Local Council One (LC1) elections take place across Uganda tomorrow, and with them comes a familiar national ritual: renewed interest in grassroots leadership. For a moment, the country’s smallest unit of governance becomes the centre of political conversation, and for women, a critical test of whether democracy truly includes them.
These elections have been postponed six times since the last LC1 leaders’ term expired in 2023, each delay blamed on a lack of resources. Before that, Uganda went without an LC1 election for seventeen years, from 2001 until 2018. That history alone raises a question worth asking: if this level of leadership were truly a priority, would it keep being pushed to the back of the queue?
The fact that more than 71,000 villages are voting at once matters not because it is impressive on paper, but because it reflects where governance is first experienced. The LC1 chairperson is often the first point of contact between citizens and the state. Land disputes, domestic violence, family conflicts, mobilisation for community programmes, and local accountability frequently begin here. These responsibilities go beyond being ceremonial. They shape how women in particular experience the state in their everyday lives.
Questions have long been raised about how these elections are conducted. Since Uganda revived LC1 polls in 2018 after a seventeen-year gap, voting has been done by lining up behind candidates or their symbols in an open public space rather than by secret ballot, a method the Electoral Commission has defended as faster and cheaper to run across tens of thousands of villages, even as funding shortfalls have been used to justify years of delay.
According to the Electoral Commission, counting is conducted at the polling venue, meaning leadership is chosen in full view of the community, where trust, reputation, relationships, and social influence matter as much as campaign promises. For women candidates, this public spectacle often becomes a site of patriarchal policing, where standing to be counted as a woman seeking power is itself an act of defiance against intimidation, ridicule, and gendered violence.
Government does, at least on paper, recognise the importance of this level of leadership: the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development shows the Electoral Commission has an approved allocation of approximately Shs 140.8 billion in the FY 2026/27 Vote Budget Framework Paper for electoral administration and preparations for the 2026 electoral cycle, for elections that were postponed six times over the past three years on the grounds that funds were unavailable. Public investment in elections is important. But the greater challenge is whether this investment produces leadership that is accountable, transformative, inclusive, and responsive to citizens, or merely reproduces male dominance at the taxpayer’s expense.
That conversation inevitably leads to another question: Who gets the opportunity to lead, and who is systematically denied it?
Although women have every legal right to contest LC1 positions, leadership at community level continues to be shaped by patriarchal norms rather than the law alone. Men are often assumed to be natural leaders while women are expected to prove themselves before they are trusted. These attitudes influence who communities are conditioned to elect, who speaks at meetings and whose ideas are respected. This is not culture. It is discrimination institutionalized as common sense.
The result is a democratic deficit in Uganda’s Local Government leadership. According to the Electoral Commission data from the 2018 Local Government elections, analyzed by the Equal Opportunities Commission (2021), men hold 97% of LC I Chairperson positions while women hold a paltry 3%. The patriarchal pyramid barely shifts at higher levels, with women holding only 6.5% of LC II and 1.7% of LC III Chairperson positions. This is despite women constituting 51% of Uganda’s population (UBOS, 2024 Census) and 53% of registered voters for the 2026 general elections (Electoral Commission, 2025).
Article 33 of the 1995 Constitution and the Local Governments Act mandate affirmative action, yet affirmative action has been ghettoized into Woman Councillor seats rather than executive power.
Global evidence is clear: UNDP (2023) data shows that when women lead at the local level, there is up to 25% increase in investment in health, education, and anti-violence services, the very issues LC1s handle daily.
As Ugandans head to the polls tomorrow, these figures should encourage communities to look beyond long-held stereotypes and give capable women a fair opportunity to lead. Supporting capable women candidates at the local level is not simply about achieving gender balance; it is about reclaiming grassroots power, redistributing resources, and ensuring governance works for those it has historically marginalized.
As an organisation that has spent years building and nurturing women’s leadership at the grassroots, FOWODE calls on Ugandans to use tomorrow’s vote to break the pattern: to look past inherited assumptions about who is fit to lead, and give capable women the chance to prove it.
At the end of the day, elections do not transform governance on their own. Citizens do. As Uganda holds these long-delayed LC1 elections, the conversation should move beyond who wins office to what kind of power we are building. Citizens should choose leaders based on integrity, competence, and commitment to public service rather than patriarchal familiarity and male entitlement. Communities should make a deliberate effort to support and vote for capable women leaders.
If Uganda is serious about building a more accountable, inclusive, and democratic society, that work must begin where leadership begins: at the grassroots level.
Elect a woman. Transform the village.
Written by Joshua Mitala
The writer is a Communications Officer at Forum For Women In Democracy
