Before 2023, Uganda relied heavily on fuel flowing through the Port of Mombasa and the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) network.
However, what Uganda says it perceived as an East African Community (EAC) Government-to-Government arrangement turned out differently.
Speaking during the groundbreaking ceremony of the 320-million litre Kampala Storage Terminal on Thursday 17, 2026, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni made claims that renewed scrutiny into the oil business in the East African region.
The Ugandan head of state disclosed that around 2019, he was shocked to learn that the country had been buying oil from Oil Marketing Companies (middlemen) in Kenya and not the government.
Museveni revealed that it took a Kenyan whistleblower for him to discover that there was something irregular about Uganda’s purchase of oil through Kenya.
“The Republic of Uganda was buying petroleum products through middlemen in Kenya. Can you imagine that? And the person who woke me up first was a senator from Kenya,” Museveni stated, igniting speculation about which Kenyan legislator had given this information to Uganda.
In a post on his X account on Sunday, September 20th 2026, Museveni laid bare the identity of the Kenyan “Senator” who opened his eyes to the goings-on in the oil business between Kenya and Uganda.
“It was a Kenyan Senator called Jirongo who told me this around 2019. I immediately tasked the then Minister Irene Muloni to sort out that mess,” posted Museveni.
The Open African Tribune understands that Jirongo has never been elected as a senator in Kenya. The politician who died in a motor accident on December 13, 2025, served as Lugari Member of Parliament for two stints between 1997 and 2002 and 2007 and 2013.
According to Museveni, after Jirongo approached him with the information, he tasked government officials in charge of oil procurement to “address the mess.”
In an interesting turn of events, Museveni stunned the public after he stated that he was unaware Jirongo had died in 2025.
He proceeded to send a message of condolences to Jirongo’s family on September 21, 2026, about nine months after the Kenyan politician’s demise.
Whatever the precise chronology behind Jirongo’s tip, its resurfacing this week has pulled Kenya and Uganda back into a fuel business brawl rooted in decisions both capitals made years before Museveni’s remarks.
Museveni’s recent sentiments have reopened a three-year-old grievance that has prompted Kenya to defend its fuel import model, one which Uganda painted as exorbitant. The dates, the numbers and the names mentioned do not neatly fit together with both Kampala and Nairobi battling to defend what they believe is the accurate position.
This spat touches on Kenya’s Old Open Tender System (OTS), Kenya’s G2G scheme that began in 2023 and Uganda’s push and achievement to own state-led importing since 2024.
The Old Chain
Uganda imports about 2.5 billion litres of petroleum a year, worth roughly $2 billion, with over 90% arriving through Kenyan ports, pipeline and roads.
Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), which Museveni generally describes as middlemen, handled the petroleum products that passed through Kenya to Uganda. The OMCs operated in Kenya under the Open Tender System (OTS), which then sold oil to Ugandan Oil Marketing Companies.
Many OMCS operate in both Kena and Uganda and factored in the needs of the two markets. OMCs importing for the Ugandan market via Kenya prioritised the needs of the final market destination. This tendering system ensured that Ugandan retailers bought oil from Kenyan importers, not directly from refiners.
Cargoes leaving Mombasa through the KPC system to Nakuru, Kisumu and Eldoret would be loaded by Ugandan OMCs in depots in Western Kenya and ferried to the consumers in Uganda.
Kenya’s G2G arrangement with Gulf Energy Giants
However, significant changes happened in 2023, when Kenya replaced the Open Tender System with its own market G2G. The Kenyan Minister for Energy Opiyo Wandayi announced that the country had arranged a 180-day credit deal with three state-backed Gulf energy suppliers for the G2G petroleum importation framework that commenced in March 2023.
The three state-backed energy giants are Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC).
In the deal, Saudi Aramco supplied diesel products under a 6-month to 270-day window; ADNOC provided diesel and jet fuel through ADNOC Global Trading, and ENOC delivered refined gasoline (super petrol) via ENOC Singapore.
In Kenya, nominated marketers including Galana Energies, Gulf Energy, Oryx One Petroleum, Asharami and BE Energy handled the downstream distribution logistics.
Kenya’s energy ministry explained that the nominated OMCs, acting as partners to the Gulf Energy suppliers, sold the imported petroleum products to other OMCs under the Open Tender System provisions.
Wandayi explained that the G2G arrangement was a move to ease a severe dollar shortage.
A key part of the G2G deal was credit terms providing for a 180-day deferred payment period as part of alleviating foreign exchange and U.S. dollar shortages.
According to Wandayi, the target was to save roughly $500 million in monthly dollar demand. Kenyan officials maintained that the move stabilised local forex reserves while at the same time stopping fuel shortages.
Plainly, Nairobi held that the OTS was licensed, not deleted by the transition to the G2G arrangement.
Why Kampala wanted out
Following the move by Kenya, Kampala’s grievance was cost and control.
In November 2023, Uganda chose to buy oil from the global market in a bid to end its reliance on Kenyan oil marketing companies, whom Museveni accused of inflating pump prices by up to 59%.
To Uganda, both the OTS and G2G were exploitative. Kampala also cited supply security in its push for direct purchase on the global market.
Currently, Uganda’s oil terminal at Jinja holds 30 million litres, which is about 4.2 days of demand at seven million litres a day.
The country’s monthly demand is about 240 million litres and growing around 7% a year, with the new Mpigi terminal aimed at addressing the concern when it is commissioned around 2028.
In its quest for change, Uganda legislated to make the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) the sole importer with a contract with oil trader Vitol.
Museveni dated the price-cutting agreement in this move to August 18, 2023. Museveni and Energy Permanent Secretary Irene Batebe’s claims and evidence rest on three per-tonne premiums, citing that diesel fell from $118 to $83, petrol from $97.50 to $61.50, and aviation fuel from $114.25 to $79.25.
These are import premiums, not pump prices. With these figures, each price drop is about $35 a tonne, or 30 to 37% of the old premium.
Global benchmarks account for 80 to 87% of UNOC’s sale price; hence the drops are for a part of the pump price, not the whole of it.
The evidence beyond Museveni’s word is thin. While Batebe described the old arrangement as G2G in name but middlemen in practice, no contract, invoice, or tender record has been published to that effect.
According to Businessfront, the premiums Museveni mentioned have not been independently broken down in public record. There has been no express mention of intermediaries referred to by Museveni, and Jirongo, to whom the revelations are attributed, cannot be questioned. Though Museveni says he tasked Muloni, in charge of the Energy Ministry, to sort out the mess in 2019, no document to that effect has surfaced.
Uganda’s account itself concedes that despite the head of state indicating he tasked government officials to address the issue in 2019, nothing changed until 2023.
One issue complicates the narrative by Uganda’s leadership. A 2019 tip Museveni says he received from a Kenyan politician predates the G2G deal by four years. The question is how Jirongo’s tip came four years before Kenya introduced the G2G system in 2023.
The late politician’s warning concerned the Open Tender System era, though some reports pin it on current Kenyan President William Ruto’s G2G arrangement.
From Uganda’s account, Museveni’s “before” numbers are from 2023, not 2019 or 2026. Wandayi’s statement cited the premiums Kenya’s G2G started with: $97.50 for petrol, $118 for diesel and $114.25 for jet fuel per tonne, which match Museveni’s “before” figures exactly.
Kenya’s premiums also fell. They were renegotiated to $90 (petrol), $88 (diesel) and $111.75 (jet) in September 2023, then to $84, $78 and $97 in March 2025. This, put side by side with Uganda’s figures, shows Uganda is cheaper on petrol ($61.50 against 84) and jet ($79.25, $78, and $83). This comparison is imperfect.
The word “middlemen” heavily cited by Uganda does not sit well with Kenya. Nairobi holds that its marketers were nominated by the Gulf suppliers, not handpicked by the government, reiterating that this is not brokerage.
Kampala treats all intermediaries who take title before Ugandan buyers as a cost. Both descriptions by the two countries can be true based on context, now that Uganda has also replaced a group of Kenyan intermediaries with a single global trader, Vitol.
The licensing fight
Uganda’s transition towards having UNOC as its sole oil importer after resolving to replace Kenyan importers came with its fair share of hurdles. The introduction of UNOC collided with Kenya’s regulatory framework.
On September 30, 2023, the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) rejected UNOC’s licence application for failing to meet its requirements for foreign applicants. EPRA required UNOC to have a licensed local depot, five retail stations, annual sales volumes of 6.6 million litres, and $10 million in turnover for each of the last three years.
Uganda requested Nairobi to waive the conditions in a matter that proceeded to a High Court in Kenya. While the Cabinet delayed its decision on the matter, the High Court in Machakos barred EPRA from reviewing the application by Uganda in November 2023.
Uganda then moved to the East African Court of Justice on December 28, 2023, arguing that Kenya breached Article 93 of the EAC Treaty on rational use of port installations, invoking the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Uganda requested the court to declare that it did not need an EPRA licence to use the KPC system. According to Uganda, UNOC needed to get equal commercial terms with other partner states.
Meanwhile, Kampala explored Dar es Salaam as an alternative, and KPC warned of substantial losses if Tanzania took the traffic.
Kenya’s position was that licensing rules apply to every entrant.
There was also a financial worry behind the stalemate, with reports suggesting UNOC’s deal would disrupt a source of dollars for Kenya’s G2G by forcing a revision of monthly import volumes.
Diplomacy broke the deadlock with President Ruto’s February 2024 visit to Uganda (Museveni’s Kisozi farm) setting the stage for a licence. The Machakos case was withdrawn days before EPRA issued it.
The dispute involving the UNOC at the EACJ ended following the diplomatic truce.
On May 16, 2024, at State House Nairobi, the two governments and UNOC signed a tripartite agreement, under which UNOC imports refined products directly from producers through Kenya.
A companion deal with KPC covered transport through the pipeline to depots in western Kenya. Uganda changed the buyer but not the route, also deepening its leverage by taking a 20.15% stake worth $255 million in the KPC public offering in 2026. This stake gives it a say in pricing.
Despite Museveni’s remarks igniting new questions about oil importation arrangements between the two countries, he remained conciliatory to President Ruto, thanking him for prevailing over some actors in Kenya who opposed the current arrangement.
What it means for Kenya and the region
The dependency runs both ways. According to UNOC, Uganda accounts for about 65% of volumes moving through KPC and nearly 35% of its revenue. According to the Kenya Ports Authority, Uganda-bound transit cargo through Mombasa increased from 8.70 million metric tons in 2024 to 10.9 million in 2025, making Uganda the largest transit market for the port.
Politically, Kenya’s former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua has used Museveni’s remarks to press for transparency and competition in G2G. Opposition leaders like Jubilee’s Fred Matiang’i have demanded that the agreements be published.
Kenya’s Treasury keeps describing the G2G agreement as temporary, first for nine months from April 2023, then extended to December 2024, and now defending it as a working model.
Uganda retains the plans for the Tanzania route, is setting up a domestic terminal and refinery and is pursuing a pipeline extension from Eldoret to Kampala.
Whether it is Nairobi’s forex arithmetic or Kampala’s push for full independence from Kenyan middlemen, the two countries are now hedging against a rerun of the very dispute that Museveni’s remarks this week reignited.
