Government Backs Emaali Cultural Festival as Platform to Draw Tourists, Investors to Teso

Government has backed the Emaali Cultural Festival 2026 as a platform to draw tourists and investors to Teso under Uganda's tenfold economic growth agenda.

Government has backed the Emaali Cultural Festival 2026 as a platform to draw tourists and investors to Teso under Uganda’s tenfold economic growth

agenda.

The government has thrown its weight behind the Emaali Cultural Festival 2026, casting the two-day event as a vehicle to open up the Teso sub-region to tourists and investors under Uganda’s drive to grow its economy tenfold by 2040.

Launching the festival at the Uganda Tourism Board headquarters in Kampala, Amuria Resident District Commissioner Paul Eseru said the state would stand behind the celebration because it feeds directly into the ATMS agenda — the four-sector plan built around agro-industrialisation, tourism, mineral-based industrialisation, and science, technology and innovation that anchors the country’s push to expand the economy from about $50 billion to $500 billion.

Tourism carries a heavy share of that target, projected to generate up to $50 billion as the government moves to multiply visitor arrivals several times over. Eseru said the festival would put Teso’s attractions, heritage and investment openings in front of both local and international audiences, and that the Kampala launch was a deliberate shop window meant to pull people eastward.

“We are bringing it here in Kampala first for display and then people will follow us to Teso to see exactly what we came to showcase,” he said.

He said district administrations across Teso would work with the Iteso Cultural Union to turn the festival into lasting gains through tourism traffic, business deals and cultural promotion.

The Iteso Cultural Union’s tourism minister, Charles Eweku, appealed to companies, tourism operators, development partners and Ugandans abroad to put money and support behind the event.

Organisers expect more than 50,000 people — among them government officials, cultural leaders and delegates from Kenya and South Sudan, where Iteso communities also live — at the festival, set for 24 and 25 October at the Korolo Ceremonial Grounds.

It will run under the theme “Celebrating Heritage and Building Legacy of Iteso People,” with organisers pitching it as a way to lift tourism, preserve Iteso customs, create jobs and pull investment into a region that has struggled with poverty and, in the past, insecurity.

The festival takes its name from “Emaali,” a Teso song popularised through earlier heritage showcases such as the Akogo Festival, and follows an earlier launch of the same event held at Soroti Hotel.