MPs gives nod for more support to Dei Biopharma to minimize important of drugs & Costs

The Ugandan government has faced calls to release an additional funding to Uganda’ top pharmaceutical manufacturer Dei Biopharma with to a tune if UGX 1.6 trillion alongside other requests to the Matugga firm .

This funding aims to complete a major pharmaceutical plant, to lower medicine import costs, and secure state equity.

This follows President Yoweri Museveni’s directive to financial support to fast-track the completion of over 30 manufacturing units at the 250-acre facility.

The plant is roughly 70% complete, with several units already operational and licensed by the National Drug Authority (NDA) to make basic generic drugs.

 Founder Dr. Matias Magoola state that extra funding is required to finish complex biotechnology and vaccine manufacturing infrastructure.

Government officials and visiting ministers maintain that local manufacturing is vital to reduce heavy reliance on imported pharmaceutical products.

Company leadership to the public, counters that state funding acts as an equity investment rather than a gift, with plans to list on the stock exchange eventually.

Members of the Committee in the new Parliament toured the plant at Matugga, in Wakiso district, on 10 August, where the company’s founder, Dr Matthias Magoola, walked them through production lines already running and buildings still under construction on the 250-acre site. Several MPs said afterwards that the visit had convinced them the project deserved faster and fuller government backing.

The committee’s chairman, Simon Peter Okwalinga, who represents Kanyum County and refers to himself as “the Guardian of the People”, was emphatic. “We need, as government, we need Dei BioPharma more than they need us,” he said, arguing that the plant’s projected profits could “triple the development of Uganda” and describing it as the only manufacturer of its kind on the continent — a claim the company itself has long made. Okwalinga said the committee would press the government on two points: electricity, because the plant needs about 100 megawatts, which he compared to the output of a dam, and the outstanding $430m. “Those are some of the issues that we shall definitely recommend for government to quicken,” he said.

Ofwono Opondo, who now sits as the Older Persons representative for eastern Uganda after more than a decade as government spokesman, went further, aligning himself with President Yoweri Museveni’s drive to protect strategic local firms. He argued that the state should not merely fund the plant but should also commission it to supply the public health system.