Lawrence Semakula  

Mr. Lawrence Semakula is the Accountant General of the Republic of Uganda; the duties he has performed since January 2013. Lawrence joined the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in 2001 as Assistant Commissioner Accounts, in charge of Foreign Funds.

In 2003, Mr. Semakula was promoted to Commissioner Accounts and subsequently assigned to be in charge of Financial Management Services (FMS) under the Accountant General’s Office.   FMS is the department directly charged with the design, development and implementation of Government Financial Management systems.

Mr. Lawrence Semakula was named the acting Accountant General in 2013 and confirmed in 2014. Mr. Lawrence Semakula was the Chairman of the East and Southern African Association of Accountants General (ESAAG) from 2017 to 2019.

Prior to joining Government, Lawrence worked with Nile Hotel International for 11 years.  He joined Nile Hotel as a Financial Accountant in 1990. In 1993, he was given accelerated promotion to acting Chief Accountant and later re-designated Financial Controller in 1995.

Lawrence has been a Member and Fellow of ACCA (UK) for over 20 years and is also a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda.  He holds an MBA from Heriot-Watt University – Edinburgh Business School and Bachelors of Commerce (Accounting) from Makerere University. He has undertaken specialized training in the following areas; Debt Management from Harvard University Business School, Public Expenditure Management & Public Policy Management from Joint Africa Institute, and Strategy Policy Planning from International Centre for Parliamentary Studies (UK). He holds other certificates in various areas of Public Financial management.

Mr. Semakula is associated with various Public Financial Management (PFM) reform initiatives in Government.  He chaired the application implementation workgroup under the Integrated Financial Management system (IFMS); he was the task chair on the implementation of the Electronic Funds Transfer system, task chair on Treasury Single Account (TSA), and task chair salary decentralization. In 2012, he was directly charged with the responsibility of reviewing the Public Financial systems to strengthen controls to address emerging weaknesses highlighted by various reviews from oversight bodies and development partners.

He currently oversees the implementation of the Electronic Government Procurement project and is the Chairperson of the Accountability Systems and Compliance in Budget Execution under the Resource Enhancement and Accountability Project (REAP).

Mr. Semakula has been the Chairperson of the Accountability Sector working group and is currently highly involved in Government’s transition from Sector to Programme based planning and budgeting. As the Accountant General, he is the Accounting Officer for the Treasury Operations vote, Accounting Officer for the Petroleum Fund, Accounting Officer for the Contingencies Fund, and the Deputy National Authorising Officer for the European Union (EU) Funds for Uganda.

Mr. Semakula has made various PFM presentations at both International and National fora. He has also received various accolades for being innovative, hardworking, and a good time manager from the workplace, community organizations, and former schools.