THERE is a word in the Teso language of eastern Uganda — Aicerit na Okide — which means, roughly, a woman of strength and purpose. The people of Bukedea District use it to describe their queen, their TOTO, their mother: Anita Annet Among, Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Uganda. The rest of the continent, surveying the spectacular latest chapter of her remarkable story, might be forgiven for reaching for a different word altogether. Several, in fact. None of them would be boring.
Because on a recent bright morning at Entebbe International Airport, a cargo aircraft from England touched down and opened its belly to reveal a machine of such singular, boxy, glittering extravagance that even the airport apron seemed to stand a little straighter. It was a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, 2025 model, in all its three-tonne, twin-turbo, 592-horsepower glory. Valued at £440,000 — or Shs2.2 billion, before one begins the unhappy business of talking to the taxman. Which, in Uganda, is always an adventure.
“It was a birthday gift.”
Anita Among, Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament
That is what the Speaker told a conference call that included, with wonderful improbability, Mr John Musinguzi Rujoki, the Commissioner General of the Uganda Revenue Authority, who confirmed the story to the Weekend Monitor. A birthday gift. One notes, for the record, that Her Honour was born on 23 November 1973, placing her birthday a comfortable distance from the month in which the Cullinan was airlifted. Whether this was an early gift, a late gift, or simply a gift of the ‘do not ask too many questions’ variety, the Speaker did not elaborate.
She did, however, note cheerfully that her bosses already knew about the car. They are aware, she said, of her love for vehicles. This is, as statements of public officials go, one of the more magnificently understated on record.
THE CULLINAN BY THE NUMBERS
Vehicle value (pre-tax): Shs2.2 billion (£440,000)
Tax slapped by URA: Shs1.2 billion
Total cost to Uganda (incl. freight & charges): Just under Shs4 billion
Engine: Twin-turbo 6.7-litre V-12, 592hp
0–60mph: 4.5 seconds
Weight: Approx. 3 tonnes
Uganda GDP per capita: Between $1,093 and $1,374 (Shs4m–5.1m)
Uganda’s global ranking: Among 47 least developed countries
A Consistent Eye for the Finer Things
It would, of course, be deeply unfair to present this Rolls-Royce as if it materialised from nowhere. Among has long demonstrated an admirable consistency of taste when it comes to motorised luxury. In April 2022, Parliament procured two Mercedes-Benz S500S — one for the Speaker, one for the Deputy Speaker — at a combined cost of £520,000 (Shs2.4 billion). The procurement caused a public uproar of sufficient volume that it made headlines across the region.
That procurement, readers will note with interest, was handled by the very same England-based company — Albeity Limited — that airlifted the Cullinan. A firm, in other words, with a proven track record of Ugandan parliamentary satisfaction. In the world of high-end governmental automobile supply, repeat business is apparently not difficult to secure.
For those keeping score at home: the Speaker has, in the space of four years, been associated with luxury vehicles totalling somewhere in the region of Shs6 billion — enough to build a hospital or two in the very Bukedea district where she is beloved as TOTO. We raise this not to be unkind, but because arithmetic is a democratic exercise available to all.
“She once brewed ajon, a local beer, to raise school fees. Uganda’s GDP per capita is $1,374. The Cullinan costs 3,200 times that.”
The Small Matter of Sanctions
Here the story acquires a flavour that even the most creative fiction writer would hesitate to deploy, for fear of being accused of implausibility. The Cullinan was purchased in and airlifted from the United Kingdom. The same United Kingdom that, on 30 April 2024, imposed personal sanctions on the Speaker — including an asset freeze and travel ban — citing corruption allegations linked to the now-legendary iron sheet scandal. Her husband, Mr Moses Magogo, was sanctioned at the same time. The United States followed suit on 30 May 2024.
The sanctions, as the Daily Monitor faithfully noted, do not prevent Among from receiving goods purchased in those countries. This is the kind of distinction that lawyers love, and citizens find darkly amusing. One can be frozen out, travel-banned, officially designated a person of concern by two of the world’s most powerful governments — and still take delivery of a Rolls-Royce from Britain. Rule Britannia, one supposes, has its limits.
The departure of URA Customs Commissioner Mr Asadu Kisitu, which occurred shortly after the Cullinan’s arrival, has been noted. Whether the timing is meaningful, coincidental, or simply one of those things that happens in Uganda — a country where the space between coincidence and consequence is often very narrow indeed — is a question this publication leaves to the reader’s good judgment.
From Ajon to a Cullinan: The Arc of the Extraordinary
It is impossible to write about Among without acknowledging the sheer audacity of her journey. Born in 1973 as one of more than 49 children, she grew up in circumstances that offered girls very little. Her father intended to marry her off young. She ran away and became a house girl. She ran away again when her sister’s husband became a threat. She brewed ajon — the local sorghum beer of the Teso — to pay her school fees. She worked as a bank cleaner on her Senior Six vacation and rose to become a cashier.
She then did something remarkable: she promised her father she would become the most educated child in their enormous family, and she kept the promise. Bachelor of Business Administration from Makerere, 2005. MBA, 2008. Bachelor of Laws from Kampala International University, 2018. Chartered Certified Accountant. She lost two parliamentary elections, in 2007 and 2011, before winning as an independent in 2016. On 25 March 2022, she was elected Speaker.
All of which is genuinely, uncomplicatedly impressive. The continent has produced few political biographies as propulsive. The question that Africa’s governance watchers now ask — gently, but insistently — is a different one: at what point does the arc of the extraordinary bend so far toward personal enrichment that it leaves the people who made the journey possible behind?
“King Charles III has one. Kim Kardashian has one. Cristiano Ronaldo has one. And now, Uganda has one.”
Welcome to a Very Exclusive Club
The Rolls-Royce Cullinan, for those unfamiliar, is the crown jewel of the marque’s SUV ambitions: large, extravagant, and, as the automotive journal Car and Driver puts it with characteristic understatement, ‘dizzyingly expensive.’ It seats five. Its air suspension reads the road ahead with a camera and adjusts in real time. It has night vision. Its rear entertainment system pairs with Bluetooth headphones of any variety, or one may choose to experience life through its 18-speaker, 1,400-watt audio setup. It does zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds, though in Kampala traffic, this may not be its most useful feature.
The global Cullinan ownership register is a list that was not, until recently, expected to include a speaker of parliament from one of the 47 least developed nations on earth. It includes King Charles III, who received his for his coronation; Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man; a constellation of Bollywood stars; NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes; and Ghanaian musician Shatta Wale, who represents the continent’s previous entry. Among now joins them.
Uganda’s nominal GDP per capita oscillates between $1,093 and $1,374. The Cullinan costs, after taxes and freight, something approaching Shs4 billion. To put it differently: a Ugandan earning the average national income would need to save every single shilling for approximately 3,000 years to afford their Speaker’s birthday gift. No wonder, as the Monitor’s summary framing noted, ‘Uganda’s entry into the elusive club of countries with a Rolls-Royce Cullinan owner belies many deep-seated issues.’
She Dared the Detractors. Again.
When the news broke, Among did what Among does: she leaned into it. She accused the people circulating the story of being her detractors, keen to alert her bosses to the acquisition. Her bosses, she noted, were untroubled. They know about her love of cars.
It is worth pausing here to appreciate the political confidence this requires. Among is, by many accounts, among the most powerful speakers of parliament on the African continent. She has outlasted challengers, survived sanctions, navigated the treacherous shoals of Ugandan NRM politics, and was returned to the Speakership despite what she described, at a breakfast meeting with newly elected female MPs, as people calling her an ‘accidental Speaker.’ Her response was characteristic: ‘I was voted by 412 MPs.’
One does not, in sum, trifle with Anita Among. The Rolls-Royce, one suspects, is not simply a car. It is a statement. A three-tonne, pearl-painted, V-12 statement, airlifted at great expense from a country that has formally declared her a person of concern, and it has parked itself, with the engine running and the Pantheon grille gleaming, in the driveway of Uganda’s political consciousness.
The View From the Kerb
In 2025, as Uganda prepares for elections in 2026 and parliament debates, among other things, a Bill that would require disclosure of the source of external funds exceeding Shs400 million, the optics of a Shs3.4 billion gift arriving by airlift from a sanctioning nation are, to deploy the most generous possible description, complex.
The Iteso call her Aicerit na Okide — a woman of strength and purpose. The residents of Bukedea call her TOTO. The 412 MPs who elected her call her Madam Speaker. The Uganda Revenue Authority, negotiating a staggered tax repayment plan on her behalf, calls her a valued client.
And the rest of Africa watches, as it so often does, with an expression that is equal parts admiration, disbelief and the rueful, knowing laugh of a continent that has seen this particular movie before — and knows, with a weariness born of long experience, that it never quite ends the way the people in the cheap seats deserve.
The Cullinan, for its part, wafts. The road-scanning camera adjusts for imperfections in the pavement. The 1,400-watt speakers fill the cabin with whatever soundtrack the moment requires.
Outside the tinted windows, Uganda goes about its business, on $1,374 a year.
