KAMPALA— A committee of Ugandan MPs has called on the government to urgently release the $430m that the biotechnology firm Dei BioPharma says it needs to finish its drug and vaccine plant near Kampala, arguing that the money would create jobs, cut the country’s medicine import bill and eventually put treatments for diseases such as cancer and sickle cell within reach of ordinary patients.
Members of Parliament’s Presidential Affairs Committee toured the plant at Matugga, in Wakiso district, on 10 August, where the company’s founder, Dr Matthias Magoola, walked them through production lines already running and buildings still under construction on the 250-acre site. Several MPs said afterwards that the visit had convinced them the project deserved faster and fuller government backing.
The committee’s chairman, Simon Peter Okwalinga, who represents Kanyum County and refers to himself as “the Guardian of the People”, was emphatic. “We need, as government, we need Dei BioPharma more than they need us,” he said, arguing that the plant’s projected profits could “triple the development of Uganda” and describing it as the only manufacturer of its kind on the continent — a claim the company itself has long made. Okwalinga said the committee would press the government on two points: electricity, because the plant needs about 100 megawatts, which he compared to the output of a dam, and the outstanding $430m. “Those are some of the issues that we shall definitely recommend for government to quicken,” he said.
Ofwono Opondo, who now sits as the Older Persons representative for eastern Uganda after more than a decade as government spokesman, went further, aligning himself with President Yoweri Museveni’s drive to protect strategic local firms. He argued that the state should not merely fund the plant but should also commission it to supply the public health system. Opondo proposed that the health budget be arranged so that the National Medical Stores buys directly from Dei, and set out a phased target — asking whether the company could meet 10%, then 30%, of the essential drugs the government needs over three to five years — while linking its output to the military’s hospital, the national specialised hospital and lower-level health centres. He said the government currently held a 9.8% stake, praised a young, largely Ugandan workforce that he said was mostly under 30, and pressed for the industry to be tied to farmers, noting that cassava starch is imported from India and maize starch from China even though Uganda grows cassava that struggles to find a market. On accountability, Opondo said the company’s books had been audited by Ernst & Young and passed to the finance ministry, and would be examined by the Auditor General before any recommendation was acted upon.
Dr Magoola said a feasibility study by Ernst & Young put the total cost of the campus at $1.1bn (about 4.1tn shillings), of which roughly $700m had been spent — $500m raised by the company through banks and partners, and $194m from the government — leaving the $430m balance to complete construction, buy equipment and connect production.
He said six facilities were already producing, that about 70% of the works were finished, and that the campus could be completed before the end of 2027 if the money arrived in time.
Dr. Magoola added that the company intended to list on the stock market so that Ugandans and foreign investors could buy in—noting that the medicines Dei Biopharma makes at Matugga match the quality of those sold in New York or London.
For Rose Mutonyi, the woman representative for Manafwa district, the appeal was personal as well as economic. She welcomed local starch production as a way to lower drug prices, pointed to the foreign exchange the country would save by buying at home, and said she was moved by the plant’s focus on cancer and sickle cell — disclosing that a niece of hers faced surgery after the disease attacked her pelvis.
“If he is telling us the truth, and I feel he is telling the truth, I am sure he can do a great deal for us Ugandans,” she said, adding that she did not want the site to become “a white elephant”.
Denis Amere Oneka, the MP for Kitgum Municipality, called Dei Biopharma a bit exceptional among the science and technology projects he had visited in five years in Parliament.
He urged the company to buy cassava and create jobs beyond the east, including in the northern Acholi sub-region, and argued that it should perfect a handful of medicines and begin earning before expanding.
“The economy of the country at the moment might not sustain us to give very many billions to one institution,” he said, noting that other state-backed ventures such as the vehicle maker Kiira Motors were competing for the same limited funds.
Founded by Dr Magoola in 2014, Dei BioPharma has become one of the largest facilities of its kind in the region and a recurring test of the government’s willingness to back local manufacturing.
The company says it has filed more than 100 patent applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for treatments and vaccines targeting cancer, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, sickle cell disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
Several have moved beyond filing. In January 2025 the USPTO accepted its application for what the company calls the world’s first universal vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease.
On 6 February 2025 the office published a patent, numbered US 2025/0043258, for a guided-RNA cancer therapy that the firm says strikes defective genes common to many tumours rather than a single patient’s, and which it projects could cost under $100 a patient, against more than $500,000 for some existing cell therapies.
In July 2025 the USPTO accepted two further applications — a universal mRNA cancer-vaccine platform and an affordable single-chain antibody-fragment therapy — and in May 2026 the company filed for a broad-spectrum mRNA vaccine platform against Ebola and mpox, an announcement made at an Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) meeting in South Africa.
Its natural-source anti-malarial drug is also awaiting a US patent.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted Dei’s development plans for several biosimilars — a darbepoetin product for anaemia and kidney failure, and the GLP-1 diabetes and weight-loss drugs liraglutide and semaglutide — and has sent preliminary comments on PSI-033, a proposed lower-cost version of the cancer drug Yervoy. The company also says the FDA agreed to waive clinical-efficacy trials for its planned biosimilars of the cancer drugs pembrolizumab and trastuzumab.
Within Uganda, the National Drug Authority has licensed the Matugga plant and cleared it to make a range of products; it is already producing around nine generic medicines.
Dei says it builds to FDA, European Medicines Agency and World Health Organization standards and is in talks with the WHO, the vaccine alliance Gavi and the research body CEPI over future supply, though those discussions have not yet produced WHO prequalification or an Africa CDC manufacturing designation.
The government has already invested about 700bn shillings ($190m) and has been converting the spending into an equity stake.
Opposition MPs, including the Leader of the Opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi previously visited the plant commended the progress but questioned whether the shares the money was meant to buy were ever acquired.
When Parliament approved earlier funding, the then Speaker, Anita Among, ordered that the company’s assets be valued and its land titles held by the Treasury before disbursement.
The finance ministry has since said a panel of bankers and scientists will vet future rounds of funding before more money is released.
The Presidential Affairs Committee says it will now table a formal recommendation for the government to fast-track both the $430m and the additional power the plant needs.
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