As every Ugandan owes international money lenders close to $450 (about UGX 1.5m), University students have started a peaceful protest calling upon their government to restrain from borrowing but also give proper accountability of the already borrowed monies. 
Uganda’s cumulative public debt stood at Shs65.82 trillion shillings as of December 2020. This was an increase by 16.82 trillion in a space of one year compared to Shs49 trillion the country had at the end of 2019.
Students from Makerere, Kyambogo and other universities have embarked on a protest reminding government that the debt is almost hitting a 50 percent threshold. The students who say they could have held a group demonstration but they are restrained by Covid19 lockdown, are now taking pictures holding placards and posting them on social media platform mostly twitter.
Learners want the government to first account for the 16 trillion borrowed in an attempt to avert Covid19 that has so far killed close to 800 citizens while more than 60000 have contracted the contagious diseases even though the biggest percent has already recovered.
One of the students, Alex Ssemambo, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Law at Makerere University, has expressed concerned over money borrowed from World Bank, European Union and IMF to fight Covid19 yet the country has a paltry of ICU beds.
In April 2020, which was a month after Uganda had gone into her first lockdown, $300m was borrowed from World Bank, European Union extended $125m Euros to boost the economy while IMF approved a loan worth $491.5m under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) which was also for overcoming Covid19 economic difficulties.
“The government needs to understand that there is no government especially the European world that is so interested in the prosperity of Uganda more than Ugandans themselves. While we borrow, we must borrow with one hand and the other hand created a guard against the ill intentions,” Ssemambo argues.
Apart from World Bank, EU, IMF, Uganda has debts from a number of individual countries such as China. Reagan Muyinda, a student of Kyambogo pursuing procurement and logistics, said every Ugandan should be alarmed by loans Uganda took last year which were mostly tagged on the Covid19 pandemic.
“We wonder how many generations will pay for this debt because as we speak each Ugandan owes lenders Shs1.5m. We are now saying enough is enough. The poor vice of corruption eating up government coffers must be quickly attended to,” Muyinda said.
In nutshell, student want all those implicated in theft of public funds be brought to book. The learners also want property of corrupt officials be attached and auctioned to recover stolen pubic funds.