In December 2025, China Eastern Airlines launched the world’s longest direct flight, from Shanghai to Buenos Aires, Argentina, via Auckland, New Zealand.

 

Around the same time, Ugandan leader President Yoweri Museveni was in his home town of Mbarara, on the campaign trail, announcing a trailblazing mega project that would lift Uganda into the air travel business.

An international airport was to be built there, guaranteed to divert traffic from the newly launched long-haul flight between China and South America, and from all the major air travel routes through European and Middle Eastern hubs.

This airport, to be wholly financed by private investors, is meant to serve as a transit hub between Asia and Latin America, cutting travel time airlines take through the Middle East and European hubs by half, and by six hours via Auckland.

Sky ambitionThe project has raised eyebrows, as the Ugandan investors behind it are presenting little-known Base Seven Company, an outfit with Chinese backers and London-based financiers Blackrock Uwekeza. The latter was incorporated in 2022, but company searches indicate it was dormant six months ago and became active only recently.

Sources familiar with the deals say the financiers will spend about $1.5 billion on the project.

The address of the project consultant, Hamster Business Solutions, is also not known, as we could not locate it at its registered Adam House premises on Portal Avenue in Kampala. A search of the company returns text in Vietnamese. Both the financiers and consultants have no website.fOn March 5, a high-level meeting took place at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kampala, chaired by Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja. This was the first multi-sector meeting to plan the execution of the Mbarara airport, which the president directed the premier to coordinate and expedite last month.

In the meeting, which featured the ministers of Works and Transport, Local Government, Lands, and senior technocrats from these agencies, Ms Nabbanja made sure not to deviate from the president’s directives on this project, as outlined in a February 11, 2026 letter. Only once did she speak off the cuff.“We have no loss at all as a country. It will make that place boom in just a short while. I was shown the architectural [designs]… let us not delay this,” she said, while urging government agencies to ensure the investors obtain right of way, construction permits and financing guarantees.

The multibillion-dollar aviation project first came to light on September 4, 2025, when President Museveni met the consortium behind the facility, which, when completed, will rival the newly launched route from China to South America via Auckland, New Zealand, that takes up to 26 hours.

Project pitchThe consortium presented itself as Base Seven Company, led by Uganda-based air services operator Base 7 Aviation International Academy, which operates a flight academy, aircraft maintenance and flight charter services from the government-owned aerodrome at Nyakisharara, Mbarara City.

Other firms include Hamster Business Solutions as project consultants, Hunan Construction Engineering Group Corporation to handle construction works, with China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute as the brains behind the feasibility and design studies.

The UK-registered Blackrock Uwekeza is the consortium’s financing force and operations brain for a project to be delivered under a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model, according to project officials Mugabi Charles and Alexandria Judith Kyakunzire.

According to reports, the airport, covering 21 square kilometres, with two runways measuring 5.5 kilometres long and a reserve 3.7km runway for VIPs, is expected to be up and running by 2030 under the President’s initiative: Party and Term Oriented Delivery.“This project is only a transit route that we are trying to create,” Eddie Kisitu, Base Seven Company CEO, told the Prime Minister, adding that the airport will facilitate transit between Latin America, China, Indonesia and Australia, and generate enormous revenue for Uganda.

Addressing the viability of the project, Kisitu added: “This facility is aimed at snatching about 30 percent of traffic from the rest of the airports known. I’m talking about Europe, United Arab Emirates… because that is a very common route, congested and very expensive.”But commentators are already punching holes in the project’s design and location. “Those long runways give away the game,” one social media commentator with aviation experience said. “Uganda is a hot and high region. In aircraft performance, it’s far from the most ideal place to have an airport.

.“The long runways are to compensate for this deficiency since aircraft will need a longer take-off roll, especially during the 18 hours between 6am and midnight. It will be a tough call competing with Bugesera airport, which is about the same elevation,” he posted.

Altitude problemObservers ask whether the project targets lucrative ventures around the region, such as minerals from the DRC, whose border is just 200 kilometres west.

Museveni said that the investors’ business case was premised on two zones of the globe—Latin America, especially Brazil, and China—now trading and communicating with one another, and the planned airport in Mbarara being at the midpoint of a shorter flight route between the two regions, relieving travellers of trips of up to 42 hours through Europe and the Middle East.“Their route of communication is wholly irrational and uneconomic,” Museveni said, referring to transit routes through hubs in Europe and Gulf countries. “It is South America, over the Atlantic, over Europe, Asia etc., to China, and back. It takes 34–42 hours.“Yet, if someone was to come from Brazil, refuel at Nyakisharara, it would take him 20 hours of flying time. It takes nine hours of flying from South America to Nyakisharara, and 11 hours from Nyakisharara to China,” the Ugandan leader wrote.

According to Kisitu, the project is a goldmine, modelled against Heathrow. A commercial aircraft landing at London Heathrow today pays £18,000, while taking off costs £14,000. Another £60 is charged for each passenger, and the airliner also pays £1,800 for taxiing on the runway.“All this is money these governments are making. This London Heathrow model is similar to what we are going to implement in Uganda. This airport is designed mainly to facilitate a very, very famous route between South America and Asia, but mainly China,” Kisitu said.

Distance realityBut a look at the current charges shows the British Civil Aviation Authority has capped landing fees at £23.71–£23.73 per passenger for the period 2025–2026, a decrease from previous years. From 2027–2031, Heathrow has proposed raising average passenger charges to around £33.26 to fund a £10 billion investment.

Kisitu also claims travel between South America and Asia has grown exponentially, with an estimated 111 million people travelling between China and a number of South American countries over the last three years for business and other reasons.

Key South American destinations like Argentina saw a 168 percent increase in inbound travel orders from China, while Brazil and Chile experienced over 80 percent growth.

Despite this increased travel between the eastern and western hemispheres, the shortest link currently is a 20,000km route from the Chinese economic hub of Shanghai, where most travellers are destined, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a stop in Auckland, New Zealand.

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