KAMPALA — Minister of State for Youth and Children Affairs Balaam Barugahara has described the multi-trillion shilling Dei BioPharma pharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Matugga as a cornerstone for bolstering Uganda’s sovereignty and a definitive solution to youth unemployment.
Speaking during an extensive tour of the facility ahead of Labor Day celebrations, Barugahara emphasized that true independence is unattainable if a nation remains a perpetual consumer of foreign goods. He hailed President Yoweri Museveni as the founding father of industrialization in Uganda, noting that the Matugga project is a strategic move to ensure the country can survive on its own resources.
A nation that relies on imports at all times cannot say it is a sovereign state, Minister Barugahara said. We must invest in long-term national strength rather than short-term gains. By producing our own goods locally, we secure our dignity and our future.
The minister, who previously admitted to being skeptical of the government’s heavy investment in the project, noted that his perspective shifted after seeing the massive investment, including thousands of young Ugandan scientists from districts such as Karamoja, Iganga, and Kamuli running the operations. He noted that the facility is expected to create 40,000 high-paying jobs, which he believes will drastically reduce social unrest.
When young people are busy and productive, they do not have time for street demonstrations, he said. Industrialization absorbs a large number of young people into decent employment, keeping our economy stable and diversified.
The facility also provides a vital economic alternative for the agricultural sector. Last year, President Museveni launched the Dei Biopharma Advanced Agro-Processing and Biotech Park in Namasagali, Kamuli District, a project also led by Dr. Magoola. President Museveni also commissioned the Dei Biopharma cassava starch manufacturing plant, a $50 million investment marking a decisive step in Uganda’s quest for pharmaceutical self-reliance.
The factory will produce starch, glucose, and maltose for pharmaceutical and food industries. The firm plans to extract more than 100 derivatives from cassava, matooke, maize, and potatoes. The facility will require 500 metric tonnes of cassava daily. This project forms part of a larger $10 billion investment plan to establish a biotech hub, including a 1,000-bed hospital for sickle cell and cancer treatment, and a vaccine facility.
President Museveni, who has consistently supported Dr. Magoola’s pharmaceutical ventures, praised the entrepreneur’s innovation and resilience, sharply criticizing individuals who had previously frustrated the scientist’s efforts. By utilizing pharmaceutical-grade starch from the 600-acre plant in Kamuli, the project offers a new market for cassava and matooke farmers, particularly providing a much-needed alternative to sugarcane for those in the Busoga region.
Barugahara urged Dei BioPharma management to ensure timely pay and to establish a secure on-site housing campus for the scientists and staff, ensuring that the human capital driving Uganda’s industrial sovereignty is well-protected.
Dr. Monica Musenero Masanza, Minister of Science, Technology & Innovation, commended the DEI Biopharma team under the leadership of Mr. Matthias Magoola for their resilience and for providing a solution that will lead research and manufacturing of traditional medicines for Africa and humanity.
She stated: We need to be defiant against the situations that the world has in the past put us in, and we allow. We need to make Africa stand on her feet.
Dr. Musenero further emphasized: The dream is to industrialize Uganda and Africa—turning it into an industrial hub so that we can fight poverty and underdevelopment. Until now, every effort has focused on subsistence improvement, but we are now shifting towards industry. We want to take our knowledge and intellectual property, transform it through manufacturing, and make it available to the world. This facility is a significant component in that value chain.
The Dei BioPharma manufacturing facility is set to become the engine behind Uganda’s push for a $500 billion economy, with leadership projecting that pharmaceutical exports will soon generate more revenue than the country’s oil and gas sectors.
Dr. Matthias Magoola, the lead scientist and founder, said the facility is the largest single-campus pharmaceutical plant in Africa. The project has moved from vision to reality through a 2 trillion shilling investment from U.S. partners and over 500 billion shillings from local banks, supported by 724 billion shillings in government funding.
The facility’s economic potential is anchored in the production of high-value biological drugs. Magoola pointed to the global success of GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, which add $1 trillion to the U.S. economy every four years. Having already secured several U.S. FDA approvals for similar innovations, Magoola said Uganda is now positioned to capture a share of that global market.
Dr. Magoola briefed the minister on plans to manufacture nine essential vaccines and groundbreaking treatments for sickle cell anemia and rare cancers.
Current sickle cell treatments cost between $2.2 million and $3.1 million in the West, Dr. Magoola said. We are going to manufacture these drugs here to bring about affordability. This is where manufacturing meets the President’s vision of a knowledge economy.
On the Kamuli plant, Dr. Magoola explained that nearly 99 percent of starch and other ingredients for tablet and capsule production are imported, making African pharmaceuticals expensive.
We are among the first companies in Africa to manufacture our own pharmaceutical ingredients. The facility aims to make quality medicines affordable for Ugandans and Africans, creating jobs and driving industrial growth, Dr. Magoola said.
The starch plant represents the first phase of the ambitious Dei Group Advanced Agro-processing Park, an industrial zone designed to supply locally manufactured excipients and active pharmaceutical ingredients, or APIs, to the company’s drug manufacturing complex in Matugga, and also for export to regional and international markets.
Located along the banks of the River Nile and near Lake Kyoga, the site easily connects to major cassava-growing regions, including Northern Uganda, Teso, Busoga, and even parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dei Biopharma has already registered more than 3,000 farmers and distributed Nilocus-1, a high-yield cassava variety developed by Ugandan crop scientists. Magoola said the shift to cassava would significantly improve farmer incomes, projecting that a cassava farmer could earn roughly triple what a sugarcane farmer earns on the same piece of land due to the crop’s shorter growing cycle and higher returns per kilogram.
While pharmaceutical-grade starch is the flagship product, the plant’s applications stretch into broader industrial sectors. The facility is now producing glucose, maltose, or malt sugar, and two grades of fructose, which are key ingredients in beverage, food, and drug manufacturing. Magoola revealed the company is starting with five products but plans to eventually extract more than 100 derivatives from cassava, maize, and potatoes, including sorbitol, mannitol, and dextrose.
The project has already seen a total investment of 2.7 trillion shillings, with the government contributing 724 billion shillings toward the $1.1 billion total cost. Dr. Magoola invited the public to buy shares in the company, noting that Ugandans already own a stake through the government’s investment.
Dr. Magoola, who holds more than 100 U.S. patents for treatments ranging from Alzheimer’s to sickle cell anemia, noted that the facility was born from a refusal to sell Ugandan innovation to multinational companies. He recalled that early in his career, the president encouraged him to retain his malaria drug research for the benefit of Africa rather than taking a payout from foreign interests.
Currently, the National Drug Authority is reviewing 50 drug applications from the facility, with 30 already approved for manufacturing. Among these are Hydroxyurea for sickle cell patients, Tranexamic acid, Doxycycline, and specialized pain management drugs like Tramadol for cancer patients.
Dei BioPharma is the only facility in East Africa manufacturing many of these products. Within the next 60 days, the plant will also begin producing anti-malarial treatments that are currently not manufactured anywhere else on the continent. The facility adheres to U.S. FDA and World Health Organization standards to make advanced biological medicines accessible and available directly from Uganda, addressing a critical gap for the 80 percent of the global population currently unable to afford such treatments.
