Bank of Uganda Governor Prof Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile died on Sunday morning at Nairobi Hospital, Kenya at the age of 72.His Deputy Dr Michael Atingi-Ego confirmed his death.
“It is with profound sadness that the Bank of Uganda announces the death of it’s gallant Governor, Prof. Emmanuel Tumusiime- Mutebile,” Dr Atingi-Ego announced.
According to family members, the Governor breathed his last at around 5am.
A few weeks ago, Mutebile was rushed to Nairobi under critical health condition.
According to a source, the late was battling diabetes related complications and on 31st December 2021, he collapsed at his home in Kampala.
This was not the first time the governor was being admitted to hospital due to poor health. In April 2020, Mutebile was admitted to Nakasero Hospital before rumors started making rounds on social media that he was dead.
However, Dr. Adam Mugume, Executive Director Research,BoU was quick to dismiss the rumors clarifying that Prof Mutebile was still alive and receiving treatment in one of Uganda’s medical facilities.
“BoU Governor Prof. Mutebile took sick leave on Wednesday March 25, 2020. He is receiving treatment in a Ugandan medical facility and will resume duty as soon as he has recuperated. Strongly disregard the false and malicious stories of his passing,” said Dr. Mugume.
In 2018, the longest serving BoU Governor had to be flown to UK for specialized medical treatment after he collapsed at home.
In 2016, one of the local tabloids alleged that the governor was seriously ill and living off a lifesaving machine.
However, a few days later while announcing the Monetary Policy Statement for October 2016, Governor Mutebile faulted the The Red Pepper for trading in falsehoods.
Mutebile has been highly revered and he is credited for the prudent and effective monetary policy performance in Uganda.
The world over, central bank governors are so important and crucial to the extent that their health situations are very sensitive, even affecting the performance of stock markets, the economy and even politics.
Mutebile was in January 2021 re-appointed as the governor of Bank of Uganda for a fifth five-year term despite being frail for some good years.
He was first appointed governor in 2001.
Who was Mutebile?
Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile (27 January 1949 – 23 January 2022) was a Ugandan economist and banker. He was the governor of the Bank of Uganda. He was first appointed to that position on 1 January 2001.
Tumusiime-Mutebile attended Kigezi College Butobere for his O-Level studies (grades S1-S4).He then attended Makerere College School in Kampala for his A-Level studies (grades S5-S6).
In 1970, he entered Makerere University, where he was elected president of the university Students’ Guild.
He was forced to flee Uganda in 1972 after he gave a speech publicly criticizing the expulsion of Asians from the country by Idi Amin. He fled to England via Tanzania, and was able to finish his studies at Durham University, graduating with an upper-second in Economics and Politics.
In October 1974, Mutebile began his post-graduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to East Africa.
He entered the University of Dar es Salaam to lecture and conduct research while pursuing his doctorate in economics.
In 2009, Nkumba University, a private university based in Nkumba near Entebbe, awarded him an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree in recognition of his “great contribution towards the development of Uganda’s financial sector”.
Between the year 1979 and 1984, Tumusiime-Mutebile was appointed to several government positions in Uganda ranging from deputy principal secretary to the president at State House in 1979, to undersecretary in the ministry of planning in 1981 where he rose to senior economist and then chief economist in 1984.
In 1992, he was appointed permanent secretary to the newly combined ministry of finance planning & economic development, a merger that he had advocated while working under Minister of Finance Gerald Ssendaula.
He is the longest serving chief executive in the Bank of Uganda’s history.He is credited with many of the sound economic policies adopted by the Uganda government at the urging of the central bank during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s.
Since 2006, Mutebile has been a visiting professor in the Department of Economics at Makerere University, the oldest and largest university in Uganda.
Mutebile was the chancellor of the International University of East Africa, a private university established in 2011, with an urban campus in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
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