In the late 1980s, most manufacturing industries relied on agricultural products for raw materials and machinery, and as a result, the problems plaguing the agriculture sector hampered both production and marketing in manufacturing. Processing cotton, coffee, sugar, and food crops were major industries, but Uganda also produced textiles, tobacco, beverages, wood and paper products, construction materials, and chemicals.

In the late 1980s, the government began to return some nationalized manufacturing firms to the private sector in order to encourage private investment. The primary aim was to promote self-sufficiency in consumer goods and strengthen linkages between agriculture and industry. By 1989 the government estimated manufacturing output to be only about one-third of postindependence peak levels achieved in 1970 and 1971. Only eleven out of eighty-two manufacturing establishments surveyed by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development were operating at more than 35 percent capacity. Overall industrial output increased between January 1986 and June 1989, and the contribution from manufacturing increased from only 5 percent to more than 11 percent during the same period.

Data as of December 1990