Sugarcane outgrowers in Masindi District have strongly opposed a police-backed directive ordering the removal of all independent roadside weighbridges, warning that the move will reverse gains made in transparency, fair pricing and healthy competition within Uganda’s sugar industry.
A letter dated February 12, 2026 from Uganda Police Headquarters instructs the Regional Police Commander Albertine North to provide security as officials from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives carry out the dismantling of privately operated weighing stations across the district.
The directive follows instructions issued on February 6 by the Minister of Internal Affairs, Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Kahinda Otafiire, who ordered the Inspector General of Police to enforce a 2025 Ministerial Directive from the Trade Ministry. The directive, which government says is aimed at combating sugarcane theft, requires that all sugarcane be weighed exclusively at factory premises and bans the operation of weighbridges along roads and in trading centres.
However, outgrowers in Masindi and across the wider Bunyoro sugar belt have dismissed the anti-theft justification, describing the move as a direct threat to farmer empowerment.
For years, sugarcane growers had no alternative but to deliver their produce to factory premises and accept whatever tonnage the factory weighbridge recorded. There was no independent verification, no transparency and no bargaining power. Farmers described it as a system in which the buyer alone determined the weight, the price and the final payment.
The introduction of independent roadside weighbridges changed this dynamic. Farmers were able to weigh their cane before delivery, document the tonnage and approach factories with evidence. The shift moved negotiations from blind trust to informed bargaining.
The weighbridges also served the broader farming community by weighing maize, cassava, beans and other produce, effectively becoming important pieces of commercial infrastructure in rural trading centres.
“When we started weighing our cane ourselves, factories stopped under-declaring our tonnage because they knew we had proof,” a Masindi outgrower told this publication.
Outgrowers argue that by eliminating independent roadside weighbridges, government is effectively restoring a system in which factories are the sole controllers of the weighing process.
The Trade Ministry has pledged that factory weighbridges will operate transparently and that proper documentation will be maintained. But farmers say records generated within a factory-controlled environment, with no external point of verification, offer no real protection.
“We have been here before. We know how this ends,” one farmer said. “If the factory is the only one weighing, the factory is the only one deciding.”
Industry observers note that the roadside weighbridges had introduced a degree of healthy competition among sugar factories. With farmers aware of their exact tonnage, factories were compelled to offer more competitive prices to attract cane. Farmers could compare offers from different mills and negotiate on the basis of verified weight.
The removal of the weighbridges, according to both farmers and analysts, risks eliminating this competitive pressure. Without independent proof of what they are selling, growers will have little leverage to challenge unfavourable pricing.
“Those weighbridges were the farmer’s negotiating table,” a cooperative leader noted. “Without them, farmers return to being price takers, not price negotiators.”
Police involvement raises tensions
The involvement of police in the planned removal exercise, with the directive explicitly anticipating resistance and calling for security deployments, has deepened anxiety among farming communities. Many outgrowers say they feel criminalised for operating infrastructure that improved fairness in agricultural trade.
For the sugarcane growing communities of Bunyoro, the standoff is no longer simply about theft. It is about who controls information, who controls pricing and who holds power in the sugar value chain.
As Ministry officials prepare to enter Masindi under police escort, farmers continue to ask one question: why remove the very tool that helped them stop being cheated?
To the outgrowers of Bunyoro, the roadside weighbridge was not a theft point. It was a transparency point. And its removal, they insist, marks a return to a system they fought hard to escape.
