Denmark, Sweden and Iceland launch Shs33bn fund for Uganda's creative sector

The embassies of Denmark, Sweden and Iceland launched a new Uganda-Nordic creative economy partnership in Kampala on 10 September 2026, anchored by a Shs33 billion (about US$8.7 million) government revolving fund for artists and creatives, a newly signed copyright law, and plans for a dedicated creative-industry building.

The launch, billed as the Nordic-Uganda Partnership Day and held under the theme "Youth, Culture, Creativity, and Nordic Partnerships," drew more than 250 young people to workshops on storytelling, gaming and digital innovation, alongside artists, policymakers and cultural leaders, according to the Daily Monitor.

Uganda's Minister for Youth and Children Affairs, Faith Mercy Lakisa, told the event that creative arts had moved beyond "a formal way of having a cultural expression" to become "a vital socio-economic sector," the Monitor reported.

A revolving fund, not one-off grants

Rather than handing out one-time grants, the Shs33 billion budgeted for the current financial year is channelled through savings and credit cooperatives, or SACCOs, which manage groups, records, savings and loan repayment on behalf of members, according to the Rio Times Online.

By December 2025, about Shs18.99 billion (roughly US$5.0 million) of that money had already reached 50 SACCOs and 3,047 individuals — 62 percent of them young people and 43 percent women, the Rio Times reported, citing figures presented at the launch. The structure means recipients borrow and repay through their cooperative rather than receiving a single, non-repayable payout, a model intended to build lasting financial infrastructure in a sector historically shut out of formal bank lending.

A new copyright law

The government has also moved to tighten intellectual-property protection. Parliament passed the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Amendment) Bill on 17–18 March 2026, after a first reading in May 2025, and President Yoweri Museveni signed it into law on 29 April 2026, according to the Uganda Registration Services Bureau and the Monitor.

The Act raises penalties for piracy and infringement to fines of up to Shs50 million — about US$13,000 at the roughly Shs3,800-to-the-dollar rate implied by the fund's reported conversion, a writer calculation — imprisonment of up to ten years, or both, and it lets the Registrar of Copyright or rights owners order online platforms to take down infringing content, the Monitor and Uganda Registration Services Bureau reported. It also requires copyright registration with the Uganda Registration Services Bureau to access some protections, caps copyright assignments at 20 years before rights revert to the original author, and allows royalty collection and distribution to run through the national payment system.

The law also ends free radio and television airplay by requiring broadcasters to pay for the content they use, introduces a digital tracking system for music and film played in bars and public venues, and sets a revenue split for caller ring-back tones of 60 percent to authors and performers, 31 percent to telecom operators and 8.5 percent to aggregators, according to allAfrica and Nile Post.

Justice Minister Norbert Mao called the legislation "a game-changer for our creative industry," Nile Post reported. Eddy Kenzo, president of the Uganda National Musicians Federation, said of the law: "Finally we can earn from our works and sweat," calling it a "life-changing opportunity" for artists, according to allAfrica.

A common-user facility

Government officials said at the launch that they were "finalising the acquisition of a dedicated home for creative artists as a common-user facility," though no location or timeline was given, the Rio Times reported.

Why it matters

Uganda's creative sector is a meaningful, if inconsistently measured, part of the economy. Its Fourth National Development Plan put the sector's contribution at 3.1 percent of GDP in 2022, supporting more than 300,000 jobs and 12,400 small and medium enterprises, according to a Monitor commentary, while a separate Monitor news report put the figure as high as Shs3–4 trillion. The government has made the sector a pillar of its 10-Fold Growth Strategy, which targets a US$500 billion economy by 2040.

At the launch, Sweden's ambassador to Uganda, Anna-Maria Olsson, said "creativity also flourishes where people can exchange ideas freely," linking the funding to "freedom of expression, openness to dialogue and respect for human rights," according to the Monitor.

Not the only outside backer

The Nordic push follows other foreign-funded efforts in Uganda's creative economy, including the European Union's ACP-EU Ignite Culture programme, which has distributed EUR4.5 million in grants to 37 creative organisations across ten African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, including Uganda, delivered through the British Council and HEVA Fund.

The SACCO-based revolving structure marks a departure from the one-off grant model typical of Western cultural diplomacy in the region. It also offers a comparison point for how other partners might design support for the region's creative industries — including China, whose cultural-exchange spending in East Africa has tended toward festivals, scholarships and infrastructure rather than repayable local financing; no specific Chinese programme comparable to the Nordic fund has been identified, and this is offered as context rather than as a claim about any named Chinese initiative. Uganda's government has not said whether the fund will be expanded beyond this financial year or whether other donors will be invited to contribute.