Uganda won independence on 9 October 1962 via a ballot deal

Uganda became independent from Britain on 9 October 1962, the “appointed day” set by the UK’s Uganda Independence Act 1962, after which the British government had no further responsibility for governing the former protectorate.

The Act did not create a republic. It made Uganda, kingdoms and districts together, part of “Her Majesty’s dominions” — an independent Commonwealth realm with the Queen as head of state. The handover was negotiated at the ballot box and the conference table rather than won in a war, and the vote that decided who would lead the new state was the real drama:

• March 1961: Uganda’s first direct general elections return an African majority; Ben Kiwanuka’s Democratic Party (DP) becomes the majority party.
• September 1961: 48 Ugandan delegates agree the shape of an independence constitution at a conference in London.
• 1 March 1962: Self-government begins, with Kiwanuka as prime minister — making him, not Milton Obote, Uganda’s first.
• April 1962: Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress wins 37 seats to the DP’s 24. Buganda’s Lukiiko chooses its 21 members indirectly, all from the royalist Kabaka Yekka, which allies with Obote to make him prime minister.
• 9 October 1962: Obote’s UPC–KY coalition receives the instruments of independence; President John F. Kennedy sends him a congratulatory message the same day, the date of US recognition.
• 1966–67: The independence constitution is abrogated in May 1966 and a republican constitution follows in 1967.

The alliance between Obote and Kabaka Mutesa II of Buganda did not last. It fell apart over control of the army, the government and Buganda itself; in 1966 the Kabaka fled into exile in London ahead of a military assault on his palace led by Obote’s protégé Idi Amin.

Uganda was one of a wave of British territories to leave the empire in those years, following Cyprus in 1960 and Kuwait in 1961.