Biophysical Economics of Uganda: A Comprehensive Review of Energy Resources and Sustainable Development Pathways

Abstract

Uganda is a nation endowed with an estimated 52,000 MW of energy potential across seven distinct resource categories, yet more than half of its population lacks access to electricity, and nearly 90% of national energy consumption derives from traditional biomass. This review surveys Uganda’s full energy resource matrix—hydroelectricity, biomass, solar, geothermal, wind, fossil fuels, and nuclear—alongside the mineral resource base that underpins energy infrastructure development. The analysis is organised through a three-dimensional evaluation framework encompassing resource endowment, infrastructure and governance capacity, and socio-economic demand alignment. The review finds that Uganda’s energy poverty is not due to a deficit of natural resources but to a failure of development capacity and institutional coordination across all three dimensions. The progressive layering of governance fragmentation, ageing grid infrastructure with 22.8% transmission and distribution losses, and a critical shortage of trained energy professionals forms a closed-loop bottleneck that blocks investment even where resource potential is high. Uganda’s Vision 2040 targets of expanding installed capacity to 51,200 MW and increasing per capita electricity consumption to 3,668 kWh are ambitious but achievable only if policy interventions address all three dimensions simultaneously, with governance reform serving as the prerequisite for unlocking investment in both infrastructure and demand-side interventions. The review identifies a critical research gap in quantitative biophysical-economic modelling applied to the Ugandan context and proposes that biophysical economics offers a productive analytical lens for future energy-policy evaluation in comparable sub-Saharan African settings.