Minister for the Presidency Hon. Babirye Milly Babalanda has a blunt message for Uganda’s Resident District Commissioners.
Stop arguing with your critics. Start outworking them.
The Minister delivered the charge on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, while closing a three-day capacity-building workshop in Jinja City.
The training brought together RDCs, Deputy RDCs, Assistant RDCs, Regional Internal Security Officers and District Internal Security Officers drawn from across the Busoga Sub-region.
It was held at the Source of the Nile Hotel, a venue that sits within sight of the very river whose waters have shaped the fortunes of the sub-region for generations.
Her core argument was simple.
Government’s image in the eyes of ordinary citizens is built one district office at a time.
“You represent Government at the district and community level and through your work, citizens form an impression of the Government and ultimately of the Presidency,” Hon. Babalanda said.
The Office That Was Built to Watch
To understand why the Minister’s charge carries weight, it helps to understand what an RDC actually is.
The office was created under Article 203 of the 1995 Constitution and Section 71 of the Local Government Act.
By law, the RDC represents the President and coordinates government services within the district, advises the district chairperson on matters of national concern, and monitors and inspects the activities of local governments.
In practice, the RDC has become something closer to the eyes and ears of the Presidency at the grassroots.
The RDCs are non-political leaders appointed by the President and serve as his representatives in the districts, coordinating government programs and policies at the grassroots level to ensure effective implementation and service delivery.
It is a demanding brief, and it is one that has drawn scrutiny in the past.
The office chairs the district security committee and monitors implementation of both central and local government services, a mandate that has grown heavier as the number of districts and municipalities has expanded nationwide.
Hon. Babalanda herself has previously had to remind officers where their authority begins and ends.
In December 2024, while closing a similar workshop for the Teso and Sebei sub-regions, she warned RDCs that they are supervised only by the President, the Minister for the Presidency, the Secretary of the Office of the President and the Head of the RDC Secretariat, not by politicians.
That history of course-correction makes Wednesday’s Jinja workshop part of a pattern.
The Minister is not simply training new officers.
She is repeatedly recalibrating an institution that operates under constant public pressure and constant political noise.
Working Out of the Office
Hon. Babalanda urged the Commissioners to move beyond office-based administration.
She wants them spending more time in communities.
Monitoring government projects, identifying challenges, protecting public resources and confirming that services reach their intended beneficiaries should not be desk work, she said.
She described monitoring as one of the most important responsibilities of the RDC structure.
She cautioned officers against attempting to supervise government programmes from behind an office desk.
Instead, she directed them to physically visit project sites.
They should establish facts on the ground.
They should interact directly with the communities the programmes are meant to serve.
According to Hon. Babalanda, officers should be asking hard, specific questions.
Are projects progressing according to plan?
Are public funds and other resources being properly utilised?
Are contractors and implementing agencies fulfilling their obligations?
Are the intended beneficiaries actually receiving the services government has paid for?
She said monitoring should not end with a field visit or a written report.
The Commissioners, she said, should trace the root causes of any problems they uncover.
They should identify the institutions or individuals responsible.
They should communicate through the appropriate channels.
And they should follow up until corrective action is actually taken.
Hon. Babalanda also encouraged officers to document successful government projects and interventions.
Recognition, she suggested, should not be reserved only for failures.
She said the RDC structure must move away from monitoring for the sake of producing reports.
It must instead adopt a results-oriented approach built around accountability, corrective action and measurable improvement.
Fight Corruption, But Follow the Law
The Minister devoted a significant part of her closing remarks to corruption.
She urged the officers to take a firm stand against corruption, misuse of public resources and abuse of office.
RDCs and their counterparts, she said, carry a responsibility to protect government programmes and assets from diversion, manipulation, negligence and personal interest.
But she was equally firm about the limits of that responsibility.
She cautioned officers against making unsubstantiated accusations.
She warned them against using their monitoring powers to settle personal disputes.
“The fight against corruption must be conducted responsibly. Let the evidence speak, follow due process and ensure that your actions are guided by the law and the established mandates of the relevant institutions,” she said.
It is a caution that echoes concerns raised elsewhere about the office.
Parliament has previously questioned the caliber of some RDC appointees, with the Leader of the Opposition citing an incident in which an Assistant RDC undressed in public and hurled insults at officials.
Against that backdrop, Hon. Babalanda’s insistence on evidence and due process reads less like routine advice and more like institutional damage control.
One Government, Not Competing Offices
Hon. Babalanda called for stronger cooperation among RDCs, Deputy RDCs, Assistant RDCs, security officers, local government structures and technical departments.
She acknowledged that these various offices carry different responsibilities.
But she stressed they are all part of one government system.
They must work together, she said, rather than compete with or undermine one another.
“The people of Uganda are not interested in internal disagreements within Government offices. They expect the Government to work,” she said.
She urged officers to resolve institutional differences professionally.
Disagreements between offices, she said, should never be allowed to interfere with service delivery.
Let Performance Do the Talking
The Minister then turned to the political environment the officers operate within.
She warned them against being distracted by political propaganda, rumours and public debates.
She acknowledged, without naming names, that opposition leaders and other political actors would continue making statements designed to shape public opinion.
Her instruction to the RDCs was to stay focused on their official responsibilities regardless.
“Your most effective response is performance,” she said.
She pointed to concrete measures of that performance.
Functioning health facilities.
Properly implemented roads.
Successful government programmes.
Protected public resources.
Peaceful communities.
These, she said, are the clearest demonstrations of government performance available to any RDC.
She further urged the officers to remain professional, factual and measured in their public engagements.
She discouraged them from using their offices for partisan political activity.
A Warning on Discipline
The Minister issued one of her sharpest warnings on indiscipline within the RDC structure.
Officers serving under the Office of the President, she said, must understand that their individual conduct shapes public confidence in the Presidency itself.
“Indiscipline within the RDC structure will not be tolerated,” she said.
She explained the reasoning plainly.
Members of the public rarely distinguish between an individual officer and the institution that officer represents.
The conduct of a single RDC, Deputy RDC, Assistant RDC, RISO or DISO can therefore either strengthen or damage public confidence in Government as a whole.
Hon. Babalanda also discouraged officers from spending time speculating about appointments and transfers.
Such decisions, she reminded them, are made by competent authorities, not by rumour.
She urged them instead to concentrate on the responsibilities attached to the positions they currently hold.
“Public office is a responsibility entrusted to you for service; it is not a personal entitlement,” she said.
That reminder lands against a backdrop of frequent reshuffles within the RDC corps.
A major reshuffle in July 2025 affected numerous RDCs and RCCs across the country, following a similar large-scale shake-up in August 2024 that touched 146 RDCs and 163 deputies.
In an office where transfers are common and often abrupt, Hon. Babalanda’s advice against speculation is as much practical as it is disciplinary.
Migereko: Now Is the Time to Talk Wealth, Not Politics
The workshop’s closing session also featured Uganda Railways Corporation Board Chairperson and former Energy Minister Hon. Daudi Migereko.
He used his remarks to pivot the conversation from political conduct to economic transformation.
Hon. Migereko opened by commending the RDCs for what he called their “wonderful job” supporting government during the 2026 General Elections.
He credited their efforts with contributing to strong support for President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and the National Resistance Movement.
“You people, you did a very wonderful job. People voted for the President and the NRM overwhelmingly. I know you are non-partisan, but you did a very good job,” Hon. Migereko said.
But he urged the leaders to now shift their focus toward wealth creation and poverty reduction.
“Now this is the time to talk about wealth creation. Every day I hear His Excellency the President talk about wealth,” he said.
Why the Four-Acre Model Matters to Busoga
Hon. Migereko’s central pitch to the RDCs was the Government’s four-acre model.
The initiative grew out of presidential regional tours in May 2019 focused on skills development in commercial agriculture, manufacturing, ICT and services, with the ultimate goal of creating wealth and jobs and boosting household incomes.
Under the model, each acre of land is dedicated to a specific high-value activity, including zero-grazing dairy, a mixed fruit orchard, and other agricultural enterprises run as demonstration units.
For Busoga specifically, Hon. Migereko framed the model as a corrective to a much older economic pattern.
He said the approach is particularly relevant to the sub-region because of limited land holdings and the low returns associated with growing sugarcane on small plots.
For farmers with limited land, he said, the focus should shift to high-value crops and enterprises capable of generating stronger returns.
“If the four-acre model is to take off, the timing is now. It is also in the National Development Plan,” he said.
The economics behind that argument are not abstract.
Busoga holds the largest sugarcane milling capacity in Uganda, at roughly 35 percent, hosting major factories including Kakira Sugar Works, Mayuge Sugar Factory, Kamuli Sugar Limited and several others.
Yet landowners across the sub-region who lease land for sugarcane are increasingly finding that returns fall well short of what the same land could earn under food crops such as rice, maize and tomatoes, despite attractive upfront lease payments of roughly Shs600,000 to Shs1 million per acre over a six-year term.
Government’s own messaging has leaned into that gap.
President Museveni has previously singled out Busoga’s sugarcane dependence directly, arguing that farmers there must wait roughly 18 months to harvest and stressing the need for diversification into activities such as poultry, piggery and fish farming instead of relying solely on cane.
Scientists working in the region have echoed the same concern more recently.
Officials from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation have argued that sugarcane is most viable for farmers holding at least ten acres, and have urged smallholders toward alternative enterprises offering better returns per acre.
Hon. Migereko challenged the assembled RDCs and other government representatives to mobilise their communities around the model, warning bluntly that their leadership would be judged by its success or failure.
“If the four-acre model succeeds or fails to succeed, it is you to blame as RDCs,” he said.
He proposed establishing a special desk in Busoga dedicated specifically to promoting the model and coordinating anti-poverty efforts across the sub-region.
“It is high time that we went back and created a special desk for the four-acre model initiative in Busoga. We should reflect on that matter of popularising this model,” he said.
He also urged the leaders to lead from the front, establishing their own demonstration farms so communities could see the model’s economic benefits firsthand.
That kind of visible leadership has already been tried elsewhere in the country with some success.
In Kakumiro District, State Minister for Transport Fred Byamukama built the Kamanyire Demonstration Farm into a working example of the model, with more than 100 pigs, an acre of animal grass, an acre of bananas and six dairy cows.
A Warning on Food Dependence
Hon. Migereko expressed concern over Uganda’s growing dependence on imported food, particularly from Tanzania.
He said Busoga and other regions should be increasing local production instead, both to strengthen food security and to lift household incomes.
“You are leaders and you are allowing people to depend on imported food supplies? In the past, other countries used to depend on Uganda for food supplies, but now it is the other way round,” he said.
He called on local leaders to develop clear, area-specific production and wealth-creation plans tailored to the resources available to their communities.
Irrigation, Fisheries and Unspent Funds
Hon. Migereko also raised the issue of irrigation, describing it as one of the keys to transforming agriculture in Busoga.
He noted that government had already provided resources to support irrigation, but that some districts had failed to utilise the funds, returning the money to the Treasury instead.
He said effective use of irrigation funding would be critical to the four-acre model’s success, noting that one component of the model had already received government support.
“The four-acre model will succeed if only we are able to utilise the irrigation money. One component for the four-acre model has already been facilitated,” he said.
On fisheries, he assured participants that government was working on measures to help farmers establish fish ponds, as part of a broader push to strengthen aquaculture across the sub-region.
Hon. Migereko, who has also previously served as Minister of Lands and as Chairperson of the Uganda Tourism Board, closed his remarks by framing poverty as a solvable problem rather than a permanent condition.
“Poverty is a problem that we can handle. During this term of office, this should be our focus. If we don’t do so, we shall be in trouble. We need a locally initiated programme for our poverty-stricken area,” he said.
He urged the RDCs, RCCs and security officers in attendance to treat their positions as tools for translating government programmes into real improvements in household incomes across Busoga.
Together, the two sets of remarks in Jinja pointed to a single underlying message for the RDCs of Busoga.
Political noise will not stop, and it is not theirs to fight.
Their job, according to both the Minister for the Presidency and the URC Board Chairperson, is to make sure the roads get built, the health centres function, the public funds stay accounted for, and the region’s farmers finally start earning more from four acres than they ever did from a lease to a sugar company.
