A New Season: Building Our Strength in the Diaspora

The aftermath of Uganda’s January 2026 elections has given Action for Good Governance (AGG) reason to reflect deeply, not only on what happened, but on where our energies can make the greatest difference in the years ahead.

The official results returned President Yoweri Museveni to office for a seventh term. His principal challenger, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (Bobi Wine), rightly rejected the results. The election and its aftermath were marked by serious allegations of intimidation, violence, restrictions on civic space, and an internet shutdown. The European Parliament subsequently concluded that the process failed to meet fundamental democratic standards.

What followed was equally troubling. Kyagulanyi went into hiding after the election as security forces searched for him. Uganda’s military chief, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba; the President’s son, made a series of extraordinary public threats against him. Kyagulanyi eventually left Uganda and resurfaced in the United States, where he began international engagements, including meetings on Capitol Hill. More recent reporting describes him as living in exile in the United States.

For AGG, these developments have prompted a serious reconsideration of strategy.

Looking Inward to Build Outward

For the immediate future, we are no longer looking primarily to Kampala for solutions. This does not mean abandoning Uganda or Africa. Nor does it mean abandoning the ideals of democracy, accountability, human rights, and responsible government that brought many of us together in the first place. It means recognizing where we are, and recognizing what we have. Most of us live in the United States. Here we have opportunities to organize, learn, build institutions, participate in civic life, develop relationships, educate ourselves and our communities, and gradually build a respected public voice. That is where AGG’s immediate attention must turn. We intend to build diaspora strength here.

From a Community to a Civic Force

The African diaspora possesses enormous but often fragmented capacity: professionals, educators, entrepreneurs, students, community organizers, religious leaders, academics, public servants, and families with deep relationships on both sides of the Atlantic. AGG’s long-term task is to help convert some of that scattered capacity into organized civic strength.

That means bringing new members into the organization. It means civic education. It means understanding American institutions and participating in them. It means developing relationships with policymakers and community leaders. And it means building an organization capable of speaking thoughtfully and credibly about matters affecting our communities. We are therefore expanding our membership and deliberately seeking people who can contribute new ideas, experience, energy, and leadership.

Women Must Be at the Center

A particular priority in this new phase will be bringing more women into AGG and into its leadership. Many women in our communities have already demonstrated remarkable courage and commitment to democratic change in Africa. Others have accumulated tremendous professional, educational, organizational, and community experience here in the United States.

Their contribution cannot remain peripheral. If AGG is serious about becoming a formidable civic organization, women must be among those shaping its priorities, leading its programs, representing it publicly, and determining its future.

The Long Game

We recognize that this is a long-term strategy. There may be no immediate political opening in Uganda. We cannot manufacture one from thousands of miles away. But we can build; We can educate; We can organize; We can develop leaders; We can establish relationships; We can strengthen our economic, intellectual, professional, and civic capacity, and we can become better participants in the democracy in which most of us now live. Over time, something important can happen. A confident, organized, civically sophisticated African diaspora in the United States can become a force for good here, and eventually a force for good governance elsewhere.

The knowledge, the relationships, the expectations we develop about accountable institutions; the leadership experience; the resources; and the ideas propagated, all travel. In that sense, what we build here can eventually boomerang back to Africa. Not as outsiders telling Africans what to do, but as people who remain intimately connected to the continent while having developed additional experience, institutions, networks, and capacity abroad.

A New Season for AGG

This, then, is not a retreat from our commitment to Africa. It is a maturation of our strategy. Rather than waiting indefinitely for political circumstances elsewhere to change, we will work with the democratic space available to us here and build something durable within it. We will bring people together; We will particularly encourage women to lead; We will educate ourselves; We will participate in American civic life; We will develop relationships with institutions and policymakers, and we will build AGG into the strong, informed, credible diaspora organization we believe it can become.

Africa remains part of our story. But for this season, the work begins here. We will determinedly build here, organize here, learn and lead from here. And, in time, let the strength we build here become a force for good governance wherever our communities call home.