Parish SACCOs at the Crossroads: PDM's Trillion-Shilling Test of RepaymentShs9 billion back from Shs3 trillion out: the uncomfortable arithmetic of PDM recoveryWendi's Shs240b question: can a SACCO wallet turn deposits into credit?Dry Spell Tests Ankole's Dairy Co-operatives as Milk Volumes CollapseBelow One Percent: Can Community Schemes and SACCOs Close Uganda's Health Insurance Gap?Parish SACCOs at the Crossroads: PDM's Trillion-Shilling Test of RepaymentShs9 billion back from Shs3 trillion out: the uncomfortable arithmetic of PDM recoveryWendi's Shs240b question: can a SACCO wallet turn deposits into credit?Dry Spell Tests Ankole's Dairy Co-operatives as Milk Volumes CollapseBelow One Percent: Can Community Schemes and SACCOs Close Uganda's Health Insurance Gap?

Policy & RegulationSubscribers

Three laws, one SACCO: why Uganda's cooperative legal framework needs a rewrite

By Kaza Research Desk

16 March 2026 · 4 min read

The Parliament of the Republic of Uganda building in Kampala — Cooperative law has been amended by Parliament in 2020 and again in 2022. · Photo: Andrew Regan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Ask who is responsible for a Ugandan SACCO and you will get at least three answers. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives registers it as a cooperative under the Cooperative Societies Act. The Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority licenses it as a Tier 4 financial institution under the 2016 Tier 4 Act. And if it grows large enough, the Bank of Uganda now says it must also be licensed under the Microfinance Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, Cap. 58. In a February 2026 letter, the ministry's permanent secretary, Lynette Bagonza, described the result bluntly as a multiplicity of laws and overlapping jurisdictions.

Subscribers only

Continue reading — Subscribe to Kaza Principles.

Get unrestricted access to every article, every issue, and every subscriber-only download — for the price of one cup of coffee a month.

Monthly

UGX 15,000/mo

•All premium articles
•Every PDF issue
•Subscriber-only downloads

Sources & references

Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Act (Uganda) — ECOLEX / FAOLEX
The Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Act, 2022 — Parliament of Uganda, 2022
Why BoU Postponed SACCO License Enforcement — Plus News, 2026-02-26
Museveni halts central bank directive on Sacco licensing — Daily Monitor, 2026-02-02
Gov’t Urged to Invest More in Cooperatives to Drive Socio-Economic Transformation — Publicist East Africa, 2025-07-02
Licensing, Regulation and Supervision of SACCOs in Uganda — Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority

Keep reading

Also in Policy & Regulation

Policy & RegulationSubscribers

Who regulates Uganda's big SACCOs? Inside the standoff over Bank of Uganda licensing

A six-month deadline extension and a presidential directive have paused the central bank's push to license large SACCOs, leaving the sector's regulatory future unsettled.

By Kaza Research Desk · 2 Mar 2026 · 4 min read

The Kampala skyline seen across a railway yard

Policy & Regulation

A cooperative bank, one SACCO at a time: inside the launch of the National Cooperative SACCO

Twenty-five years after the Cooperative Bank collapsed, the movement has launched a national savings and credit society as the first step back. The capital raised so far is modest.

By Kaza Research Desk · 22 Sept 2025 · 4 min read

St Balikuddembe (Owino) Market in central Kampala

Policy & Regulation

Licensed or not? What UMRA's enforcement drive means for SACCOs and their members

Eight years after the Tier 4 Act, Uganda's microfinance regulator is moving from sensitisation to enforcement. Here is what the law requires and how far licensing has come.

By Kaza Research Desk · 25 Jun 2024 · 4 min read