Keypoints:
- Muhoozi declares intention to contest in 2031
- Rwabwogo emerges as an establishment counterweight
- Family feud raises questions over post-Museveni Uganda
UGANDA’S long-running succession question has burst into the open after army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba declared that he intends to seek the presidency in 2031, as an increasingly public confrontation with his brother-in-law Odrek Rwabwogo exposes competing centres of power inside President Yoweri Museveni’s political family.
The clash is about considerably more than a family rivalry. After four decades of Museveni’s rule, Uganda has never managed a presidential transition under the current political order. With conventional opposition forces under sustained pressure, manoeuvring within the ruling establishment is becoming central to the question of who — and what — eventually follows Museveni.
Muhoozi puts 2031 on the calendar
Muhoozi, 52, said this week that he plans to contest the 2031 election and predicted he would secure ‘90 percent’ of the vote. Reuters reported that the military chief also indicated he expected his father’s backing.
The declaration matters because Muhoozi has repeatedly floated presidential ambitions before retreating from them. Africa Briefing previously reported that Muhoozi abandoned plans to contest the 2026 election and instead backed his father.
His latest announcement therefore does not settle the succession question. But it places a date on his ambitions and sharpens the debate over Uganda’s political future.
Muhoozi’s position as Chief of Defence Forces makes that ambition especially sensitive. He is not merely the president’s son building a political following. He is the country’s most senior serving military commander and chairs the Patriotic League of Uganda, a political mobilisation network closely associated with him.
Rwabwogo emerges as counterweight
More intriguing is the increasingly open friction between Muhoozi and Odrek Rwabwogo, 56, a businessman, presidential adviser and husband of Museveni’s daughter Patience.
Rwabwogo has not declared himself a presidential candidate, an important distinction amid mounting succession speculation.
But AFP reports that he is increasingly attracting attention as an alternative centre of influence within the establishment, particularly among officials drawn to a more technocratic and institution-focused approach.
That makes this something other than a two-man presidential race.
For now, it is a struggle over influence, political direction and proximity to the institutions likely to shape whatever follows Museveni.
Rwabwogo chairs the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development, or PACEID, which focuses on exports, industrialisation and private-sector development.
His public language has increasingly emphasised institutional restraint, open communication and the rule of law.
‘We must keep the country communicating freely,’ Rwabwogo said in remarks cited by AFP.
The message is difficult to separate from the increasingly combative political style of his brother-in-law.
Family feud turns into power struggle
The confrontation escalated when Muhoozi declared PACEID an ‘illegal organisation’ and threatened arrests of members he accused of wrongdoing.
Ugandan media reported that he also threatened consequences for radio and television stations that gave PACEID officials airtime.
No court determination establishing the presidential advisory body as illegal was cited in Muhoozi’s statements.
Official Ugandan government records show that Museveni commissioned PACEID in March 2022 to help expand the country’s exports and improve access to international markets.
That makes Muhoozi’s attack on the body especially significant: an organisation established with presidential backing is now at the centre of an open confrontation involving the president’s son and son-in-law.
The dispute then became more serious after Matthew Bagonza, head of the PACEID secretariat and a close Rwabwogo associate, was detained.
Muhoozi later publicised Bagonza’s detention on X and posted a photograph of him. AFP also reported that he made further claims about the aide in posts that were subsequently deleted. Those claims should be treated as Muhoozi’s assertions rather than independently established facts.
Rwabwogo later told Ugandan journalists that Museveni had informed him he neither knew about nor ordered Bagonza’s arrest.
Museveni has not publicly confirmed Rwabwogo’s account.
The conflicting accounts raise an extraordinary question about lines of authority inside Uganda’s government: the president’s son says arrests are being carried out, while the president, according to Rwabwogo, says he did not order the detention.
Opposition pressure pushes contest inward
The succession drama is unfolding as Uganda’s traditional opposition faces intense pressure.
Bobi Wine remains Museveni’s most prominent political challenger, but Reuters reported that he has since fled to the United States amid the post-election crackdown, further narrowing the space for organised opposition to the government.
<a href=”https://africabriefing.com/bobi-wine-ugandas-ghetto-president-challenger/” target=”_blank”>Africa Briefing has documented the restrictions, arrests and political pressure surrounding Wine and his opposition movement.
Veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye is meanwhile on trial for treason after being detained in Kenya in November 2024 and subsequently brought back to Uganda.
The wider pattern matters because the weaker external challengers become, the more consequential competition within the ruling establishment may become.
Gerald Waluya, a communications lecturer at Makerere University, told AFP that the succession battle had increasingly become an internal struggle as political institutions weakened and dissenting voices came under pressure.
But he also cautioned against automatically accepting Rwabwogo’s positioning as evidence that he would represent a democratic alternative.
Rwabwogo remains a member of Museveni’s inner establishment. His language may differ significantly from Muhoozi’s, but there has been no electoral test of how far his calls for institutional reform would translate into political change.
Museveni still holds decisive card
For all the attention focused on Muhoozi and Rwabwogo, Museveni remains the decisive figure.
There is no publicly announced succession plan and no formally designated successor.
The 81-year-old president has ruled Uganda since 1986 and secured another term in the January 2026 election, whose results Bobi Wine rejected as fraudulent. Museveni officially received nearly 72 percent of the vote, while Wine secured about 24 percent.
Museveni’s intentions beyond the current term remain unclear.
His background as a former guerrilla commander also matters because the political system he built has long placed the military and security establishment close to the centre of power.
That makes succession bigger than the identity of one candidate.
The transition could ultimately depend on the NRM, the military, state institutions, business interests and alliances within the presidential family.
What happens after Museveni?
Opposition figures have long accused Museveni of preparing a dynastic succession involving his son, an allegation the president has denied.
Rwabwogo, by contrast, is increasingly speaking the language of institutional reform, economic modernisation and restraint without declaring a presidential ambition.
After more than 40 years under one president, the larger question is whether Uganda’s political system can eventually manage a transfer of power without allowing the succession struggle itself to destabilise the institutions built around Museveni.
Muhoozi has now placed 2031 firmly on his political calendar.
Rwabwogo has not followed him into an electoral contest, but the hostility directed towards his organisation — and his increasingly public response — suggests that tensions within Uganda’s most powerful family are becoming harder to keep behind closed doors.
The struggle over post-Museveni Uganda may therefore already have begun.
For Uganda, the real question is no longer simply who comes after Museveni, but whether the choice will ultimately be made by voters, the ruling establishment, the military — or the family that has dominated the country for four decades.
Related stories
Museveni’s son targets Uganda presidency in 2031
