Position: Finance Minister
Incumbent: Matia Kasaija
Date of Birth: May 28, 1944
Term: Appointed March 1, 2015
Key Facts:
-- A member of parliament for President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling party and formerly junior finance minister, Kasaija was appointed to the top post at the Finance Ministry in the run-up to the 2016 presidential and parliamentary election.
-- Kasaija, a member of the Banyoro tribe in west Uganda that has long complained of government neglect, could prove valuable in building trust with his community before the 2016 election, analysts said.
-- In 2006, he won a parliamentary seat with Museveni’s National Resistance Movement party. He was appointed a junior minister at the Interior Ministry, a post he held until he moved to the finance ministry in 2011.
-- A staunch supporter of Museveni since the president came to power in 1986, he has a reputation for responding sharply to criticism of the government. During a live TV appearance in 2012, he called the show host “ignorant” and stormed out of the studios when faced with a series of critical questions.
-- He first served as an MP in 1979 under a short-lived, interim government after the violent overthrow of autocrat Idi Amin.
-- In his earlier career, he had been a teacher and then worked in farm management and as a salesman for the oil firm Shell in Uganda. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Susan Fenton)