The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) is seeking new regulations that would require government ministries, departments and agencies to prioritise goods and services supplied by certified businesses, extending an existing requirement for grain products to other applicable categories.
UNBS Executive Director James Kasigwa said the proposed changes are intended to use the government’s purchasing power to encourage businesses to comply with quality standards and improve the competitiveness of Ugandan products and services.
Kasigwa said the process of developing new legislation or amending existing laws was already under way, although he did not specify when the changes would be completed.
Under existing arrangements, government ministries, departments and agencies are required to procure grain products from suppliers certified by UNBS, following a directive by the standards body and guidelines issued by the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) in 2024.
UNBS now wants the approach extended to other goods and services where applicable, making compliance with standards a more prominent consideration in public procurement.
Kasigwa was speaking at the launch of a programme intended to bring government agencies into closer collaboration with UNBS in promoting standardisation and quality assurance.
He said government institutions must embrace standards if Uganda is to achieve its Tenfold GDP Growth Strategy, which seeks to grow the economy to 500 billion US dollars by 2040.
The programme brings together agencies from sectors including lands, housing and urban development, transport, agriculture, and trade, industry and cooperatives.
Kasigwa said UNBS also wants government agencies to certify their services and systems, with institutions serving international markets encouraged to pursue certification by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), where relevant.
He cited Uganda Airlines and the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) as examples of institutions that need to pursue certification to strengthen their competitiveness internationally.
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Beyond government procurement, UNBS plans to change how it works with businesses, particularly micro and small enterprises that may struggle to meet certification requirements.
Kasigwa said the standards body’s 2026-2030 strategic plan shifts its approach from enforcing standards to helping small businesses meet them.
“You might note that 90 percent of our enterprises in Uganda are small and micro and they might not have it all to meet the standards that we require them to meet. So in the next five years we shall be working with our enterprises and MDAs to help them meet the standards that we require them to meet,” Kasigwa said.
The strategy also shifts standardisation from a demand-driven approach, in which businesses or government agencies request particular standards, to a needs-driven system aligned with national development priorities.
Kasigwa said UNBS would identify standards needed to support priority sectors under the government’s Agro-Industrialisation, Tourism, Mineral-Based Industrial Development and Science, Technology and Innovation agenda, commonly known as ATMS.
The aim is to develop standards that support value addition and the establishment of industries around Uganda’s natural resources.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives says improving production quality is necessary if the country is to expand manufacturing and increase exports.
Deo Byaruhanga, an Assistant Commissioner for Trade, said increasing production alone would not deliver the desired economic growth unless Ugandan products could compete in international markets.
“If you are going to increase it you are not going to get that money from within. If you make a pen, you have to competitively sell it on the international market. But you can’t take anything out without the UNBS stamp, even Rwanda here, it must bear the stamp,” Byaruhanga said.
However, closer coordination between UNBS and other government institutions will be necessary to implement the strategy, particularly where their regulatory mandates overlap.
There have been disagreements involving UNBS and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, as well as the National Drug Authority and the Ministry of Agriculture, over the boundaries of their respective mandates.
Byaruhanga called for government agencies to resolve such disputes and work together to advance the national standards and quality agenda.
“I hope from here we won’t have such wars around mandate,” he said, adding that the meeting should mark a step towards a more coordinated approach to implementing national standards.
Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives Lynette Bagonza pledged support for the UNBS strategy and said she would encourage accounting officers in other government institutions to integrate standards into their operations.
She also urged UNBS to establish a structured mechanism for tracking resolutions made during its engagements with government agencies, while ensuring that small and medium-sized enterprises receive support to meet quality requirements.
Moses Matovu, a Senior Research Officer at NARO, said the agricultural research agency would begin the process of pursuing ISO certification.
By URN
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