Uganda signals continued Military commitment to Somalia * Military Africa

On August 15, 2026, Defence Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka confidently affirmed that Ugandan forces would remain in Somalia through an independent bilateral security pact, even if the multilateral African Union Support and Stabilization Mission (AUSSOM) collapsed or wound down, keeping Kampala’s troops in the country under a bilateral security deal with Mogadishu.

Uganda is AUSSOM’s largest troop contributor, with roughly 4,500 soldiers under the African Union (AU) mission’s approved deployment list. In addition, Kampala has a separate bilateral contingent in Somalia; Ugandan military sources put that figure at around 2,000, though other reporting from Kampala this year has cited numbers as high as 4,000 to 6,000. The bilateral troops operate under a security agreement that Uganda and Somalia signed at the end of 2024, covering deployments that began in 2025.

The minister’s comments follow a US decision, confirmed to the AU on 1 July 2026, to block any renewal of United Nations logistical financing for AUSSOM once the mission’s current mandate expires on 31 December 2026. That financing runs through the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS), which supplies AUSSOM units with food, fuel, transport, medical evacuation, and communications. Without it, troop-contributing countries face a hole in the sustainment chain that has kept the AU mission running since 2009.

AUSSOM’s authorization from the UN Security Council currently extends to the end of 2026, and its long-term concept still points toward a phased handover of security duties to Somali forces. But the funding uncertainty has already reshaped the diplomatic picture. From 29 to 31 July 2026, Uganda hosted an extraordinary summit in Kampala for AUSSOM’s troop-contributing countries, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Somalia, to weigh options for the mission’s future. President Yoweri Museveni told the gathering that African states would keep supporting Somalia’s stabilization even if international partners pulled back funding.

The AU operation began in January 2007 as the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an emergency peace enforcement deployment after Ethiopia’s withdrawal from Mogadishu. It became the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in April 2022, reflecting a shift toward drawdown and transition planning. It was rebranded again as AUSSOM in January 2025, this time framed around stabilization and support rather than combat-led transition. UNSOS has backstopped the mission’s logistics across all three names, taking over from an earlier UN support office in November 2015.

Uganda’s own history with the mission runs the full length of that timeline. The Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) was the first foreign army to deploy under AMISOM in March 2007, and it has anchored the AU presence in Mogadishu since. In May 2026, the UPDF sent Battle Group 47 into Somalia as its latest AUSSOM rotation, a routine but notable marker given the doubt surrounding the mission’s funding this year.

In January 2026, Uganda’s Chief of Defence Forces, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, signaled plans for a full troop withdrawal,  a statement that was seen as the likely close of Uganda’s near 2-decade role in Somalia. Kiwanuka’s August remarks reverse that trajectory in practice, if not in name: Uganda is not leaving; it is restructuring how it stays, moving more of its footprint onto a government-to-government footing that does not depend on AU or UN funding cycles.

AUSSOM troops draw allowances and non-lethal support partly through AU and donor channels, including a €75 million package the European Union approved in April 2026 for the mission’s military component; bilateral troops rely instead on whatever Kampala and Mogadishu can fund directly. Kampala’s government argues the underlying security case has not changed. Officials have warned that gains made across AMISOM, ATMIS and AUSSOM could unravel if forces pull out of districts where Somali police and army units are not yet ready to hold ground on their own. Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked group Somalia has fought for close to two decades, still controls or contests territory in central and southern Somalia and continues to mount attacks against Somali and AUSSOM positions.

Ethiopia has already moved a large share of its own Somalia deployment onto bilateral terms, and Kenya’s calculus looks similar given its direct border security stakes. Uganda’s declared intention to stay, even as AUSSOM’s UN-backed logistics run out at year’s end, points to a Horn of Africa security architecture that increasingly runs on overlapping bilateral deals rather than a single AU-flagged mission.

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