Uganda’s digital plate deal faces legal challenge over unfulfilled obligations

Uganda’s military commercial arm was promised technical knowledge and a share of fines under a national digital number plate project. Instead, it has been left outside the operation and unable to collect its allocated revenue, lawmakers were told. Now Attorney General Sam Mayanja says the underlying contract with a Russian company is legally void, according to Daily Monitor Uganda (direct).

The dispute centres on the government’s July 23, 2021 agreement with M/S Joint Stock Company Global Security, or JSCGS. The deal was intended to introduce mandatory digital number plates for every motor vehicle and motorcycle in Uganda, supporting crime detection, tracking and vehicle identification. The company was required to build, maintain and upgrade the Intelligent Transport Monitoring System, known as ITMS, then hand over a working platform when the contract expires.

A partnership that never took shape

Appearing before Parliament’s Physical Infrastructure Committee, Mayanja said the agreement conflicted with existing Ugandan laws and needed a substantial overhaul. His objection went beyond shortcomings in day-to-day delivery: he said fundamental conditions necessary for the contract had not been fulfilled. In his assessment, that left the state without a binding agreement. The position was presented to lawmakers as the government’s chief legal adviser’s view, rather than as a court ruling.

“There's no contract which binds the State of Uganda because none of the conditions which go to the root of the matter have been fulfilled,” Mayanja told the committee.

Among the failures Mayanja identified were a lack of training for Ugandan personnel and the absence of the promised transfer of technical knowledge. Under the original arrangement, that knowledge was to pass to the National Enterprise Corporation, or NEC, the Ugandan military’s commercial arm. The committee’s investigations also found that no feasibility study—an assessment of whether and how a project can work—had been carried out to guide the final contract now being enforced.

Defence and Veteran Affairs Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka supported the account of NEC’s exclusion. He told lawmakers that the corporation had not been meaningfully involved in implementing or operating the system. Land it provided had not been used for the intended project, he said, and the partnership envisaged in the cooperation agreement had not been put into practice. Kiwanuka described the company’s failure to fulfil the obligations needed to involve NEC as raising serious concerns about non-performance and a material breach, meaning a significant failure to meet the agreement.

Revenue rights and a disputed timetable

That exclusion also has a financial dimension. Kiwanuka said NEC had been unable to exercise its contractual rights or receive its designated 5% share of revenue from fines and penalties. His testimony linked the missing revenue to NEC’s absence from the project’s implementation and operations, rather than providing a figure for the money involved.

JSCGS representative Damir Makhmutov disputed the account of stalled technical preparation. He said formal technology transfer begins in 2031, but training is already taking place. Ugandan staff make kits and install and maintain equipment and camera systems, he told the committee, while police officers receive training in Gelios. By the contract’s end, he said, Ugandan specialists are expected to operate and maintain the system independently.

Committee chairman Mwine Mpaka said lawmakers had arranged a meeting with President Museveni through the Speaker’s office to address the standoff. The committee has also summoned former and current officials involved in the original procurement. JSCGS representatives are expected to make a formal presentation to Parliament early next week, before lawmakers compile their final report—the next steps to watch in the dispute over the project’s legal and operational foundations.