KAMPALA, Uganda — Breaking his silence on the collapse of one of Uganda’s flagship manufacturers, tycoon Charles Mbire says weak corporate governance drove him off the board of Kampala Cement Co. Ltd. years before the cement maker was placed under receivership.
Mbire, the MTN Uganda chairman who holds a 20% stake in the company, said in a phone interview that he resigned over unauthorized transactions linked to his co-directors’ business interests elsewhere — and that he walked away from the boardroom more than three years ago.
“I have had nothing to do with the management of the board for the past three years. I also stand a chance of losing the money I invested. But if the receiver sells the business, they can pay me my original capital,” he said.
His comments are the first public account from inside the boardroom since KPMG Advisory Ltd. took control of the company in late June, and they point to a rupture at the top of Kampala Cement long before its creditors moved in.
People familiar with the matter said Mbire resigned after alleging that his co-directors moved money out of Kampala Cement to rescue a related company in Kenya. Mbire objected because the two firms are separate legal entities, the sources said.
The company’s other directors are Baryan Manvir Singh Rajinder, Baryan Sukhminder Singh and Singh Rajinder Singh Pritam. The directors are also linked to Multiple Industries Group, a manufacturer of building materials and related construction inputs.
Mbire has moved to put his exit formally on the record. In a letter dated July 2 and sent through K. Akantorana Advocates to Equatorial Secretaries and Registrars Ltd., he asked the company secretary to update the register of directors at the Uganda Registration Services Bureau.
“We therefore request you, in your capacity as company secretary, to arrange for the company’s register of directors to be corrected to reflect that Mr. Mbire ceased to be a director with effect from December 30, 2022, and for the requisite notification of this change to be lodged with the Registrar of Companies,” the letter read in part.
The receivership he saw coming
KPMG Advisory Ltd. was appointed joint receiver and manager of Kampala Cement effective June 29, taking control of the company’s assets, business and undertakings. The appointment, confirmed in a notice filed with Uganda’s Registrar of Companies under the Insolvency Act, names KPMG partners Edgar Isingoma and Nina Turyamuhabwa as joint receivers.
The receivership follows the enforcement of a debenture by the Trade and Development Bank, the Nairobi-headquartered multilateral lender, over a facility worth about $49.3 million.
“The powers of the company’s directors over the assets and business of the company have since been suspended by law,” the notice reads in part, warning that anyone dealing with the company or its assets without the receivers’ approval does so at their own risk and could face legal action. Parties with claims against the company were asked to submit them in writing, with supporting documentation, to the receivers.
A debt built in from the start
Kampala Cement built its reputation as one of Uganda’s major cement producers after commissioning a plant at Namataba, on the Kampala-Jinja highway in Mukono district, in 2015 at a reported cost of about $100 million. The plant opened with annual capacity of about 200,000 metric tons, later expanded to 1.2 million metric tons through production-line upgrades.
The debenture TDB has now enforced was signed in September 2015 — the same year the plant began production — meaning the debt that ultimately triggered the receivership was baked into the company from the start.
The company’s indebtedness now exceeds $80 million. Its latest annual return, filed with the Uganda Registration Services Bureau on July 7, discloses total registered indebtedness of nearly $83 million plus 3.7 billion Ugandan shillings, though the company notes that not every registered facility may remain fully outstanding.
Much of the borrowing was denominated in dollars, while the bulk of Kampala Cement’s revenue came from cement sold locally in shillings — a mismatch that made debt servicing heavier whenever the shilling weakened against the dollar.
Squeezed on price and location
When Kampala Cement entered the market in 2015 as Uganda’s third cement manufacturer, it helped push prices down sharply as it competed against established players Hima Cement and Tororo Cement. Competition later intensified when Kenya’s National Cement, maker of the Simba brand, set up Ugandan operations in a regional market already grappling with overcapacity and weak pricing.
Lower cement prices benefited Uganda’s construction industry, but they also squeezed the margins the company needed to service its growing dollar debt.
Concrete specialist Apollo Buregyeya argued in May 2025 that although Namataba sits close to Uganda’s central construction market, it is far from the country’s main limestone, pozzolan and clinker deposits, which are concentrated in the east around Tororo and the west around Hima. Because cement is heavy relative to its value, hauling raw materials long distances imposes costs that rivals located near the quarries do not bear. Buregyeya also noted that the company’s products had quietly disappeared from the market for more than three years.
“The company tried to do everything itself. They wanted to source, transport, manufacture, and even distribute cement all the way to the last-mile hardware shops. That is a full vertical integration model; expensive to maintain and risky without scale or strong systems,” he wrote on X.
For Mbire — an industrialist with investments spanning telecommunications, finance, energy, real estate and mining, and widely regarded as one of Uganda’s wealthiest indigenous businesspeople — the receivership leaves his cement bet hanging on what the receivers can recover. His hope, he says, is that a sale of the business will at least return his original capital.
