Ugandan steel tycoon Abid Alam avoids civil prison after appeal court halts $338,000 debt order

Uganda's Court of Appeal has suspended enforcement of a judgment requiring the businessman Abid Alam and his company Casements Africa to pay a Chinese glass manufacturer more than $338,000, halting execution proceedings that included an application to have Alam committed to civil prison.

Justice Florence Nakachwa delivered the ruling on Aug. 28, staying the High Court decree while Alam and Casements pursue an intended appeal. The sum is about 1.27 billion Ugandan shillings.

Alam is group managing director of the Alam Group, one of Uganda's largest privately held conglomerates, with interests spanning steel, aluminium, sugar, footwear, industrial gases, electricity generation, agriculture and property across Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. Forbes reported the group's revenue at about $120 million in 2018 and identified Alam as its chief executive and controlling shareholder. It employed more than 3,000 people as of 2013.

Casements Africa is the group's flagship. His father Manzur Alam founded it in Kampala in 1965 to make windows, metal doors, louvres and steel pipes, and it became the first company in Uganda to obtain ISO 9001 certification. The company describes itself as the country's largest manufacturer of aluminium and steel fabrications, with roughly 80% market share in the region and more than 300 employees, and says its products appear in almost every landmark building in Uganda. It opened a Rwandan operation in Kigali in 2002.

The dispute concerns glass it bought and did not pay for.

Weihai Rongsheng Glasswork signed three contracts with Casements in June 2022 to supply 40 crates of clear glass, 140 crates of tinted glass and 30 crates of laminated glass, at a total cost of $338,800.52. The Chinese company says the shipment reached Casements' premises in Kampala's Industrial Area but the invoice went unpaid beyond the agreed 120-day term.

Weihai sued and won by default.

Alam's case is that he never got to defend the claim. He and Casements told the court they received the papers in July 2025 and instructed Karungi and Partners Advocates, who filed an application for leave to appear and defend on Aug. 20, 2025, set down for hearing five days later. Their lawyers did not attend and did not tell them what had happened. The application was dismissed, which opened the way for default judgment.

They then instructed Muwema and Company Advocates to have the default judgment set aside, arguing they had acted diligently and should not be penalised for their advocates' failures. The High Court dismissed that application in January.

Weihai opposed the stay on the ground that Casements and Alam had repeatedly acknowledged the debt and entered payment arrangements they did not honour, that the intended appeal had little merit, and that they had not shown enforcement of a money judgment would cause irreparable loss.

It had already begun executing. The Chinese company sought attachment of Alam's shares in Casements, garnishee orders against the company's bank accounts, and his arrest and committal to civil prison.

Nakachwa found the applicants had met the test for a stay. She noted that at this stage an applicant need not show the appeal will succeed, only that it raises reasonable and arguable questions, and held that it did, including whether the dismissal resulted from the former lawyers' mistakes or the clients' own delay, and whether the default judgment was properly entered.

On irreparable harm she focused on the prison application. Imprisonment, she held, could cause psychological and mental harm not easily undone even if Alam later won his appeal, and the balance of convenience favoured protecting his liberty while the appeal proceeds. She also found no unreasonable delay, since the Court of Appeal application followed shortly after the High Court refused a stay.

Enforcement is suspended until the intended appeal is determined.

The Alam Group's other subsidiaries include Sugar and Allied Industries in Kaliro, the Kaliro Power Station, Rhino Footwear, Oxygas, Roofclad, Alam Property, Crocodile Tool Company in Jinja, Kenya United Steel Company in Mombasa and Ama Ply. Alam's grandfather, Mehbub Alam, was a civil engineer, and the family has been in business in Uganda for three generations.