In Uganda, rolex is a timeless street food

Standing next to a sizzling charcoal stove, Sabiti Lukwago scrambles eggs in a bright green cup. He adds a chopped onion then tosses in a handful of cabbage, a pinch of salt, and a dash of chili. As he pours the mixture onto the griddle top, the sizzle of frying egg mingles with the sounds of the city – Afrobeats pouring from the shop next door, a news program on the radio, the rush of Kampala traffic.

But the cook’s concentration is perfect. Just before the egg mixture hardens, he presses a chapati – a disc-shaped flatbread – against it. Then he carefully peels his creation from the stove. Next come slices of fresh tomato and another sprinkle of salt. Finally, he rolls it all into a thin cylinder, and places it in a black plastic bag so it can be eaten quickly with one hand.

“Now our rolex is done,” he says, smiling proudly.

This popular Ugandan street food is named both for its ingredients – rolled eggs – and as a cheeky nod to the expensive watch brand. It is made in minutes and costs less than a dollar. Stalls clutter every corner of Kampala, and its vendors, who often work from dawn to midnight, are symbols of the capital city’s frenetic hustle. 

“It is a very unique thing about Uganda,” says Jonathan Okello, owner of The Rolex Guy, an upmarket Kampala restaurant. “We’ve always had that saying: Here you don’t wear rolex, you eat it.”

But recently, this iconic Ugandan food has been buffeted by events on the other side of the world. As a changing climate and the war in Ukraine drive up the price of two staple ingredients – oil and flour – vendors like Mr. Lukwego have had to raise their prices or shrink their product. A rolex now retails for about 20% more than it did two years ago.

“I used to have many customers, but now people are not so many,” says Ali Kayakumu, another rolex seller. “I make losses, but it is a business. I can’t just quit.”

The rolex’s trouble began in late 2021, when extreme weather conditions damaged soybean crops in South America, driving up the cost of cooking oil for importers like Uganda. The outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 compounded the problem by curtailing sunflower oil and wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia, both top global exporters. Conflict spiked the prices of these commodities globally.

In Uganda, costs have nearly doubled in less than two years. A liter of cooking oil, for example, can retail for double the 5,000 ugx ($1.33) it went for in 2021. A kilogram of wheat sets buyers back about about 9,000 ugx ($2.38) compared to 6,500 ugx ($1.72).

The sting is felt most acutely by people working in the informal economy, which accounts for half the country’s GDP. “With the increase in cost of production these businesses are going to struggle,” says Brian Sserunjogi, a fellow at the Economic Policy Research Centre in Kampala. He predicts that an overall hike in the cost of living could drive street vendors who live hand to mouth out of business.

Like many Ugandans, Dr. Sserunjogi has a long personal history with the rolex. He remembers eating it often as a university student, sometimes adding roasted meat to his eggs and chapati so the meal was more filling. “It used to make our supper,” the economist says.

But for a food so tied up in Uganda’s identity, the rolex’s origin story is surprisingly hazy.

Chapati was first brought to the country by Indians who were used as indentured laborers by British authorities in the late 19th century to build a railway from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Kampala, when both Uganda and India were still part of the British empire. The British also imported a European style of cooking eggs, the omelet.

Rumor has it that the first rolex was made by an experimental-minded chapati seller in the eastern city of Jinja in the 1990s. It soon became wildly popular with students at Kampala’s Makarere University, before spreading through the country.

Today, the simple snack is ubiquitous across Uganda. It has made its way from the streets and into restaurants, such as Mr. Okello’s  The Rolex Guy, which sells riffs on rolex made by adding everything from ground beef to cheese and mushroom. Some of the more expensive options cost about as much as street vendors make in a day. 

Customers at The Rolex Guy often lounge on the eatery’s colorful couches, drinking coffee and fresh juice and chatting over the sounds of reggae music. The rolex “is becoming like a national language,” says Dennis Munyangaraza, who’d dropped by the restaurant to enjoy a late Saturday lunch with friends. “If you can speak the same language, that means you understand each other.”

The cost of cooking oil has now begun to decline slightly in Uganda, but prices still remain higher than they were before December 2021. The global price of wheat, meanwhile, has also leveled off since the initial outbreak of fighting in Ukraine, but remains at a historic high in many countries, including Uganda.

In a bid to improve self-sufficiency, the Ugandan government has pledged to plant some 100,000 hectares of oil palm. But the cultivation process takes about five years, so this will provide no immediate relief to Uganda’s rolex vendors. President Yoweri Museveni also caused an uproar last May when he suggested Ugandans quit worrying about high import prices and instead eat locally grown cassava. 

That suggestion has bounced off most citizens. “If your favorite food is there, you have to eat it,” says Richard Akadiro, who drives a motorcycle taxi and consumes rolex at least once a day, adding a bit of extra chili to make it spicy.

He spoke on a quick break from work, enjoying a rolex while sitting outside a food stall in downtown Kampala, not far from the now-derelict railway that first brought chapatis to the country.   

Meanwhile, rolex sellers are still frying and hawking their wares, counting on the snack’s iconic status to keep them in business.

“The poor buy rolex,” says vendor Ali Kayakumu. “Even the rich buy rolex. It cuts across.” 

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Mr. Munyangaraza's name.