Yoweri Museveni

, after 36 years of his authoritarian rule, Uganda has been ranked 166th in GDP (nominal) per capita and 167th by Human Development Index.

Yoweri Kaguta Museveni Tibuhaburwa (born 15 September 1944) is a Ugandan politician, military officer and revolutionary who has been the ninth President of Uganda since 1986.

His government is considered autocratic.

Museveni was estimated to be born on 15 September 1944 to parents Mzee Amos Kaguta (1916–2013), a cattle keeper, and Esteri Kokundeka Nganzi (1918–2001), in Rukungiri.

He is an ethnic Hima of the kingdom of Mpororo (now part of Ankole).

According to Julius Nyerere, Museveni's father, Amos Kaguta, was a soldier in the King's African Rifles' 7th battalion during World War II.

Yoweri was born, relatives used to say, "His father was a mu-seven" (meaning "in the seventh").

This is how he obtained the name Museveni.

His family migrated to Ntungamo, then within the British Protectorate of Uganda.

Museveni attended Kyamate Elementary School, Mbarara High School, and Ntare School for his primary and secondary education.

He attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for his tertiary education, where he studied economics and political science.

The university at the time was a hot bed of radical pan-African and Marxist political thought.

While at university, he formed the University Students' African Revolutionary Front student activist group and led a student delegation to FRELIMO-held territory in Portuguese Mozambique where they received military training.

Studying under the leftist Walter Rodney, among others, Museveni wrote a university thesis on the applicability of Frantz Fanon's ideas on revolutionary violence to post-colonial Africa.

The exile forces opposed to Idi Amin invaded Uganda from Tanzania in September 1972 and were repelled.

In October, Tanzania and Uganda signed the Mogadishu Agreement that denied the rebels the use of Tanzanian soil for aggression against Uganda.

Museveni broke away from the mainstream opposition and formed the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) in 1973.

In August of the same year, he married Janet Kainembabazi.

In October 1978, Ugandan troops invaded the Kagera Salient in northern Tanzania, initiating the Uganda–Tanzania War.

Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere ordered the Tanzania People's Defence Force (TPDF) to counter-attack and mobilised Ugandan dissidents to fight Amin's regime.

Museveni was pleased by this development.

In December 1978 Nyerere attached Museveni and his forces to Tanzanian troops under Brigadier Silas Mayunga.

Museveni and his FRONASA troops subsequently accompanied the Tanzanians during the counter-invasion of Uganda.

He was present during the capture and destruction of Mbarara in February 1979, and involved in the Western Uganda campaign of 1979.

In course of these operations, he alternatively spent time at the frontlines and in Tanzania where he discussed the cooperation of various anti-Amin rebel groups as well as the political future of Uganda with Tanzanian politicians and other Ugandan opposition figures such as Obote.

He played a significant part in the Moshi Conference which led to the unification of the opposition as the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF).

Yusuf Lule was appointed as UNLF chairman and the potential President of Uganda after Amin's overthrow.

Museveni felt dissatisfied with the results of the conference, believing that he and his followers were not granted enough representation.

With the overthrow of Amin in 1979 and the contested election that returned Milton Obote to power in 1980, Museveni returned to Uganda with his supporters to gather strength in their rural strongholds in the Bantu-dominated south and south-west to form the Popular Resistance Army (PRA).

They planned a rebellion against the second Obote regime (Obote II) and its armed forces, the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).

After Museveni lost the election of 1980, he started the Ugandan Bush War which led to the removal of Milton Obote.

Museveni's rule has been described by scholars as competitive authoritarianism, or illiberal democracy.

The press has been under the authority of government.

The insurgency began with an attack on an army installation in the central Mubende district on 6 February 1981.

The PRA later merged with former president Yusufu Lule's fighting group, the Uganda Freedom Fighters, to create the National Resistance Army (NRA) with its political wing, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

Two other rebel groups, the Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF) and the Former Uganda National Army (FUNA), engaged Obote's forces.

The FUNA was formed in the West Nile sub-region from the remnants of Amin's supporters.

None of the Ugandan elections since 1986 have been found to be free and transparent.

Museveni's presidency has been characterized by an upsurge in anti-gay legislation and activity, involvement in African Great Lakes conflicts such as the First Congo War and Rwandan Civil War, the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in Northern Uganda and subsequent humanitarian emergency, and numerous constitutional amendments like the scrapping of presidential term and age limits in 2005 and 2017, respectively.

On 16 January 2021, Museveni was reelected to a sixth term with 58.6% of the vote, despite many videos and reports showing ballot box stuffing, over 400 polling stations with 100% voter turnout and human rights violations.