Yes, Uganda Can Get Acces To Indian Ocean Through Diplomacy Not Violence

Around 12th November 2025, President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni was launching a manifesto for his Presidential re-election for the 6th term. Museveni, an 89 years old former rebel and guerrilla warrior, said during the launch, that his government has a right to access the Indian ocean through Kenya. Museveni asserted that Uganda's right to the indian ocean is imperative to an extent that Kenya's territorial sovereignty is not be recognized. He also said he is ready to enforce this right by use of military force on Kenya. It was a statement that sparked uproar across borders and hence straining relations with Kenya. Thus , here are my comments and point of view .

Contextually,this is not the first time Uganda is suggesting possibility of war on Kenya. On several occasions, General Muhozi, Museveni 's son , also a guerrilla military learder in Uganda and very curmudgeonly public character has always boasted on social media that he can take only six hours to take over Kenya by using only 5000 Uganda guerrilla fighters.

This kind of careless communication from Uganda happens along side public knowledge and evidence that Uganda has a hand in Congo war, Uganda has poor millitary diplomacy with Rwanda and also only three or four decades ago Uganda under Idi Amin attacked Tanzania for no reason, only for Nyerere to beat Idi Amin out of power. It was pathetic humiliation of the century.

Museveni has always used millitary courts to try and detain kenyan civilians in Uganda on far-fetched accusations. What I mean is, while making public pronouncement of the outrageous contents of campaign manifesto Museveni had just detained two kenyan democracy and human rights crusaders in a guerrilla military camp for 38 days without trial. An eventuality which refreshes memory of over 40 illiterate Turkana herdsmen being courtsmatialled and then sentenced to life sentence to serve in a millitary prison for herding cows across the border while having home made sten guns and home made nail bullets and also the bitter memories of two Kenyan Makerere University students that were shot dead by the gateman for staging a two person un-armed demonstration for better food at Makerere University just the same way Uganda Millitary police has been killing Kenyan fishermen around Mikingo Island.

Yes, body language , diplomatic connotations and some simple research about Museveni's motivation for war with Kenya is based on a fallacy that in case Kenya gets involved in war with Uganda then Somalia, Tanzania, and Southern Sudan will give material and millitary logistical support to Uganda. This is fallacious and not rational as well as logical in any sense because it all it happens then what will be the results?

Yes, if Museveni wants a seaport along Indian ocean he can get it conveniently in Mozambique, Tanzania,Somalia, Djibouti and Somaliland not necessarily in Kenya. But above all , it is only through diplomatic negotiations that will make Uganda to have cost friendly access to Indian but not millitary excesses and overtures. Millitary flamboyance does not make any diplomatic logic in the current world.

We already have lessons from Ukraine that in the modern world, war is all about excellence in Geospatial Technology and Infrastructure but not ownership of very many querrilla warriors. This boils down to the question or urgency of giving priority to intergrated development through cooperation not competition.

Yes, the government of Yoweri Museveni has displayed some millitary petulance and irrational jingoism against Kenya like carrying out state-sponsored export of un-safe milk to kenya, exporting HIV positive sex workers to Kenya, exporting faked alcohol to Kenya, and carrying out state sponsored social dumping to Kenya.

The question of social dumping is somewhat a controversial issue in theory and practice of Pan African consciousness. It has tricky relations to the challenge of pitfalls of national consciousness. what I mean is that it is not wrong for workers to move across political boundaries in search for livelihood. But it is not right neither socially strategic for one country to shrewdly encourage its unskilled people to go to another country because the host country has strong currency and better infrastructure.

What Museveni has been doing to Kenya but below the table for all the time he has been in power is conspiracy through state sponsored inculcation and encouraging of unsuspecting Ugandan young people without education and skill to go to Kenya for sex working and domestic jobs. This strategy has led to mass influx of unskilled ugandans to Kenya . That is why every house-girl in Nairobi is a Ugandan, in Nairobi out of five sex - workers two are ugandans, all sellers of illicit alcohol in Nairobi are ugandans, all hawkers of coffee in a tumbler in Nairobi are ugandans , all hawkers of mandazi in Nairobi are ugandans ,same case to construction industry where over 80 percent of manual workers are ugandans and all other state of Nairobi 's wretchedness of the earth being substantially ugandan citizenry.

Looking at the above social fabric, we only see that over six million underground, un documented, brutalized and exploited unskilled ugandans in Kenya are not a burden to Kenya but a challenge to Uganda's economic and social projection . No country in the world has ever come out of poverty or achieved its goals by allowing over her six million people to be exploited as the scum of the earth in the foreign land.

Ergo, Yoweri Museveni can be useful to uganda if he stops drum-warming for his back ground and past life of being a querrilla. Museveni you are an octogenarian, please retire and leave for young people to manage uganda. Your thoughts of war won't help uganda, cooperation will . We all need our perfect East Africa.

Alexander Opicho writes from, RCMRD, Nairobi, Kenya