KAMPALA — Dei BioPharma’s cassava processing plant in Namasagali, Kamuli District, has stood largely idle since President Yoweri Museveni commissioned it late last year. It is now restarting after an upgrade of the electricity supply serving the facility.
The upgrade follows an intervention by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Dr Monica Musenero. She visited the plant on October 2, about two weeks after directing the Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Limited (UEDCL) to fix the power shortfall that had kept the plant’s heavy machinery from running.
Dr Musenero said the major works were complete and the project had entered commissioning, although some technical adjustments were still being made.
“We came here two weeks ago with my team from UEDCL to try and understand the issues with power connection to Dei BioPharma, because it is a high-capacity plant,” she said.
UEDCL’s manager for the North Eastern Region, Mr Paul Sempiira, said the utility had installed a separate transformer at the Kamuli substation to serve the Namasagali line. The arrangement is meant to isolate the plant from faults on other lines and to improve the quality and reliability of supply.
“What we have done insulates Dei BioPharma from the other issues arising from the other line, and also improves the quality of supply they get here,” Mr Sempiira said.
He said the two transformers now serving the area have a combined capacity of about 7.5 megawatts, which UEDCL considers sufficient for both the town and the plant.
Dr Matthias Magoola, founder and managing director of Dei BioPharma Ltd, said the company would redirect money previously spent on fuel into buying cassava from farmers.
“People are going to see the boom of production. The price of cassava is also going to go up, because the money we have been putting in fuel shall be used in buying cassava,” he said.
The Kamuli plant supplies pharmaceutical-grade starch and industrial sugars to Dei BioPharma’s medicines and vaccines factory in Matugga, Wakiso District. Company officials say vaccine and drug production at Matugga cannot proceed without those inputs.
Dr Magoola said the plant was critical to manufacturing human vaccines and medicines at Matugga, and thanked President Museveni and Dr Musenero for resolving the shortage.
“This is the miracle that has come to reality. I don’t know how many offices we went to over the issue of power shortage, but we thank the Minister for Energy who has solved this problem within two weeks,” he said.
He also thanked UEDCL, saying the intervention had given the company renewed hope of moving into sustained production.
Dr Magoola said Uganda would become the first African country to manufacture human vaccines and related products once production starts, and that local manufacture would save the government billions of shillings now spent on imports. He said the company later plans to produce vaccines and drugs for sickle-cell disease, build a 1,000-bed hospital for people living with the condition, and manufacture biofuel for vehicles.
In August, he had sought Dr Musenero’s intervention after operations stalled over the power shortfall.
Mr Richard Mutuuya, the Namasagali LC3 chairperson, said reliable power should lift the price of raw cassava tubers supplied to the plant from about Shs300 to Shs700 a kilogramme. He urged farmers to grow more cassava.
Dr Michael Mugabira, the cassava project coordinator, said the venture could shift farming households in Busoga, Teso and Lango from subsistence into the cash economy, and offer an alternative to sugarcane. He said participating farmers could see a marked rise in income within two years.
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