PAN-AFRICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION, SOVEREIGNTY, AND INTRA-AFRICAN TRADE: LESSONS FROM UGANDA’S INDUSTRIAL DRIVE AND LESOTHO’S BUS ACQUISITION
For decades, the orthodoxies of neoliberalism have preached to us across Africa that the state has no business in business, that our nations should remain mere exporters of raw materials and importers of finished goods, while leaving critical infrastructure, national security, and public services to the mercy of foreign capital and private profit.
Yet, right here on our continent, Uganda’s state-led industrial initiatives, spanning both civilian mass transit and domestic defense manufacturing, offer a compelling counter-narrative of what deliberate industrial policy, backed by public institutions and national vision, can achieve.
In the civilian transport sector, Uganda’s Kiira Motors Corporation (KMC), 96 per cent owned by the Government of Uganda and 4 per cent by Makerere University, has moved from university engineering concepts to assembling electric and diesel mass-transit buses, including the Kayoola EVS and Kayoola Coach series, at its manufacturing facility in Jinja. With electric models capable of traveling between 200 and 500 kilometers on a single charge and operating at a fraction of the running cost of imported fossil-fuel vehicles, this initiative is now delivering tangible milestones in South-South and intra-African trade.
This week, following bilateral talks in Entebbe on November 10, 2026, between Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Lesotho’s Foreign Minister Limpho Justice Tau, the Kingdom of Lesotho agreed to acquire 25 Kayoola EVS electric buses, which offer a 300-kilometer range per charge, to modernise its public transport system. Under the arrangement, the Government of Lesotho will purchase 20 buses directly, complemented by an additional 5 units donated by Uganda. Rather than importing buses from Europe or Asia, an African nation is buying green, high-technology public transit manufactured by another African nation.
Parallel to this civilian progress, Uganda has deliberately built domestic capacity in military engineering and defence production through the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC), the commercial and industrial arm of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces. Operating out of its industrial hub in Nakasongola, including the NEC-Streit armoured vehicle manufacturing plant and subsidiary engineering arms like Luwero Industries, Uganda produces a wide range of specialised equipment. These include armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mine-resistant tactical vehicles, armoured ambulances, patrol boats, and civilian security vehicles, alongside small arms, ammunition, and military helicopter maintenance and overhaul facilities.
Together, these twin pillars of civilian and defence manufacturing demonstrate three vital principles that must guide our own path to economic emancipation and national sovereignty in Zambia:
- The Necessity of the Developmental State: Industrialisation in Africa will not happen by accident, nor will it be delivered by foreign private capital seeking quick extraction. Whether in public transit or defence engineering, self-reliance requires deliberate, patient public investment in research, technology transfer, and state-backed manufacturing.
- Linking Higher Education and National Institutions to Production: By anchoring automotive innovation in a public university and leveraging military engineering corps for industrial fabrication, Uganda has shown that African engineers, technicians, and workers possess the intellectual and technical capacity to design, assemble, and maintain complex machinery when given state support.
- True Sovereignty Requires Industrial Self-Reliance and Intra-African Trade: A nation cannot claim genuine independence if it depends entirely on foreign suppliers outside the continent for both its public transport systems and its essential defence and security equipment. Building domestic manufacturing capacity reduces the drain on scarce foreign exchange, creates skilled local jobs, and turns Pan-African solidarity into concrete economic exchange.
At the same time, true accountability demands that we look at such enterprises with clear eyes. Publicly funded industries must not become conduits for bureaucratic waste, opaque procurement, or elite capture. Ongoing scrutiny in Uganda regarding production output relative to state expenditure reminds us that state-owned enterprises must be run with strict transparency, high productivity, and unwavering accountability to the taxpayers and workers who fund them.
Here in Zambia, blessed with abundant copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and clean energy potential, we have every ingredient required to lead Southern Africa in green industrial manufacturing, modern public transit, and sovereign engineering. Instead of exporting our critical minerals in raw form only to buy back finished buses, batteries, and equipment at exorbitant prices, a Socialist government will prioritise value addition, state-led industrial partnerships and intra-African trade.
Africa must build what it uses, trade what it builds with its neighbours, defend itself with what it produces, and own what it builds. Forward to a self-reliant, industrialised!
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party [Zambia]