Uganda’s National Social Security Fund grew its assets by a quarter to Shs32.8 trillion ($8.9bn) in the year to June, a pool the Fund says is the largest of any social security scheme in East Africa. The figure that determines what its 3.4 million members will actually receive, however, will not be known for another week.
The Fund’s numbers, presented to journalists in Kampala on Wednesday, show contributions from members rising 13 per cent to Shs2.4tn and benefits paid out climbing 17 per cent to Shs1.5tn, spread across just over 46,000 recipients. Total revenue rose 85 per cent to Shs6.5tn.
Only Shs3.9 trillion of that was realised income: interest, dividends and rent collected in cash. Interest income rose 21 per cent to Shs3.5tn and dividends climbed 55 per cent to Shs369bn, while rental income slipped 4 per cent to Shs16bn. The remainder, Shs2.6tn, reflects unrealised gains from marking the Fund’s bond and equity holdings to market, a sum that grew nearly sevenfold but exists only on paper until those assets are sold. It is realised income that funds the annual payout to members.
The rise in valuations owes much to a shift already under way in the portfolio. Equities now make up 18.4 per cent of NSSF’s assets, up from 13.3 per cent a year earlier, as regional stock markets rallied; the Uganda Securities Exchange’s local index rose from roughly 1,287.6 points to 2,064.0 over the period. Fixed income, still three-quarters of the Fund’s holdings, benefited as falling bond yields across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda lifted the value of existing positions. A weaker shilling added to the effect: managing director Patrick Ayota explained that the Fund’s regional holdings are worth more once converted back into shillings when the currency depreciates.
The rate credited to members’ savings will be declared on 24 September, at NSSF’s 14th Annual Members Meeting, by Henry Musasizi. It will be his first such declaration since taking over the finance ministry in May from Matia Kasaija, who held the post for eleven years before the cabinet reshuffle that followed January’s election. NSSF has committed to a “return promise” of paying at least two percentage points above the ten-year average rate of inflation, now at 3.7 per cent, and says it expects the minister to honour that pledge again. The declared rate has risen every year since 2023: 10 per cent for 2022/23, 11.5 per cent for 2023/24, and 13.5 per cent last year, the highest since 2017.
Not every trend favours a repeat. Bank of Uganda data show the 91-day Treasury bill, against which much of NSSF’s bond book is priced, averaging 11.2 per cent over the year to June 2026, down from 12.0 per cent at the close of the previous financial year, and slipping to 10.4 per cent by August. This year’s rate is backed by income already earned and is not at risk. Future returns are another matter: if yields keep falling, a fixed income book that size will struggle to repeat this year’s pace of realised income growth.
The Fund also reported lower costs. Administration costs fell to 0.8 per cent of assets from 0.9 per cent, and the average time to pay a benefit dropped to 4.5 days, from nearly two weeks in 2022.
Growth in the Fund’s voluntary savings product has outpaced the mandatory scheme. Smartlife Flexi has collected Shs180bn from more than 135,000 savers since its launch in November 2024, up from Shs27bn and roughly 40,000 savers a year ago. It is open to informal-sector workers for a few thousand shillings a month, a group with no employer to deduct and remit on their behalf, and so beyond the reach of the compulsory scheme by design.
That reach is the constraint. NSSF covers about 3.4 million members, only 850,000 of them active, drawn almost entirely from formal private-sector employment. The International Labour Organisation has put contributory pension coverage in sub-Saharan Africa at about 6.3 per cent of the working-age population, against 9.6 per cent for Africa as a whole.
Uganda’s placing in the 2025 Absa Africa Financial Markets Index sets the two halves of this against each other. The country climbed to third of 29 economies, behind only South Africa and Mauritius, and scored 85 for its macroeconomic environment. Pension fund development is its weakest category at 26 out of 100. That score rose seven points in a year when 19 countries fell back on the measure, but the gain came from the ratio of pension assets to domestically listed securities rather than from the size of the pension pool, where Uganda scores 17. The denominator in that ratio is Uganda’s own thin listed market. The index’s authors recommend micro-pensions and simpler digital contributions as the route to the informal sector, which is close to a description of what Smartlife Flexi is attempting.
Members will learn what this year’s growth is worth to them on 24 September. Whether more Ugandans come to hold a stake in a fund this size rests on the pension reforms still before government, not on a single year’s returns.
