Johnson Mwebaze and the Work of Building from the Ground Up

The Fiscal Moment Uganda Is Living Through

Uganda's domestic revenue story in 2024 and 2025 is one of genuine progress and persistent structural tension. In the 2024/2025 financial year, the Uganda Revenue Authority collected Shs31.63 trillion, exceeding its target by Shs262 billion, with domestic taxes growing by 15.6 per cent. It was a strong performance by any measure. Yet the World Bank's September 2025 Uganda Economic Update offered a sobering frame: with a tax-to-GDP ratio of only 14 per cent, Uganda remains below the critical 15 per cent threshold widely regarded as the minimum necessary for sustained development, and well below the sub-Saharan African average of 16 per cent. The gap between what Uganda collects and what it is capable of collecting is real, and closing it requires not just stronger enforcement, but a fundamental expansion of the tax base.

The informal sector is central to that challenge. Only 6.8 per cent of Uganda's economically active population and 7.1 per cent of operational businesses are registered for taxes, giving the country one of the lowest taxpayer-to-labour-force ratios in East Africa. Researchers have estimated that failure to tax informal businesses costs Uganda roughly UGX 1 trillion, or around USD 273 million, every year in foregone revenue. These are not businesses that hide from the economy. They are visible, active, and in many cases growing. The gap is structural: the systems, incentives, and outreach mechanisms needed to bring them into the tax base do not yet exist at the necessary scale.

A third dimension of the challenge is the digital economy. Uganda introduced a 5 per cent Digital Services Tax in 2023 targeting non-resident technology companies such as Google, Meta, and Netflix, and is now moving toward a 15 per cent withholding tax on payments to non-resident digital service providers. Estimates suggest Uganda loses approximately UGX 474 billion annually from informal digital transactions that escape the current tax framework. At the same time, the URA is increasingly treating domestic digital creators, bloggers, influencers, and online traders as taxable persons, on the basis that consistent monetisation demonstrates business intent regardless of whether the operation looks informal. For the tens of thousands of young Ugandans building livelihoods through digital platforms, the question is no longer whether their income is taxable. It is whether the system engaging them does so fairly and in ways that support rather than suppress the sector.

A fourth issue, closely related, is the challenge of data and digital infrastructure within the revenue authority itself. The IMF's public financial management blog noted in 2025 that Uganda's Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing System has produced a 12 per cent rise in VAT collections, and that digital tools such as Tax Identification Numbers have registered over 350,000 informal taxpayers since their integration with the national ID system. But the analysis also found that Uganda's tax administration is advancing faster than other government agencies, creating data-sharing bottlenecks that limit the full potential of these investments. Closing those gaps requires people inside the system who understand both the technical architecture and the human realities of compliance.

Johnson Mwebaze works at exactly this intersection.

The Public Servant

Johnson currently serves as an Officer in Domestic Taxes at the Uganda Revenue Authority, where his work touches tax assessment, compliance enforcement, and revenue mobilisation. It is work that sits at the heart of how the state funds itself, and by extension, how it delivers services to its citizens. Revenue administration is unglamorous and technically demanding, and the people who do it well tend to do so out of genuine conviction that it matters.

Before joining URA, Johnson spent over five years as Head of Finance at mfeyti, where he led financial strategy, reporting, and controls. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Finance from Makerere University and is a Certified Public Accountant. He also contributes as Finance Officer at Top Bloggers Uganda, supporting financial planning within the digital media and content space, a sector that is growing rapidly in Uganda but where financial discipline and structure remain underdeveloped.

His interests extend into areas that reflect where finance is heading: business negotiation, IT planning, and data-driven systems including knowledge graphs. He is someone who understands that the future of financial management is inseparable from the future of technology. In the context of what Uganda's tax system is attempting, that understanding is not a personal interest. It is a professional asset.

Beyond the Spreadsheet

What surprises, perhaps, is what Johnson does outside his professional roles. He is co-founder of Zaabu Creatives, which designs and knits custom jerseys, with each piece conceived not merely as clothing but as an expression of identity and purpose. He is also CEO of Zeon Tile Market, a hub for ceramics, plumbing, and tile solutions.

These ventures are not footnotes. They are evidence of someone who does not separate thinking from doing, who applies the same discipline he brings to public finance to the practical business of building enterprises. There is also something quietly significant about a tax officer who runs businesses in precisely the kind of sectors that revenue authorities are trying to bring into the formal economy. Johnson is not observing that challenge from the outside. He is living it from both sides simultaneously.

Where the Fellowship Found Him

Johnson is a Huduma Fellow of the LéO Africa Institute, part of the 2023 class. The Huduma Fellowship is designed for professionals committed to public service and community impact, people who are already doing meaningful work and who benefit from a space to reflect, connect, and deepen their sense of leadership purpose.

For someone like Johnson, whose career spans the public sector, the digital economy, and private enterprise, that kind of space carries particular value. The fellowship does not ask fellows to choose one identity. It invites them to bring all of them, and to think carefully about how each one can be put in service of the communities they are part of.

A Final Note

Johnson Mwebaze is building things. Some of them are measurable: tax revenue collected, financial reports filed, tiles sold, jerseys made. Others are harder to quantify but no less real: the discipline he brings to every role he steps into, and the credibility that comes from understanding Uganda's fiscal challenges not merely as a public servant assessing compliance, but as an entrepreneur navigating the very systems he helps to administer.

Uganda's ability to close its tax gap will depend on the quality of the people inside the system, people who understand the data, the digital economy, and the human realities of building a business in an environment where formal and informal constantly overlap. Johnson Mwebaze is that kind of person. And both the spreadsheet and the jersey, in their own way, are an account of who he is.

Follow Johnson on X at @jmwebaze_.