Kampala, Uganda – As Uganda’s 2026 general elections enter their fourth week of campaigning, a shadowy foreign-led operation to infiltrate civil society and bankroll radical opposition groups has been uncovered and neutralized by the country’s intelligence agencies, this publication can exclusively reveal.
The revelation comes amidst a tense political atmosphere, following a stern warning from the Uganda Police to National Unity Platform (NUP) leader, Mr. Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, over his “confrontational and provocative attitude” towards law enforcement.
While the presidential campaigns have thus far been largely calm, the discovery of the covert plot suggests powerful undercurrents threatening to disrupt the nation’s democratic process.
The German Operative and the Covert Network
At the center of the scheme is Tassilo von Droste, a German national identified by security insiders as a trained intelligence agent operating under the cover of civil society work. Intelligence dossiers indicate that von Droste entered Uganda in 2023 and embedded himself within political circles.
Under the guise of running the Civil Society in Uganda Support Programme (CUSP), he is alleged to have coordinated a sophisticated shadow financing network. The funds, security sources confirm, were not for legitimate civic engagement but were specifically designed to “incubate regime-change infrastructure, coordinate extremist messaging, and engineer pre-election disruption.”
Ugandan intelligence has since fully profiled a list of beneficiary NGOs and individuals handpicked by von Droste. These entities, publicly disguised as human rights and governance actors, have been placed under direct surveillance for their alleged linkages to “foreign-funded digital propaganda cells, protest vote-action mobilisers, and election chaos architects.”
Resurrection of a Banned Scheme
Classified intelligence further exposes von Droste as the strategic architect behind the Advancing Governance and Accountability (AGA) programme. Security agencies describe the AGA as a covert political mobilisation pipeline structured as a rebirth of the Democratic Governance Facility (DGF).
The DGF was permanently shut down by President Yoweri Museveni in 2021 after a government investigation found it was funding parallel political operations and sponsoring election-related riots.
Security sources now confirm that AGA and CUSP are effectively “DGF 2.0,” a more secretive iteration directly coordinated by von Droste in partnership with operatives from at least one other European embassy. The alleged mission was to reconstruct an “external command infrastructure” capable of influencing Uganda’s political trajectory from outside constitutional provisions.
Threat Contained
Despite the operation’s sophistication, Uganda’s elite intelligence and counter-espionage network is reported to have successfully contained the threat. In a discreet, low-profile operation, security agencies neutralised the funding corridors and severely restricted von Droste’s capacity to activate his alleged destabilisation networks.
This successful containment is being credited by insiders as a major factor in preserving the current relative calm and securing the integrity of the upcoming elections.
The development places the recent police warning to opposition candidate Kyagulanyi in a sharper light, suggesting that authorities are on high alert for any actions—whether domestic or internationally orchestrated—that could breach the peace. As the nation moves closer to the polls, the uncovering of this plot underscores the high-stakes battle being waged both in the public eye and in the shadows.
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