to be put on the map. It is positioning itself as a business case that has already been made, one that now needs the right marketing, the right access, and the right leadership to close.
Hon. Nakawuki steps into a role that carries both that inheritance and that ambition. The foundation is strong. The mandate is aggressive. The story is Uganda’s to tell.
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Article by: Lynette Agnes Kembabazi
Node Group Consult
