❮ Business & Portfolio
The Hugamara Dispatch Edition 2
TIMOTHY MUGUME, MANAGING DIRECTOR
We have been trying to write this section for a while. Not because we did not know what to say, but because some people deserve more than a newsletter paragraph, and we wanted to try at least to do him justice.
Last week, Timothy Mugume was appointed Managing Director of the Hugamara Group. It was not a surprise to anyone who has watched him work. It was, if anything, long overdue and unanimous. When you have spent fifteen years showing up the way Tim has, the decision makes itself.
If Hugamara is the dream, Timothy Mugume is the person who showed up before the alarm even went off. He has never stopped building since. And more than that, he has never stopped growing.
Tim talks about personal growth the way other people talk about strategy. Not as a concept, but as a daily practice. A discipline. That belief shows in everything he does and in everyone around him.
His calendar reads like a small country’s schedule. Banks in the morning. KCCA by afternoon. Chefs, waiters, developers, somewhere in between. And through all of it, he sees people. Every person. From the most senior partner to the newest employee and security guard. That is rarer than it sounds.
The night Luna officially launched, the air conditioning failed, affecting over a thousand people. Timothy Mugume, suits, Benz, the whole picture, picked up a fan and got to work. Nobody asked him to. That is the thing about Tim. He does not have a version of himself that is too important to be in front of him at the moment.
And when things get hard, really hard, Tim goes quiet. Not defeated. Just steady. We have never seen him crash out. Not once. He absorbs it, straightens up, and goes about his day. A colleague from the nightlife side of the business said it best:
“On the long, heavy days, Tim is my quiet reminder that goodness exists, that this matters, and that we are exactly where we are supposed to be.”
Results like his do not happen by accident. They happen because someone refused to cut corners, refused to stop growing, and refused to let the people around them settle either. Fifteen years of that is how ideas become institutions.
We are proud of you, Tim. Genuinely, deeply proud. The title just finally caught up with the man.
WHAT IT MEANS TO MANAGE MULTIPLE BUSINESSES
The question we get most often is some version of: ” How do you keep track of all of it?
The honest answer is that you build people like Tim. You create the conditions for someone to grow into the room, and then you trust them completely when they do. That is the system. Not the spreadsheet, not the org chart, the person who knows what to do when the org chart stops making sense.
Managing multiple businesses is not about being everywhere. It is about being exactly where you are needed, and having the wisdom and humility to trust everything else to the people you have built around you.
The businesses that survive are not the ones with perfect systems. They are the ones whose people have grown enough to hold things together when the systems fail. Small things done exceptionally well compound into large things. That is something Tim has lived, not just said.
The chaos does not go away. You just build people steady enough to meet it.
ON THE GROUND: A WEEK THAT REMINDED US WHO WE ARE
Bunga is slow. We will not dress that up. It is a new neighbourhood for us in every sense. Its own rhythm, its own identity, a significant diaspora community, including Eritreans and others who have built something distinct and intentional there. Progress takes time when you are doing it with genuine respect for a community. We are listening. We are adjusting. We had an activation on Friday, 15th May, and oh what a time that was.
Earning our place here is not a problem. It is the point. So, we showed out.
Dancing mascots who had the kids, and honestly, everyone else, were completely captivated. Skaters cutting through the space and turning heads. Brand amplifiers are working with the universities on that side of town, because you do not just want the street, you want the next generation on it. Influencers who understood the assignment. And the boda riders, we gave them reflectors, because we genuinely care about their safety, but we will not pretend there was not something else in it too. They move through this city all day and all night, and now they carry our name with them.
It was loud. It was alive. It worked.
And then, in the middle of all that noise and newness, we stopped to celebrate the women who hold this place together. Every branch had its cake. Every team shared a meal. At the office, we put together a Mother’s Day package for our office steward, who is expecting. She did not just receive a gift. She was seen. Celebrated. Reminded that this company notices the people who show up quietly every single day and make everything possible.
A community we went out and met on its own terms. A woman we made sure did not feel invisible. Different moments, same belief, the person in front of you is always worth the effort.
FROM THE COMMUNITY
Last edition we asked: What does this city owe its builders?
You replied. This one stayed with us:
“Recognition while we are still alive. Not statues after we are gone. This city has a habit of celebrating people too late. The builders who are quietly holding things together right now, creating jobs, training people, refusing to leave , they deserve to be seen today. That is what the city owes them.”
That is the conversation we want to keep having. Keep your replies coming.
This edition has been about people. It always is, really. Tim. The office steward we celebrated on Mother’s Day. The community in Bunga, we are still earning the right to serve.
Every business is just people deciding, every day, whether something is worth building.
So, we want to ask you: who is the person in your life or your work that you could not build without, and have you told them lately?
Reply and let us know. We are still listening.
Until next time. Keep building.
The Hugamara Group