REPORT SHOCKER! Energy Ministry Bosses on Spot for Fumbling Billions as Clean Cooking Dream Goes Up in Smoke…Acholi & West Nile Ignored

A bombshell Value for Money audit by the Auditor General has ripped the lid off what insiders are calling one of the most embarrassing energy sector underperformances in recent years, raising hard questions about supervision, competence and possible capture of key projects under the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, RedPepper can report.

At the centre of the storm is the implementation of interventions to transition households and institutions from biomass use to clean cooking technology, a programme coordinated by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development under the watch of its Permanent Secretary, Eng. Irene Bateebe.

For more than 15 years, government has promised to move Ugandans away from choking charcoal smoke and deadly three-stone fires. Uganda committed under NDP III and Agenda 2030 to increase the share of clean cooking energy. But the Auditor General’s findings paint a picture of missed targets, skewed regional progress and systemic weaknesses that have left the country far off track.

According to the audit report deeply analyzed by RedPepper, the share of households primarily using clean cooking energy rose by only 3.9%, from 16.8% in 2019/20 to 20.7% in 2023/24. That is nowhere near the 40% target anticipated by 2023/24 in NDP III. Instead of a clean energy revolution, the country got a modest statistical crawl.

Progress was heavily concentrated in Central, Eastern and Western regions, while the northern region, specifically Acholi and West Nile, recorded declines. “Why is the North sliding backwards while other regions inch forward? Who decided that Acholi and West Nile could wait?” a local politician form the northern region wonders

The Auditor General did not mince words. Government, through MEMD and its partners, “has made limited progress towards the NDP III targets.” The main interventions, namely the LPG project, the Electricity Access Scale Up Project (EASP) and the Clean Energy Access Project (CEAP), “have not achieved their intended outputs at scale.”

That is not just bureaucratic language. That is an indictment.

The audit found limited awareness and sensitization campaigns, confined to a few technologies and restricted in frequency and geographic coverage. The very misconceptions about LPG, electricity cooking, ethanol and biogas that the Ministry was supposed to demystify remain alive and well.

“How do you roll out modern cooking solutions without first convincing people they are safe, affordable and practical?” wonders a clean energy expert who spoke to RedPepper.

Worse still, the selection of beneficiaries and installation of clean cooking technologies was not informed by thorough needs assessments. The result? Mismatches between provided technologies and actual beneficiary needs, high abandonment rates and underutilization. In plain language, technologies were dumped where they were not wanted or could not be sustained.

The audit further established that the absence of robust verification and beneficiary data management systems led to duplication of beneficiaries across projects, incomplete records and ineffective targeting. In a sector awash with loans and donor funds, how do you fail to build a basic automated beneficiary management system?

Affordability has also crippled the transition. The high and unaffordable upfront costs of acquiring clean cooking technologies, up to UGX 2 million for some technologies, even where subsidies are available, have deterred many households. Flexible payment options like PAYGO are largely absent. Meanwhile, the electricity cooking tariff aimed at promoting cooking with electricity is not meeting its objective because nearly 75% of the intended beneficiaries are not connected to the grid. Even among the 25% connected, many do not consume the 80+ units required to benefit from the lower tariff.

Infrastructure for refilling LPG cylinders and ethanol remains inadequate outside urban centres. In rural areas, refill points are far, stockouts frequent, and beneficiaries revert to charcoal or firewood. Some households end up using both systems simultaneously, defeating the purpose of a full transition.

Then comes the money. The Energy Transition Plan launched in December 2023 with the International Energy Agency was supposed to be a strategic roadmap to universal access to electricity and clean cooking by 2030. It promised modernization of the energy mix, reduction of biomass reliance and net-zero emissions by 2065. Yet the plan lacks a clear financing strategy. MEMD projected it would mobilize UGX 338.03 billion for promoting clean cooking technologies over three years, roughly UGX 110–113 billion per year. Instead, only UGX 26.085 billion was allocated for clean cooking interventions.

How do you promise a transition without the cash to fund it?

The Auditor General warns that the transition from biomass to clean cooking is progressing slowly and unevenly, with a high risk that national objectives will not be realized within the planned timeframe.

But the rot does not stop at clean cooking statistics. A deeper scandal lurks within the Electricity Access Scale Up Project, a more than USD 600 million loan from the International Development Association of the World Bank, approved by Parliament in November 2022, which Uganda will repay over 37 years. The project aims to scale up electrification to one million connections.

Instead, it has been dogged by explosive allegations of blackmail, collusion, corruption and non-adherence to procedures in recruitment and procurement.

A formal complaint seen by RedPepper titled “Objection to Unfair Advance Recruitment of Staff and Procurements under the Uganda Electricity Access Scale Up Project (EASP – P166685)” accuses World Bank officials, top ministry management and recruitment firm K…of alleged connivance to manipulate recruitment processes.

The complaint alleges poor management of recruitment of staff, including single-sourcing K…., a firm already participating in other contracts within the ministry and bidding for assignments under the same project. It alleges dilution of terms of reference for key technical positions, opening up electrical engineering roles to “any qualifications in any science related areas,” and even clearing applicants with Bachelor of Arts degrees for technical roles requiring science backgrounds.

It further claims immediate former World Bank staff who participated in preparation of the project were cleared without observing the required two-year cooling-off period. “It is as if the funders are rewarding themselves,” the complaint states.

The recruitment firm is accused of conducting shallow interviews, replaying similar questions across stages, failing to test technical skills for major roles and even rounding off marks to keep preferred candidates afloat. There are allegations that due diligence reports were prepared after final candidates had been selected, potentially to blackmail or favor certain individuals.

An anonymous whistleblower email alleging corruption in the recruitment process was allegedly used to trigger a covert re-evaluation process without formal investigation or logging in the World Bank complaint management system. A new panel was reportedly set up without proper technical representation from energy departments, with recruitment firm K…members allegedly sitting on a stage where they had no legal mandate.

Emails from World Bank officials reportedly questioned the credibility of the evaluation committee chaired by the PS, with statements such as “we have reasons to question the credibility of the evaluation committee” and requests for “immediate action” before proceeding.

Is this a case of genuine oversight or a tug of war between technocrats and funders over control of a USD 600 million project? Could these recruitment wars be at the heart of the underperformance flagged by the Auditor General?

Energy experts warn that if technical positions are diluted, if engineers are elbowed out in favour of generalists, and if panels are stacked or influenced, project design, supervision and execution will inevitably suffer. Weak recruitment at the project implementation unit level can translate into weak monitoring, poor contractor oversight and delayed outputs on the ground.

The bigger question is accountability. Who is to blame for the limited progress? Is it the project managers who failed to conduct needs assessments and follow up beneficiaries? Is it the coordinators who did not build robust data systems? Is it the Ministry’s top leadership for failing to align strategy, financing and implementation? Or is it a deeper institutional problem involving both government and development partners?

A senior energy sector analyst who spoke to RedPepper on condition of anonymity said, “You cannot keep blaming communities for not adopting clean cooking when the systems are broken. If refill infrastructure is absent, if financing models are not designed for the poor, and if recruitment of project staff is contested and politicized, you are building failure into the system.”

Another Energy Ministry insider asked bluntly, “Is it time to crack the whip on project managers and coordinators? How many more audits must say ‘limited progress’ before heads roll?”

With Uganda set to repay over USD 600 million for EASP and billions more for energy transition ambitions, the cost of mismanagement will not be borne by technocrats alone. It will be borne by taxpayers and by rural families still cooking over smoky fires.

The Auditor General has spoken. The numbers are on record. The complaints are documented. The question now is whether decisive action will follow or whether this too will fade into the thick smoke of bureaucracy while Acholi and West Nile continue to decline and the dream of clean cooking remains just that, a dream.

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