For twenty years, Grace Nakimera’s voice has filled Ugandan airwaves, her songs woven into the fabric of the country’s cultural identity. But when the Uganda Performing Right Society finally handed her a royalty cheque, the number staring back at her was UGX 1 million. Not per year. Not per album. For everything. Two decades of work, reduced to a figure that wouldn’t cover a decent dinner in Kampala’s nicer restaurants.
Nakimera went public with her frustration this week, and her words landed like a stone in still water. According to a report by Mbu, the musician openly questioned how the Uganda Performing Right Society (UPRS) has been calculating and distributing royalty payments to artists, saying the amount she received made no sense against the timeline of her career.
“I Ate It”, And Then the Questions Came
Nakimera did not mince words. She accepted the money, as anyone would, but the moment it was in her hands, something did not add up. “They gave me Shs 1 million and I ate it,” she said, before turning the microscope on what that figure actually represents. Is it the total accumulation of royalties from 2004 to now? Does it mean every song she has ever recorded earned her roughly UGX 1,000? Or worse, does it mean her entire catalogue generated just UGX 400 across all those years combined?
Those are not rhetorical questions. They are the kind of arithmetic that exposes whether a royalty collection system is working the way it should, or whether it is simply collecting money on behalf of artists and distributing crumbs while the full picture remains buried in spreadsheets no one is inviting musicians to read.
A Growing Chorus of Discontent
Nakimera is not alone in this conversation. She joins a number of Ugandan musicians who have recently spoken publicly about receiving payments from UPRS. The fact that artists are now openly comparing notes and airing their experiences is itself significant. For years, the inner workings of royalty collection bodies across Africa have operated with very little scrutiny from the artists they claim to serve. That silence is cracking.
Royalty societies, in principle, exist to protect musicians. When a song plays on radio, television, or in a public space, the artist is owed a fee. The society collects those fees from broadcasters and venues, pools them, and distributes them to rights holders. It is a system that has worked reasonably well in markets with strong regulatory oversight, transparent reporting, and active artist participation in governance. Uganda’s version of that system is now facing uncomfortable public scrutiny.
The Accountability Gap No One Wants to Talk About
What Nakimera is really asking for, beneath the sharp arithmetic of her public statement, is accountability. How is the money collected? From whom, and how much? What methodology determines who gets paid, and how much each artist receives? Are the figures audited? Are artists given clear breakdowns of their individual earnings before a payment is made?
These are not complicated requests. They are the baseline expectations any professional would have of an organisation managing their income. A lawyer collects fees on your behalf and you expect a statement. A publisher collects advances and royalties and you expect a ledger. A royalty society should be no different.
The absence of that transparency is not unique to Uganda. Across the African continent, performing rights organisations have faced criticism from artists who feel disconnected from the money generated by their creative work. In some cases, the challenge is genuinely structural, collecting royalties from informal broadcasters, small venues, and digital platforms is complex and expensive work. But complexity is not an excuse for opacity, and it certainly does not explain why a musician with two decades of active output would receive a figure that rounds down to almost nothing per song.
What Reform Would Actually Look Like
For UPRS to respond meaningfully to Nakimera’s challenge, the response needs to go beyond a press release. Artists deserve a clear, itemised breakdown of every payment made on their behalf. They need to know what was collected, from which platforms or broadcasters, over what period, and how distribution calculations were made. If there is a formula, publish it. If there are administrative costs deducted from the pool, disclose the percentage. If unclaimed royalties have been sitting in an account, say so.
Beyond transparency, there is a case for an independent audit of UPRS’s collection and distribution records, not because wrongdoing is proven, but because trust in any financial institution is only as strong as its willingness to be examined. Uganda’s music industry is not small. It produces globally recognised artists, songs that dominate East African playlists, and cultural exports that carry the country’s name far beyond its borders. The people who create that value deserve a system that treats their earnings with the same seriousness they bring to their craft.
Why This Moment Matters
Grace Nakimera speaking up matters not just for her own career, but for every Ugandan musician who has ever signed over their rights to a collecting society and trusted that the system would work in their favour. When a respected, long-standing artist says publicly that she received UGX 1 million for twenty years of music, younger artists are paying attention. Producers are paying attention. And they are all running the same mental calculation, asking whether the system they are contributing to is one they can actually trust.
The music industry runs on two things: talent and trust. Uganda clearly has no shortage of the first. Whether the institutions supporting it can earn the second is now, very publicly, up for debate.
If you are a Ugandan musician who has received a royalty payment from UPRS, what was your experience? Did the numbers make sense to you, and do you think it is time for a full public inquiry into how royalties are collected and shared?
