A LOUD SOUNDING NOTHING

Castle under fiery skies: A Japanese movie review

2012-01-23T05:39:00.000-08:00

By Henry Zakumumpa

The Embassy of Japan in Uganda runs an annual Japanese movie film festival in Kampala, to which I have been a faithfully attendee since 2004.

'Castle under fiery skies' is a remarkable Japanese film. It is an affecting and truly engaging film with appealing multiple themes that mesh together nicely. It gets off to a slow start but gains the pace gradually while slowly drawing you in.

I underestimated it within the first few minutes of viewing but my assessment of it earned a five-star review progressively and by the time the credits rolled on I was sold.

The plot is actually an uncomplicated one but the director makes the most out of it.

The film centres around the ambition of a young Japanese emperor to build a four-storey giant of a castle to make a point to rival principalities but also to help unite the rival groupings that make up 1850s Japan.

The Japanese emperor calls for a competition from architects within his kingdom' to build the 'greatest' castle in Japan with in an unprecedented three years. Japan at the time was an ununited island country made of small rival 'kingdoms'.

The race to build the 'greatest castle' with three years is also part of the political power play by a young and ambitious leader to woo other sub groupings that make up Japan.

After the competition for building the castle is called, leading architects of the time make presentations before the emperor who is to make the final pick of the winner. This involves making miniature models of the proposed castle to house the emperor.

Astonishingly, a lowly carpenter wins the competition after dramatically showing the flaws of his rival designs. He is then handed the 'impossible mission' of building an unprecedented castle using materials which are not available (and construction staff) and yet within an ambitious time frame of three years.

'Castle under fiery skies' is also an intensely human film from the perspective of the protagonist the 'master carpenter' whose all-consuming desire to accomplish a task comes at a very high price and tests his abilities beyond mere technical know how. On one level it is a story of the indomitable human spirit.

The depiction of wifely servitude from a Japanese cultural point of view(not very dissimilar to Ugandan traditional culture) is explored through the 'master carpenter's wife.

In a word 'Castle under fiery skies' is a film about Japanese cultural values of thrift,duty,honor,personal sacrifice,excellence,hard work, family and even romantic love.

It's a visual feast and.. you are invited.

50 years of independence in Uganda: A tale of dashed hopes and an aborted recovery

2012-01-13T04:05:00.000-08:00

Uganda will mark fifty years of 'independence' from Britain in October this year.

On 9th October 1962, the union jack was lowered in favour of the black,yellow,red national flag. Post independence Prime Minister Milton Obote hoped ,with the millions watching as he received the instruments of power, that this marked the beginning of new hopes and aspirations for a newly born people.

But things quickly went terribly wrong. In 1996, the Executive Prime Minister, stormed the palace of the Executive President, the King of the native Baganda ethnic group at the height of bitter power struggle for supremacy.

You could say Uganda took a wrong turn from then on and, in many ways, Uganda has never fully recovered from then on.

At the time of Independence,in the 1960s, Uganda's Gross Domestic Product(GDP) super-ceded that of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. But there was a cruel twist of history. South Korea is one of the top-ten richest countries in the world while Uganda languishes at the bottom of league of nations development indicators. So, after the euphoria of independence celebrations what happened?

The prevailing political currents of socialist ideology around the globe in the 1960s occasioned by the cold war brought to birth the idea of ‘African socialism’ which in its crudest forms emphasized the sense of ‘African community’ and therefore the concept that ‘everybody’s welfare was everybody’s business’. In East Africa, Ugandan Prime Minister Milton Obote unveiled the ‘common man’s charter’ a socialist manifesto for newly independent Uganda. In Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere gave credence to ‘ujaama’ villages or communal villages that provided an all embracing community.

Social services were freely provided and medical services at government hospitals were free as were other social provisions.

However in the early 1980s the idea of an ‘African’ welfare state came under serious threat as being unsustainable owing to failing economies under hardship due to falling international prices of the cash crops on which many African countries depended coupled with chronic political turmoil and ethnic tensions ubiquitous in post independence Africa.

African countries, and Uganda in particular, sought budget deficit financing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Breton Woods institutions prescribed the hugely unpopular Structural Adjustment programmes (SAPs) that called for radically reduced social spending in the social sectors of health and education by the introduction of ‘user fees’ and ‘cost sharing’ in social service provision as well as the full-scale 'marketization' of social provisioning.

The introduction of market liberalization reforms, including privatization of the social sector, has turned citizens into client-consumers rather than social provision beneficiaries with many falling through the cracks. The state’s diminishing importance in the social sector In Uganda has called into question its own legitimacy and sovereignty as a nation state in light of the increasing importance of the market and transnational-NGOs.

The prolonged diminished fiscal ability of the Ugandan state to provide social welfare has seen an increasing importance of non -governmental agency providers of health care. In sectors such as HIV/AIDS health care and treatment in Uganda, non governmental and civil societal organizations dominate

Hence the failure of the state and the market in Uganda has seen the emergence of new service providers and the expansion of space for alternate players. The central question would therefore be that has the ‘pluralism’ of social welfare providers in Uganda called into question the need for a paradigm shift to a tri-model of state, market and NGOs and therefore the need to re-conceptualize the role of the state?

Robert Mugabe..what happened?

2011-12-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Today I attended the Amakula Kampala film festival. This was the very first film festival there ever was in Kampala and I have faithfully attended all their annual outings since their inaugural in 2004.

There was an intriguing film on the programme with an intriguing title and I thought... I should make time for this one. And I was no disappointed,

'Robert Mugabe...what happened?' was the title of the film by Robert Wright,a Zimbabwean film director. Boy! is that such a legitimate question indeed!

Robert Mugabe was considered an independence hero of Zimbabwe for leading a popular struggle for independence from Britain and subsequently against Ian Smith's white supremacist rule in the then Rhodesia. He was imprisoned for eleven years for his efforts and was only released at the height of natives struggle for self-governance with Zimbabwe gaining independence on 1980.

Robert Mugabe was supremely articulate,eloquent and spoke the finest queen's English and he duped many who accepted him as an exceptionally educated leader for Zimbabwe and this persona helped him eclipse other erstwhile contenders such as Joshua Nkomo from a rival ethnic group.

But the Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe's independence struggles wouldn't recognize today's Mugabe.

As his people lost confidence in his leadership, he resorted to desperate measures to keep on his grip on power which became an all- consuming occupation.

With the passage of time and failure to live up to the expectations of his people he lost his legitimacy to lead Zimbabwe and resorted to the most repulsive approaches imaginable to desperately keep state power including rigging elections,seizing white farms,fermenting tribal rivalries, tribal genocide,relying on the military for survival (and not his own people) and a shameless and naked drive to keep power at all costs including human lives.

Robert Mugabe is clearly past is sell-by date (he is shooting 90!)and watching him now gives one a strong impression that his mental faculties have suffered natural waste-the passage of time.

His Zanu-PF party doesnt have any more faith in his leadership but only see him as their assurance of a meal ticket and their continued partake of state largesse such as handouts of white farms to party extremists. In Morgan Tsvingrai's MDC (who actually won the last presidential polls) they have a formidable foe and Robert Mugabe is the only one who can guarantee that they will win an election even when they lose one.

Zimbabwe embodied lots of promise for Africa and could have been a success story if Mugabe hadn't screwed it all up.

To be fair, the question of land tenure justice was one borne out of the colonial history of Zimbabwe and the failure of Britain to come good on its promise to aid efforts for a fairer land re-distribution arrangement in Zimbabwe where black Zimbabweans had a fair stake in owning a piece of the arable land of their homeland is part of the problem of the tragedy of Zimbabwe.

Tanzanians: The reluctant East Africans

2011-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

In November 2009, I penned an article in 'The Monitor' inspired by a road trip I took from Kampala, through Nairobi, to Arusha in Tanzania.

The article, 'The dream of one East Africa is a distant one', decried the delay in attitudinal change by East Africans in shifting to a 'one East Africa' mentality.

I argued that the idea of one East Africa is clearly one we ought to nurture and realize given the global blocks of the EU,USA, China whose combined populations, market and GDP give them a competitive edge in the global race in which we find ourselves.

I also mentioned that the dream of one East Africa is currently a top-down vision held largely by heads of state which needs to trickle down to the regular East African in Kikuubo, Kariakoo or Kibera.

The doubts on the pace of East African integration in 2009 don’t seem to have gotten any much better despite the numerous announcements of milestones. Only that Tanzanians now seem even more reluctant East Africans. And there is plenty of evidence.

Only two weeks ago, It was reported in our dailies that Tanzania has slapped a 25% tax on Ugandan imports contrary to the recently signed customs union among all East African states that bars taxes on member countries' exports .

Tanzania has declined to sign a defense protocol of all East African countries-a project of the East African community. Tanzania says it doesn't want to be mired in the conflicts common to other East African countries. The defense protocol provides that an attack on one makes it a duty for all the rest to rise up in a mutual defense pact akin to NATO.

The High Court in Tanzania recently ruled against the East African Development bank in favour of a Tanzanian businessman-borrower to the tune of over USD$ 163 million which threatens to effectively bankrupt the bank, a survivor of the earlier East African community of the 1970s. You may say that the Tanzanian executive has no control over the courts but then East African community treaty (which Tanzania signed) says member countries should not allow litigation against East African community assets.

Observers who attended a meeting in Bujumbura at the end of last month at which East African community ministers were supposed to sign an agreement for the establishment of the East African Community Political Federation reported that Tanzania declined to sign the agreement and dramatically left its seat at the meeting.

It was only after hand-wringing that Tanzania finally singed the agreement- days after the rest of the countries had signed on.

Despite an agreement(common market) earlier this year that goods and services should freely move across all borders within East Africa(including human resources),Tanzania still bars other East Africans from getting jobs in Tanzania.

Ugandans in Northern Tanzania tell me once they get a job in Tanzania they are swiftly reported to the authorities under a community whistle-blowing arrangement.

I arrived in Tanzania again earlier this year and the 'visa' stamped in my Ugandan passport showed that I was given 14 days in Tanzania. Even the Americans and British have granted me alot more days in their realms.

At the root of all this is Tanzanian mistrust and suspicion of other East African countries. There is a widespread belief in Tanzania that in an integrated East Africa, Kenyans will take their jobs and Ugandans are a chaotic lot given their turbulent history and lifting of presidential term limits.

And it is not only Tanzania which has fallen short. The East African community recently mooted the idea of a common foreign policy protocol by June 2011 but, to date, not one East African country has come good on that milestone. And the East African common currency? Don't get me started. The Greek tragedy in the EU is a cautionary tale.

'Priceless': A delightfully priceless french movie

2011-12-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Today I watched a delightful french movie. Priceless is a french gem of a romantic comedy.
Being accustomed to Hollywood movies, 'Priceless' is a breadth of fresh air. Its not a recent release at all having come out in 2006. But I chanced on it by sheer chance.

I strolled by Alliance Francaise of Kampala (I did a french beginners course with them) at their Nakasero home in Kampala and a quick scan on their noticeboard showed Thursday was movie nite.
I had planned on jogging around the adjacent soccer field and had stopped to have a quick coffee before a 40 minute work out but abandoned the plans instantly. 'Priceless' was showing and a quick perusal through the plot,I was sold. So, work out was out and movie was in!

The plot is actually a simple but brilliant one. It tells the story of a meeting between a gold digger attractive young woman (AudreyTautou) and an accidental 'rich 'eligible young bachelor (Gad Elemlah) who meet at high-end hotel bar and mistaken identity on the part of the gold digger young woman. It's a comedy of mistaken identities that blooms into an unlikely love story.

Audrey Tautou reminded me of Julia Roberts in 'Pretty Woman'. They are both convincing as women who sale their wares.

Audrey Tautou plays a woman who is about to marry a rich but elderly man for his money and one late evening on her birthday (after a frustrating slumber from her elderly companion) she strolls into a hotel bar and is smitten by a dashing young man sleeping on a couch( the bartender) who she mistakes for a rich patron.

The bartender allows Audrey to continue in her mistaken belief and pass off as a rich young man. From then on, the laughs come fast and furious as the mistaken identity begins to unravel in the most hilarious of ways.

I have watched several french movies and their attraction , for me, was their being the anti-hollywood, not being formulaic not forcing a 'hollywood ending' but Priceless manages to be french and still attain the success of a hollywood formulaic movie- having a clear plot,an intelligent ending and keeping tabs on the clock. It is a delight

Forget AIDS: Tobacco-related diseases are the next big epidemic in Uganda

2011-11-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

‘’The Tobacco diseases epidemic is already with us in Africa’’ says Prof Peter Odhiambo, Chairman of Kenya Tobacco Control Board. ‘’Soon you will hear people announcing that the epidemic is coming to Africa. It is already here. I treat the victims of tobacco everyday’’. Prof Odhiambo was speaking at Kampala Serena Hotel on 1^st November 2011 in a public lecture entitled ‘The journey from the Farm to the Lungs: Who gains from Tobacco in Africa?’ at the inauguration of the new regional Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA) to be hosted by Uganda.

Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death in the world today. Tobacco use claims more lives globally than HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria combined. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unless urgent action is taken, tobacco could kill one billion people during this century. WHO data also shows that in comparison to HIV/AIDS which claimed three million lives globally last year, Tobacco deaths were nearly six million cases.

According to WHO, more than 80% of the world’s tobacco-related deaths will be in low and middle-income countries by 2030.

‘’Tobacco is the only legal product in the world which, when used as intended by the manufacturer, kills half of all the people who use it ’’ says Dr Sheila Ndyanabangi, who is the Tobacco Control focal person in the Ministry of Health.

Tobacco use is also known to cause at least 15 cancers (particularly lung cancer), heart and respiratory diseases and leads to lifelong heath and developmental disorders among exposed children.

In a study conducted at Mulago Hospital, Uganda’s main referral Hospital, 75% of patients with oral cancer had a history of smoking, with the number of years of smoking ranging from 2-33 years, according to a 2008 study report by Fredrick Musoke of Makerere University.

“Tobacco use is the only risk factor associated with all major non communicable Diseases (NCDs) such as lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, tuberculosis, asthma and pneumonia. It is a risk factor for six out of eight leading causes of death, globally” said Dr Douglas Bettcher, Head of WHO’s Tobacco-Free Initiative at the opening ceremony of a regional Tobacco Control centre in Kasangati, near Kampala.

Dr Bettcher also said that tobacco use in women causes infertility and leads to low birth weight of babies born to tobacco-using mothers. For men, tobacco use can cause low sperm count.

Almost a quarter of Ugandan males (22%) aged between 15 and 49% are smokers while 4% of females are smokers -according to the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey.

However,the threat posed by second-hand smoking or ‘environmental tobacco smoke’ which is said to affect almost a half of all youths in Uganda and is a much more mainstream public health threat in Uganda. Exposure to second hand smoke increases the risk of heart disease by 25-30% and the lung cancer risk by 20-30%.

Smoking has been banned in public places, including in bars, restaurants and educational institutions, in Uganda since 2004 . But the judicial and political will to enforce this law has been lukewarm. Not a single person has been prosecuted under this law despite smoking in public places, such as bars, being widespread in Kampala and other towns of Uganda.

In August, British American Tobacco (BAT) Uganda, announced that that cigarette sales had gone up by 29% in Uganda compared to a similar period in 2010.

The Ugandan tobacco industry argues that tobacco is economically important to Uganda given that the industry is a leading tax revenue payer and that the livelihoods of 600,000 tobacco farmers, particularly in Arua District in the West Nile region, where BAT runs an out-growers programme, depends on the cash crop. The industry also argues that it is important export crop for the country.

‘’It is not the tobacco companies which pay tobacco taxes, it is the smokers’’ counters Dr Sheila Ndyanabangi, who argues that taxes on tobacco are simply passed on to consumers. Dr Ndyanabangi also maintains that the health care costs of treating tobacco-related diseases, such as lung cancer and heart diseases, far outweighs the economic benefits of the tobacco industry.

Tobacco use poses a heavy burden on the governments of low and middle-income countries, through increased healthcare costs, aggravates environmental degradation through clearing forests to make way for tobacco farms and leads to diversion of agricultural land to tobacco farming since tobacco crops can only be grown alone.

According to Rachel Kitonyo, a Kenyan working with the Africa Tobacco Control Consortium based in Lome in Togo, Uganda is out of step with other East African countries such Tanzania and Kenya which passed a Tobacco control law in 2007.

Uganda is yet to pass a tobacco control law although a Bill has been in the works for the past few years with a draft announced in 2010. The Ugandan parliament is now set to discuss the Bill after being dogged by delays.

The resurrection of the bill was disclosed on 1 November 2011 by Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of Parliament, while opening the Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa(CTCA), which is based in Kasangati township, about five kilometers from the Ugandan capital, Kampala. One of the proposals of the bill is a two-month jail sentence for public-smoking offenders.

According to Kadaga, the bill will have its first reading in parliament soon and will be tabled before parliament as a private members’ Bill moved by Dr Chris Baryomunsi, Member of Parliament for Kinkizi West.

In addition to tobacco control law, Dr Joaquim Saweka, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Uganda country representative, calls for an increase of the tax on tobacco in which globally is recognized as the most effective tobacco control measure to deter people from smoking. Increasing tobacco taxes is seen as a win-win option as it means more money in government coffers and a reduction in consumption of tobacco products. A World Bank study shows that a 10% increase in tobacco taxes was followed by an 8% reduction in consumption of tobacco products.

Uganda’s tax on tobacco products has been increasing marginally in the last three years but is still far below the threshold set by the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Uganda consented to the FCTC in June 2007, which is a set of internationally-agreed strategies for tobacco control that has force of international law. The FCTC calls for a ban on advertising of tobacco products, the display of graphic warnings on cigarette packs, an increase in tobacco taxes and alternatives to tobacco farming. However, Uganda is yet to give full effect to FCTC guidelines such as using graphic warning on cigarette packs.

‘’The size of health warnings on cigarette packs, as a percentage of the surface area of the cigarette packs in Uganda is till small and below FCTC guidelines’’ says Gilbert Muyambi, Secretary General of Uganda National Tobacco Control Association.

An effective tobacco control regulatory regime in developed countries has constrained the operations and profits of big tobacco companies such as Phillip Morris and BAT which has made them consider Africa as a lucrative alternative – an untapped market with weak anti- tobacco laws and policies. Thus tobacco giants have set their sights on Africa as a ‘new’ marketing hope for the tobacco industry.

With multinational tobacco companies switching their attention to African countries, the non-communicable disease epidemic of heart diseases and cancers which, until now, have been more widespread in the west, are certain to shift to African countries which already have high burdens of infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis epidemics to contend with.

It is estimated that by 2030 tobacco-related illnesses will be the leading cause of death in the world and 70-80% of these deaths will occur in low and income countries.

“Be wary of multinational companies, which come here and sell you death in the name of freedom. These are merchants of death. The tobacco disease epidemic is already here,” warns Professor Peter Odhiambo.

The Viva Riva! movie and the promise of African cinema

2011-11-16T07:31:00.000-08:00

Last evening I watched the critically acclaimed 'Viva Riva' Congolese feature film that is having a lot of buzz around the world.

It is a film with an African story ,an African director, African actors and but with clear global appeal. You have seen this film before in western cinema.

The film centres around a charming, forty-something protagonist who

Delayed Uganda tobacco control bill set to be tabled before parliament

2011-11-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

The Ugandan parliament is set to discuss a proposed new law to curb tobacco use in Uganda.This was disclosed on Tuesday, 1st November 2011, by Rebecca Kadaga, the Speaker of the national assembly of Uganda while launching a regional tobacco control agency-Center for Tobacco Control in Africa(CTCA) at Kasangati township, about 5 kilometers from the Kampala city centre.

The proposed anti-tobacco law known as the Tobacco Control Bill 2010 will be tabled before parliament under a private member's bill to be moved by Dr Chris Baryomunsi, Member of Parliament for Kinkizi constituency in South Western Uganda.

CTCA will be a regional agency for Tobacco control in five countries including Uganda, Kenya, Angola and South Africa and will be mandated to support governments in the region to build and sustain institutional capacity for Tobacco Control in Africa, according to Dr Possy Mugyenyi, the manager of the centre.

'This centre is the first of its kind in the world' said Dr Joaquim Saweka, WHO’s Uganda country representative, at the opening ceremony and 'a dream come true' according to Dr Christine Ondoa, Uganda’s health minister.

The CTCA is funded through a, three year, US$ 3.5 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant which was a won through a WHO-mediated competitive grant that attracted 20 competitors from all over Africa.

According to the WHO, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable deaths worldwide. Globally, it causes more deaths than AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria combined. Smoking is also estimated to kill half a billion people in the world over the next fifty years.

'' Tobacco use is the only disease that is associated with all major Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) such as Lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, tuberculosis, asthma, pneumonia'' said Dr Douglas Bettcher, the head of WHO's global tobacco control at Geneva who was present at the opening ceremony.

He also mentioned that tobacco use in women causes infertility and leads to low birth weight among tobacco-using mothers. For men, tobacco use is a risk factor for impotence.

The Tobacco Control Bill 2010 was drafted by tobacco control advocates in Uganda spearheaded by the Uganda National Tobacco Control Association. One of the proposals in the bill is a two-month jail sentence for public-smoking offenders.

Uganda is a signatory to the WHO framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which is a set of internationally-agreed strategies for Tobacco control and has force of international law. The FCTC calls for a ban on advertising on tobacco products, display of graphic warnings in cigarette packs, increase in tobacco taxes, alternatives to tobacco farming etc.

At the opening ceremony, a theme song for tobacco control was unveiled and was presented by popular musicians who included Keko and Dr Hilderman who made an original composition which should catch on as an anthem for tobacco control advocates in Uganda. 'Smoking is not cool' raps Keko one of the performers at the opening ceremony. Fittingly, the theme song was composed by the younger, hip generation who constitute the 'breeding ground' for the tobacco industry especially young people in Ugandan secondary schools.

Because of an effective tobacco control regulatory regime in western advanced countries which has constrained the operations and profits of tobacco companies such as Phillip Morris and BAT in western countries, Africa is seen as a lucrative alternative, an untapped market with weak anti tobacco laws and regulations and tobacco giants have set their sights on Africa as a the 'new' hope of the tobacco industry.

‘Be wary of multinational companies which come here and sell you death in the name of freedom. These are merchants of death. The tobacco disease epidemic is already here’ said Professor Peter Odhiambo of University of Nairobi in Kenya who delivered a public lecture on tobacco control at Serena Hotel in Kampala in honour of the newly opened Center for Tobacco Control in Africa(CTCA).

Why Libya may miss Gaddafi's dictatorship

2011-10-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

The head of Libya's National Transitional Council(NTC) ,on Wednesday(yesterday), formally called for an extension of NATO's Libya mission till the end of the year ' to ensure the security of Libyans from some remnants of Gaddafi's forces which fled into neighbouring countries' reports the BBC.

You may be forgiven for thinking that the NTC is merely appeasing their NATO backers but the NTC will actually need support to hold the country together in the post-Gaddafi era.

For all their failings,dictators are not credited for their masterly in securing national security and the art of ridding their countries of turmoil and anarchy.

After the US invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the US,with that unforgettable image of former president George W Bush on an aircraft carrier, declared 'mission accomplished'. But they spoke too soon. With Saddam Hussein's feared security apparatus all but dismantled, Iraq soon descended into an endless quagmire of home-grown terrorism and occupation-resistance. As we write,Iraq has never recovered its Saddam-era stability.

Closer to home, Somalia which was a stable country albeit with simmering political divisions where 'dictator' Siad Barre was ousted by political opponents. He departed along with the Somalia state as we knew it. 'Strong men' in ethnically-diverse countries or 'dangerous places', to borrow a Paul Collier term, have an uncanny ability of preserving national security.

After 9/11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to rid it of state-inspired terrorism and deny Islamic fundamentalists a breeding ground for terrorists. After ten years of US occupation and a trillion-dollar military operation, Afghanistan is yet to return to normal-lacy and the Afghan insurgents are boasting: 'you have the watches but we have the time'.

So, what makes dictators so tick when it comes to preserving national security?

Well, irony of ironies. It is everything we abhor about dictatorships- a secret police,ruthless crack down on dissent,instilling fear of the state within the population, maintaining patronage networks, playing the ethnic politics of divide and rule,repressive laws,,denial of press freedom etc. There is always that classical question. As president of a 'dangerous place',would you rather be feared or loved?

At the moment Libya is a hot favourite to step into the foot steps of Afghanistan and Iraq. The NTC is not on top of things and will have struggle to rein in the 'rats'as we saw with the gruesome extra-judicial murder of Gaddafi. Libya is made of dozens of rival ethnic groups and the idea of a one Libya is a work- in- progress,as it is with most African countries. It is littered with small arms(thanks to the eight-month revolution), there is a high population of 'demobilized' soldiers and security personnel, there are Gaddafi-avengers waiting to pounce-the ingredients of civil anarchy.

Although Gaddafi's was labelled a 'village tyrant' and was chided for playing tribe against tribe, his genius in tribal manoeuvrings is about to be appreciated by the NTC. How do you successfully govern an ethnically diverse and heterogeneous country such as Libya?

The irony is that electoral democracy in the developing world may be an enemy of peace and stability as research by Paul Collier,an Oxford professor have found. The things you deplore in a dictatorship may be the things that precisely hold a culturally-fragmented country together. Pre-colonial societies were rarely homogeneous and an artificial creation put together by band-aid.

Gaddafi and Saddam, who clearly were not beacons of democracy, in crafting a repressive system in their countries, secured stable and peaceful countries and at their ouster, the 'band aid' that holds their countries together tends to unravel.

But dictators such as Saddam and Gaddafi were not being terribly original in the 'dark arts' of statecraft. Colonial Britain in Uganda used the same tactics of 'divide and rule'(Buganda vs Bunyoro), indirect rule(Kakungulu in Bugisu), repressive laws(preventive arrest,sedition) brutal crackdown on political opponents (Mau Mau in Kenya).

So, before you label me a Gaddafi apologist, a tutor of tyrants,an enemy of democracy.. review a brief history of 'regime change' in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Can Uganda be the food basket it aspires to be?

2011-10-16T02:09:00.000-07:00

Today is world Food Day. I have not always paid much attention to food prices as food in Uganda, for the middle class at least, has been pretty affordable for many years now.

Many food crops in Uganda grow easily in the country side with minimal farmer in-put, dependent on natural rain water and rudimentary farming knowledge systems. Food ,in Uganda is largely grown on subsistence production basis although commercial producers are increasing.

Even international food producers are buying large tracts of land in Uganda, clearing it, and setting up large scale food farms for export. Recently, a British company bought a large expanse of land in central Uganda to produce for export and evicted many natives on the land and the news story made the 'New York Times'.

Most staple food crops in Uganda such as bananas,potatoes,cassava and maize are ferried in by lorries and trucks from upcountry food farms to the capital Kampala and other urban centres for a profit by food traders who pay the fuel costs for transporting this food after paying a pittance for them from up country food farmers.

In Uganda, it is the middle- men who make the killing in the food business. They will buy a bunch of bananas from a village farmer at about one US dollar and sell it in the capital Kampala for about ten times that price. Yes, they have to buy diesel to transport the bananas but the profit margin seems a little too steep. Many think the food dealers in Uganda are part of the problem of rising food prices.

I began paying attention to food prices in July this year. Food prices at my local market began shooting up overnight. Inflation in Uganda including on food prices has reached 28% according the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. All of a sudden, prices doubled. The household food budget more than doubled as well and food which initially only took a small percentage of my household income took a much more uncomfortable percentage of my personal income. I started to take notice.

In Uganda there were widespread popular protests when food and fuel prices shot up. The Ugandan opposition took advantege and rode the wave. Government was slow to respond and blamed the prices increases on the rising cost of fuel which, they claimed, was external to the country, and they didn't have much control over. But the people were not convinced.

Uganda often projects itself as a food-secure country owing to the country being gifted by nature-a good tropical climate,regular rainfall and fertile soils. Uganda even aspires to be the food basket for the greater Eastern African region.

In fact,Uganda does actually export food to neighboring Kenya,South Sudan and Congo(DRC) and this has been part of the cause of high food prices in Uganda since regular Ugandans have to compete to buy locally-produced food with say, the Sudanese ,who are willing to pay much higher for food than Ugandans who have taken low food prices for granted.

Uganda is actually not yet food-secure as the Ugandan government would have us believe. Famine is perennially reported especially in the Northern part of the country and when disaster strikes parts of Uganda,such in the mountainous Bugisu region, food scarcity always results because of an absence of effective local food storage and preservation systems. Even Ugandan traditional food granaries of per-colonial times have diminished. Yet as a child, about twenty years ago, I used to seem some in my rural village.

As Pacey and Paine have suggested in their food production theory, one has to look at the entire supply chain of food production to diagnose the food-security challenge facing Uganda.

Uganda largely depends on natural rain water which of late is not reliable and climate change has changed weather patterns and Ugandan farmers can no longer plan for the planting season due to changing weather patterns. Uganda therefore needs to mainstream irrigation among local farmers instead of blaming climate for constant food shortages.

Land tenure systems in Uganda are not helping either. Unlike many countries of the world, the majority of Ugandans own in-herited small individual plots of land which is not conducive for large-scale mechanized agriculture. Food production is mainly at subsistence level with few industrial-commercial producers. Land reform is therefore another another potential remedy in Uganda.

Many other options such as embracing more scientific and economically efficient farming methods and systems could lead Uganda into achieving its ambition of being a food basket for the region.

In the mean time, below par food production levels, an absence of food preservation technologies,rising population rates,external demand for local food will continue to impact on food prices in Uganda.

Development economics for the rich industrialized world

2011-10-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

I love Jeffrey Sachs. He got me interested in development economics with his best seller 'The End of Poverty'.

He writes in an accessible way and simpifies all that jargon into main street material. Economics for dummies, if you like.

Jeffrey Sachs is a renown economist especially in development circles for his proposals to end extreme poverty in Africa, Asia etc.

Lately, it appears his economics are needed in struggling economies like the US and in Europe.
He has written a new book, 'The Price of Civilization' and written op-eds in Newsweek and Time magazines about what is wrong with the American economy.

One of his arguments is that the US economy needs more taxes not tax cuts and that the US should invest in education and infrastructure. Invest in education? That sounds like a message he would give to a poor country like Uganda! Of late he has been on the circuit dispensing advice for the US economy when the poor world needs his attention more.

There was a time when the US didnt need advice from a professor who dabbles in ending extreme poverty but how things change.

And the europeans were desparate to retain the top seat at IMF not for prestige or power but out of real need for the IMF's help in their own countries! Now, all social studies students in Sub Saharan Africa know about IMF because it has always been there to dispense wisdom for failing economies. Even the World Bank comes in later. IMF is to dying economies what CPR is for dying patients.

This is indeed is the era of development economics for rich advanced countries! How times change.

Was Libyan Victory declared prematurely?

2011-09-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

We all recall that banner: 'mission accomplished'.On an aircraft carrier behind former president George W Bush after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. They spoke too soon. And it appears in Libya too, the rebels spoke too soon.
It now is clear that Muammar Gaddafi is digging in for the long haul. Choosing a long-drawn out guerilla resistance to tire out his opponents.
The 'rebels' celebrated after the fall of Tripoli and now feel reluctant to follow up on their Tripoli victory and take Gaddafi's last standing strongholds. They celebrated the end of a six-month protracted struggle and now feel reluctant to fight on and finish the job.
They issued two ultimatums for the Gaddafi-held towns of Ben Walid and Sirte -for the loyalists to give up arms and even extended the deadline but with no result.
Their choice of a negotiated settlement with the Gaddafi loyalits seems to suggested a reluctant military stance in favour of a negotiated exit for the vanquished.
Clearly, the Gaddafi regime has fallen and there is not any real hope that he will forge a come back worth its name but prolonged guerilla warfare doesnt seem out of his reach.
He seems to have fled with huge sums of US dollars,euros and gold as reported by his generals who fled into Niger. So, the vanquished Gaddafi-machine still has access to some resources on which to launch a feeble guerilla campaign even when we all know it is a matter of time before Gaddafi is found.
It would appear that his early exit from Tripoli was a tactical rather than a clear military defeat. Instead of confronting the rebels head-on he prefered to engage them in a guerilla-style resistance, afterall, the NATO air strikes proved too decisive in favour of the rebel forces.

AIDS treatment in Africa at the crossroads with looming drugs ban

2011-08-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

I attended an insightful intellectual property workshop in Kampala. It is amazing how much access to essential medicines such as ARVs has to do with intellectual property laws.
Would you believe for instance that come 2016, generic AIDS drugs which are consumed in Uganda (originally from India) will no longer be permitted owing to international trade agreements(TRIPS)?
The Ugandan parliament has shelved a bill(industrial properties bill) which would buy Uganda some time (under the flexibilities of TRIPS). Now Uganda faces the real possibility of having to buy ARVs from western pharmaceutical companies at prices beyond the reach of the overwhelming majority of Ugandans.
Generic drugs made AIDS treatment possible for millions in the developing world now that the grace period is running out for copy the formula of these drugs by pharmaceutical companies in low-income countries then the real prospect of drug stock outs becomes a real and present danger.
Can parliament wake up to its mandate before millions die out of their negliegnce?
Of course the whole international trade law is ranged against the poor world and serves 'big pharma' but our own negliegence may worsen matters.

Is the US really flat broke?

2011-07-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

With the political stalement in the U.S., it is hard to believe that the US of A is in such debt. How did the most financially successful country in the history of the mankind reach such a point where the state doesnt have enough money to run and needs foreign borrowing to survive?
These are very strange times indeed. For Greece,may be. But then the U.S,?
The United States was a country founded on the ideals of self-reliance, individualism, the free market and it's embarasing and humuliating that the US finds itself in this position in the first place. The founding fathers would have surely chided the current generation of Americans.
Many argue that the very idea of capitalism led the US, and subsquently the rest of the world, in this state of affairs.
The US is now heavily indebted to China(most of all), to Japan,the UK, Germany and city-nation of Singapore!
The economic decline of the US is very astonishing especially given the speed with which it is being manifested. Even ten years ago,no one really saw this coming. We all knew that Americans love to live beyond their means and that they love the credit card but flat broke? That would have been pure fiction.
And the trouble for the world is that the US's financial woes dont end in Washington DC but extend to the rest of the world. The U.S. is still such a central player in the global economy.
The global financial crisis which started in 2008/2009 was actually sparked off by events on Wall street. Remember Lehman Brothers,Freddie Mae, AIG and the 'too big too fail' talk?
Industrial production is declining in the US as is export perfomance and it is hard to see that the US will regain its economic predominance pre-global financial crisis.
Its a difficult situation that President Obama finds himself-politically. He cant borrow to run government and the republicans wont let him increase taxes to finance the budget deficit. How in the hell is one supposed to run a government in these circunstances?
President Obama shouldnt be blamed for economic times that the US finds itself. In all fairness the root causes of the American malaise go back many years.

Can we treat our way out of the HIV epidemic?

2011-06-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today afternoon I attended a very engaging and thoughtful debate. Can we treat our way out of the HIV epidemic?
The debate was at Makerere University's School of Public health where the presenters were up and coming Ugandan Centers for Disease Control (CDC) fellows. And so, the perspectives were largely Ugandan.
It was a debate akin to a secondary school debate with proponents and opponents for the motion of the day. And a very topical one indeed, seeing as it is ,that its thirty years since the onset of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which started way back in early 1980s among American gay couples.
Well, it emerged at the debate that there is scientific proof to show that the HIV/AIDS epidemic can be eliminated through a universal 'test and treat' approach where all are tested for HIV and those found positive are put on AIDS drugs.
Scientists have shown ,through modelling, that universal access to voluntary counselling and testing for HIV and putting all eligible patients on antiretroviral therapy(ART)can end the HIV epidemic while controlling for behaviour change and prevention efforts. The recent National Institutes of Health study among HIV discordant couples shows that starting early on ART can reduce the HIV transmission risk by 96% proving that that ART is both a treatment and prevention tool. An observational study conducted in Rakai,Uganda by Steven Reynolds which followed 51 discordant couples showed than none of them contracted HIV while the positive partner was on AIDS drugs. In Botswana, 90% coverage of prevention of Mother to Child Transmission(PMTCT)eliminated mother to child transmission of HIV altogether.
Those arguing that we cant treat our way out of the HIV epidemic hard a far easier task of the afternoon.
They simply made the case that we dont have the resources to treat all those in need of ART in terms of the financial,human,pharmacuetical and laboratory and other associated resource needs. That we dont have the health systems in which to dispense the drugs in Sub Saharan Africa even if they were suddenly available , in Uganda for instance, and that many countries have showed limited capacity for absorbing AIDS aid. The Uganda treasury recently returned 50 billion shillings of unutilized funds for AIDS drugs. The latest Auditor General's report shows that many AIDS drugs have expired in our national medicine stores and will have to be destroyed.
That the socio-cultural and behavioural drivers of the epidemic will continue to spread HIV even if all those eligible are put on anti AIDS drugs. The proponents though showed that those on ART have shown a 78% reduction in risky sexual behaviour. That ART drug adherence would be problematic and lead to an even more complicated situation of drug resistance due to posible low drug adhrence necesitating the use of second line drugs which a lot more expensive and not widely available in Sub Saharan Africa. And that stigma is a barrier to testing and treatment for HIV in Africa and would be a huge hurdle for universal coverage efforts.
And where will the finances come for treating all those in need of ART? How sustainable can it be fiscally speaking? Simple: the usual donors will pay for it! And by usual donors is meant PEPFAR,Global Fund, World Bank etc. In short, the west. This was the response of Sarah Nakku one of the proponents. Of course it is alot more complicated than that. She however argued that the west has a direct self-interest in combating HIV in Africa given the globalised world we live in. A traveling Ugandan can have breakfast in Kampala, lunch in London and dinner in New York.
And do we have health sytems within which to deliver these drugs in Sub Saharan Africa or Uganda at least? According to the proponents, yes we do. That an infrastructural skeleton exists in Uganda and all we have to do is beef it up. Read, pay doctors better salaries,equip hospitals with labs and drugs and that you dont necessarily need medical degrees to treat HIV since lower cadre health workers can be trained to do the job etc. Again a little simplistic if only for arguments's sake. And 80% of the generic AIDS drugs are from India ,from where Uganda an mot AIDS-affected countries get the ARVs, which has now asked to stop the production of generic drugs whose patents are help by western pharmaceutical firms.
And then the mainly academic audience weighed in. What if we targeted
specific epidemic drivers such as sex workers,truck drivers and fishermen instead od the entire population came a thoughtful question.
At the 2000 international AIDS conference in Durban South Africa, the west was skeptical about the abillity of African health systems to scale up access to ART because of fears of
drug adherence and weak health systems(again!) but see where we are now. In Uganda more than a half of those in need of ART have it. In other words, the west may be skeptical about mass treatment like it was before the scaling up of ART but it was proven it can be done. That it took truly global efforts to eliminate small pox,river blindness, polio etc and the same can be done for HIV/AIDS. And what is the alternative anway? The risk of not treating AIDS is a lot worse than actually treating it and studies show expenditure on ART is actually an investment in future generations.

The Chinese are coming!

2011-06-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday sunday evening I watched an insightful BBC documentary on China's rising interests in Africa. The reporter takes us on an intimate trip through Zambia,Tanzania and Congo DRC to see first-hand China's budgeoning interests in Africa.
From a large-scale chicken farmer in Zambia to a large scale mining concession in DRC Congo, Chinese businesses are becoming new economic players in Africa.
China's interests are driven by an insastiable apetite for raw materials for their industrial machine that has been described as 'super market to the world'.
China's interests in Africa provide a new lease of life economically to many destitute African countries which cant seem to refuse the irresistible Chinese offers.
In Zambia, the copper mines had been closed until the Chinese came calling. In DRC Congo, the mines were there for locals to exploit using stone-age era mining implements.
Clearly, China is giving a new lease of life to poor African countries. But it has not come without a price. The Chinese are not missionaries in Africa. Their interests are pragmatic. They need raw materials and markets for their products and alternatives for their billion-strong population.
There have been reports of human rights abuses at Chinese factories. There has been an influx of Chinese entreprenuers at scale that is attracting the ire of many small scale Zambian chicken farmers. Do the Chinese have to compete at this level as well in Africa?
The irony is not lost on a History major here. China a country branded as communist is beating the capitalists at their own game. It has outcompeted european industry on cost and now the small scale African trader is next.

The ugly return of Uganda's Amin image

2011-05-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

The 'walk to work' protests are having a more profound effect than the architects hoped for.
Uganda has returned in the international media and regained its former pariah status.
The Ugandan president is being called names reserved for Robert Mugabe by internation media houses such as Al jazeera and 'The New York Times'.
The governments brutal handling of riots against the rising fuel prices has earned it internation notriety and turned back the clock to the very darkest days of Uganda's history in the 1970s.
The savage arrest of Dr Kizza Besigye the opposition leader by police forces has gone viral on Youtube.Uganda is once again the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The immediate casualities are a dip in foreign direct investment and tourism sales which had reportedly gone south. No one wants to take a vacation in a riotous and restless Kampala where foreign presidents are stoned on the way to the airport.
Uganda's international credit rating is set to suffer as fears of instability and turmoil gain currency.
There seems to be no end in sight as both the Museveni administration and the Dr Kizza Besigye camps dig in. The Ugandan government insists it will let the high fuel prices stay and the Dr Besigye camp insists it will continue the protests until government relents.

The changing face of the Libyan conflict

2011-04-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

Is the situation in Libya a civil war or is it a case of a desparate leader dropping bombs on unarmed protestors?
Is the west foray into Libya still guided by the United Nations security council resolution?
We now hear that Britain has sent in military advisers near Benghazi and that the US has 'unmanned'drones which have already launched attacks against Gadhaffis' forces?
For starters this is no defence against Muammar Gadhafi,the world more than know what his ills have been as Libyan leader.
Are the international actors in Libya changing goal posts in Libya?
At first we were told the military strikes were there to forestall Gaddhafi from advancing rapidly against rebels and thereby preventing a sure bloodbath.
Strategically, the aims of the initial mission was to secure a 'no fly zone' and to build a buffer for the Libyan's opposition stronghold of Benghazi. It was to kind of enforce a ceasefire through military means. But character of the west's onslaught in Libya is changing very rapidly we need to be afraid,indeed, very afraid.
Arent we breaching international law by sponsoring an armed internal rebellion against a sitting government by providing them with direct military support?
Arent we setting a precedent?
Are we still within the UN security council mandate?
Is it legitimate for external forces to support a partisan party in a civil war?
We all know that the country that we know as Libya is actually a hotch potch of ethnic sects and tribes and that this a major part of the current conflict in Libya. Gadhafi is detested partly because he is from a different ethic group from the peoples of Benghazi.
How much support does international law accept in a conflict as peculiar as the one in Libya?
Initially, the libyan sage could be seen in black and white. A dictator using excessive force against his own people including peaceful demonstrators. Are we still at this stage of the conflict?
Arent we getting into Vietnam territory here?
Where is the worlds's rage?

What I have learned from the Libyan saga

2011-03-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

Abraham Maslow was right. Satisfaction of physiological needs gives rise to the need to satisfy higher needs. The people of Libya may have had good good health care,education and roads but they had unmet civil and political needs. The west will intervene in a crisis if the country in question has oil and the conflict is getting in the way of the world's supply of crude oil. The African Union is toothless in the face of the west's hand wringing. The United Nations' Security Council is a mouthpiece for western interests. Staying in power for over four decades makes conditions ripe for a revolution given the right spark. Do not shoot and drop bombs on unarmed street protesters no matter how much power you think you wield. Do not ignore events in your neighbourhood they have a bad habit of spreading to your backyard. All conflicts have underlying economic undertones. Air prowess and strikes dont win wars on their own. 'You need boots on the ground'. Getting direct international intervention in national conflicts takes more than three weeks.

In Uganda,its a tense election eve

2011-02-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

Many have been taken aback by the lack of violence in the Ugandan presidential election this year that goes against the experience similar elections in 2001 and 2006.
Ugandan jouralists are bemoaning an uneventful election season that makes it difficult to run 'all the news that is fit to print'.
Many ordinary Ugandans now feel that the unexpected calm before the presidential polls is akin to the calm before the storm.
In church yesterday, the priest strongly advised all his faithful to stock up on cereals just in case the election results spark violence and anarchy.'Buy lots of rice and maize meal and dry beans'he implored.
It is shocking how much violence is expected in the banana republics.
We are to lose almost an entire week in electioneering,voting and returning from upcountry voting trips.
May God bless Uganda!

China is not Russia: Why the US and China can be strategic partners

2011-01-22T04:12:00.000-08:00

In the cold war mindset,a country that didnt agree with you ideologicallywas an adversary.
Many in the US view China's economic rise in adversarial terms but China is no USSR.
It is not communist in the strict sense of the world and its pursuit of export market capitalism rules it out of the strictly marxist-lennist lane.
To understand that China is not the ideological opposite of the United States one needs to go back to the power struggle between Mao Tse Tung and Deng Xiopeng in the early 1970s.
Chairman Mao, at the time the paramount leader of China,espoused marxist ideology and wanted China to follow a purist leftist doctrine in its politics and economy. Deng Xiopeng who is the father of China's economic reformation-and therefore it's recent rise to the second largest economy in the world,wanted China to pursue a leftist political ideology but a more liberal economic regime.
China and the United States need each other. They need to see themselves as strategic partners in the coming decades.
A strong and vibrant United States is good for China. Most of China's foreign reserves are in US dollars. The United States is a leading destination of Chinese products.
All major US corporations have operations in China where labor and expertise are cheap.
China constitutes a huge market for US products. The buyer of the Hummer brand of General motors was from China and almost all US computer hard ware companies such as Hewlett Packard,Dell etc have operations in China.
The US and China can strike up a dual partnership that can shape the coming decades.
The thorny issues of a devalued Chinese currency and human rights concerns can be resolved diplomatically without a recourse to more adversorial approaches.

Hope fading for Gbagbo removal from power

2011-01-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

Hope is fading fast for the removal of Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivorian leader who defied a presidential election loss and has continued on president despite stringent international pressure to step down.
Diplomatic efforts and threats of his removal by force seem to have done little to weaken his resolve to cling to power despite clearly losing to Outtara according to the Independent Electoral commission of Ivory Coast and UN observers.
Despite several diplomatic pleas including visits by Thabo Mbeki,and an ECOWAS presidents' delegation and Kenyan Prime Minister Odinga's visits to Abidjan under AU urging to plead with Gbagbo to step down, the Ivorian leader is still hanging tough and rejecting any pleas to vanquish state power.
The United States recently proposed to him a generous offer for a post-presidential residency in America which he flatly declined.
Even threats of a military removal have not bore fruit.
And cracks are beginning to emerge in West Africa's ECOWAS resolve to bring Gbagbo to relinquish power.
Ghana announced yesterday that it would not take part in the military removal of Gbagbo because its military is 'overstreched',a clear signal that the alliance against Gbagbo's removal is cracking.
Already the international press is talking about a 'unity government', language which just a few days ago, was alien territory.
It would appear that the prospects of Gbagbo's removal from power are fading fast and a Kenyan-Zimbabwe option seem progressively alluring.
The losers will be Ivory Coast and electoral democracy on the African continent.
The Kenyan and Zimbabwean precedent and now in Ivory Coast seems to point to the demise of African presidential electoral democracy.

Will Ivory Coast go the Kenyan and Zim way?

2010-12-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

A disputed election. The losing incumbent is quickly sworn in as president. The supposed victor is left out to dry. Riots and violence break out by angry disaffected youth of the undeclared victor.
International mediation teams jet into the country for talks between warring parties.
After several weeks of negotiations, the losing incumbent remains president and the supposed election winner is declared prime minister , with a few loyalists handed some non descript cabinet dockets in an uneasy,fragile settlement. Sounds familiar? Well this is the script that Zimbabwe and Kenya followed after bitterly disputed presidential elections a few years ago.Is this the future of electoral democracy in Africa?
Are African incumbent presidents becoming too cynical about African electoral democracy?
Hold an election which will leave you as president even when you lose it? Quicly swear in as president, close off your border and then let in a friendly mediator usually one who has been in the presidents club at the AU or EU.
In Ivory Coast this is about to play out between the incumbent and the undeclared victor.
Post election settlements are a real threat to the integrity of African elections and threaten to disenfranchise the African voter. Does national peace have to come at the price of a dashed election?

A little German twist of fate

2010-11-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

If you told me in high school that I would visit Germany,the country I read about in my modern european history classes at secondary school, four times, I would think you were nuts.
But life throws us many suprises and my association with Germany ,thus far,is a real suprise ,even to me. Well, Forrest Gump warned me a long time ago, 'life is a box of chocolate, you never know what you are gonna get'.
I have now visited Germany four times in the last two years. That's two visits per year, on average.
And yes, I have enjoyed, immensly, all my trips to Germany.
Even as a child in elementary school, I often quizzed my helpless dad about countries and which was richer than the other(which questions my Dad always patiently provided,thanks dad!), I knew that Germany was one of the most advanced countries on the globe. At the time it was up there with the US and Japan. The Asians of course have had something to say about that lately.
But I didn' count Germany among the first countries I would probably visit. There was the language barrier,the stereo types, and thenthe obvious history,which I mastered as a high school history major.
But as I write, I have now visited Germany more times than any other country outside Uganda.
My association with Germany was never delibarately planned. I would say it was fate and Germany came calling each time.
In 2008, I applied and was selected as a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)fellow at the University of Oldenburg.

Will the Kings from the east be as benevolent as those from the west?

2010-10-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

It is no secret. The global balance of power is shifting from the west to the east. Martin Jaques has an intriguing book title 'When China Rules the world: The end of the western world and the birth of a new global order'. Studies show that the west is undergoing a steady decline especially in economic terms and the in contrast countries such as China and India are on the rise.
And with the loss of economic predominance so too goes global influence and cultural leadership.
But this diatribe is not about the rise of the east and the fall of the east. Its about who would be a more benevolent global leaders, the Chinese or the europeans for instance.
In Uganda, Vice president Gilbert Bukenya recently urged Ugandans to learn chinese.
European values have ruled the world in the last century. With China becoming an economic power one wonder what kind of global leader China will be. What values will it profess to the world.
Bill Gates was in China recently to talk to some Chinese millionaires about donating to global causes. He didnt get many converts.
Some would say that the west gives to poor countries out of guilt of a history of colonialism and imperialism and that China doesnt owe the poor world anything.
Would human rights, democracy, the rule of law, liberty be the dominant ideal in a world led by China?
For all the west's failings, the world in the past two centuries has grown to expect some sense of 'western' justice in the conduct of human affairs. With Asian countries emerging as global power houses will european values still prevail.
As africans we have grown used to western philanthropy,albeit with its strings attached' but will a world ruled by Asia in the next fifty years continue with a western value system?
Can Asia provide a compassionate leadership of the world? Can it guarentee a 'just' world order.
Will international law systems such as the United Nations still play the role they do today? Will diplomacy still be chosen over war?
Can the world depend on Asian global leadership the way the west has done in past centuries?

Witzenhausen: The Tale of a small town

2010-09-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

They told us it was a small rural town in the heart of Germany. Well, there was nothing terribly rural about this delightful, albeit,small river town famous for its cherries. Pardon me, I am from Kampala and 'rural' town is a relative term. It took us about two and half hours to get here by taxi from Frankfurt International. It could take marginally less time when you taken the bullet train from Frankfurt.
Witzenhausen, we were told is a university town to a satelite campus of organic agricultural sciences of the University of Kassel. It is a tourist delight(and we came across american and english tourists) with buildings from the middle ages. We visited a cathedral from the times of Martin Luther and the reformation. I was amazed that back then they would bury aristocrats in cathedrals. Middle age paintings are still there for all to see and there are not many places in the world you can still say that about.
We visited a tower north of the town where prisoners would be secluded from society. Above the tower you have an imposing view of the town.
We were to be guests here for fourtneen days. Twenty six people from more than fifteen countries.
I took up residence at the Deula. One of us says we are at' Am sande 2',strasse, the German word for street.
In Witzenhausen, business closes at six pm in the evening and these folk do keep time-almost to a fault. Sunday is a complete shut down, the shops are closed.They need the rest. After all, they have been building this nation for centuries while we did the hunter-gather gig...
There is a delightful tarmarcked foot path along the river in the town that is absolutely gorgeous for nature walks and introspection.
We were to be students in a medieval monastery later turned into a German colonial administration school (the irony was not lost on me) and currently an agricultural school.
Witzenhausen, a small, intimate town in the heart of Germany

HIV/AIDS is still a disease of international emergency

2010-08-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Recent trends suggest that international attention on HIV/AIDS is waning and so is the funding. The global commitment to combat HIV/AIDS internationally is in some form of down turn.

An emerging perception is gaining currency that HIV/AIDS is no longer the threat it was in decades past(especially in the west) and that budgets, programmes and efforts lined up globally to respond to it should be down sized (in corporate speak).

International funding for HIV/AIDS in the developing world has been scaled down according to the international press and from the actual providers of HIV/AIDS care such as Dr Peter Mugyenyi, Head of the Joint Clinical Reseatch Centre (JCRC) in Kampala,Uganda.
PEPFAR the most important funder of HIV/AIDS treatment in Sub Saharan Africa is 'flat funding' AIDS programmes in Africa according to the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC)2010 report and a Medicine San Frontiers report of 2009. The implication is that AIDS treatment centres in Sub saharan Africa cant enroll new patients because they have no budget lines to support their life-long treatment due to funding 'flat-lining'.

The global financial crisis is the first excuse thrown about to explain the declining funding from western donors for the HIV/AIDS response in countries which cant cope unaided but reports show that political factors in western donor countries are equally at play.

It has been reported in 'The New York Times', 'The Boston Globe' and in the 'Huffington Post' in the US that the Obama administration is intent on scaling down on PEPFAR funding in favour of promoting a proposed new maternal and child health initiative in the developing world. It is understood that Dr Ezekiel Emmanuel has been pushing this line within the Obama administration. Politically speaking,PEPFAR was a Bush administration initiative with enormous success and the Obama administration is in need of a similar international success.

Clearly, maternal and child health too is a continental emergency and the recent July 2010 AU summit in the Ugandan capital was called solely on the subject. However, to cut AIDS treatment funding at the moment and to renege on promises to incrementally scale up funding to treat the increasing number of patients in need of anti retroviral therapy would be nothing short of tragic.

In Uganda, 100,000 new patients are added to list of those in need of AIDS treatment(ART) , in a country where only a half of those eligible for treatment get it(a continental record nevertheless). HIV/AIDS prevalance rates in some Sub Saharan African countries such as Uganda are on the increase and more not less funding is needed from international donors but also from African governments which should do more to shoulder the burden of treatment of their own citizens. The World Health Organization (WHO)issued new guidelines requiring that patients be put on AIDS treatment earlier than initially recommended hence increasing the treatment burden further.

The Global fund on AIDS,Malaria and TB is finding difficulty raising funds from western donors and is incapacitated in calling successive rounds of funding AIDS treatment in poor countries.
Now is not the time to play politics with human lives in Sub Saharan Africa. For millions of patients who depend on PEPFAR and the Global Fund monies for their drugs,this is a matter of life and death.

PEPFAR may go down as one of the few successes of the Bush administration and failing it inorder to promote a new global health initiative for political expedience is failing humanity needlessly.

The World Cup and Gross Domestic Product(GDP).

2010-07-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

You would wonder what in the world, the FIFA World Cup has to do with Gross Domestic Product(GDP)figures of countries but, come to think of it, it has evertything to do with it.
Consider this: the top three finalists at this 2010 World Cup Finalists are Germany,Netherlands and Spain. Its no coincidence that these countries are countries with some of the highest GDP figures acording to the World Bank.
Many have decried the poor perfomance of African countries at this World Cup and other earlier editions (save for Cameroon in 1990 , Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in this World Cup). The truth is that historically, the best perfoming countries at the World Cup have also been some of the wealthiest. All countries that have won the World Cup have been major industrial powers(save for the Latin American countries). England,Italy,France,West Germany have each won the world cup.
There would seem to be a corelation between GDP and success at the World Cup finals. Can this be pure coincidence?
Many pundits agree that hosting the World Cup on home soil is an advantage. Think here of the French in 1998 or the English in 1966 or even Uruguay in the maiden competition.
Not every country has the economic muscle to host a World Cup. FIFA recently revealed that there were not many countries in Africa which would have been able to host the prized competition even if they wanted. Investing billions of dollars in perfunctory stadiums, many of which will not be used much after the World Cup, is not every country's cup of tea. In Africa, not even Nigeria can afford such hefty investments despite the billions in pay offs that come with hosting such a global show piece. South Africa is reported to bag close to 3 billion dollars as an off-shoot of hosting the World Cup in terms of increased Tourism interest, trade and commerce.
Besides all the economics, it takes money to afford the best training possible for a competing team, hiring the best coaches money can buy, paying competitive player bonusses(many African teams self-destruct on account of unpaid bonusses at competitions).
If African countries want to win the World Cup may be the Holy Bible comes in handy' Seek first the economic kingdom and the rest will follow'.

Larry King Live Makes 25 years

2010-06-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

CNN is marking 25 incredible years of Larry King Live. Donald Trump turned the tables on Larry King in a commemorative interview on CNN fielding questions from a diverse audience of people he has interviewed over the years from Lionel Ritchie to Marlon Brando. Questions regarding his favourite interview, why he favours suspenders, his endurance on the show were all put to the 'King of talk television'. They showed a snippet of an interview he had with Marlon Brando a few days before he died.Marlon Brando had been out of the public eye for ages at the time and we see him give Larry a kiss,presumably for the unique rapport he strikes with his guest.
I first watched Larry in 1992 when CNN broadcasts were pionnered in Uganda. I became an instant fan even when when I was just a teenage secondary school kid.
Larry King is a gifted interviewer and there is no one like him on television. Even years of training would not produce a Larry King. He simply has got it. He is comfortable talking to a rocket scientist as he is talking to Snoop Doggy Dogg. His staying power is truly remarkable.

The East African Com mon Currency and the Greek Cautionary Tale

2010-05-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

Greek tragedies are eminent in world literature and now, they seem instructive for common currencies around the world. Advocates of an East African Common currency (who now include the IMF)should take pointers from Greece and the european union.
Greece's national debt is threatening to bring down the eurozone (and the rest of the global economy)analysts have already written eulogies for the euro. Harvards' Niall Ferguson has penned an article in he has entitled 'The End of the Euro'. Greece is reportedly in debt by as much as 15% of GDP.
It would seem that the British have, for now, been vindicated for passing up the euro in favour of the pound. The fear is that if of one of the common currency countries has a messy fiscal and economic policy then the economic impact will spread to other members like a cancer. That when in a common currency, its not enough to worry about your own books but your neighbour because he could unwittingly bring you down.
Greece has already accepted a billion-dollar IMF loan and a German-led rescue loan to save it from financial catastrophe which even its severly austere measures have not been able to cure in the short term.
For East Africans, its time to look at the downside of a common currency given the Greek lesson and to be cautious in fast tracking the East African common currency. All East African member countries have to be prudent economic policy managers and fiscal disciplinarians otherwise the sins of own will be borne by all. If Burundi, for instance, is grappling with a huge national deficit then this will impact on other East African common currency countries.
The Greek tragedy is a cautionary tale for East Africa's planned common currency.

Scaling down International AIDS Funding is Tragic.

2010-04-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

The International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) has released an April 2010 report that shows that internation funding for AIDS treatment has been scaled down or 'flat-lined' by the most important global funders who include the Global Fund and the PEPFAR(US President's'Emergency Fund for AIDS relief.
But national governments in Africa too are to blame for not meeting their own Health Spending targets set in Abuja in 2001 for funding health funding commitments of at least 15% of their annual budgets.
Dr John Mugyenyi of the JCRC(Joint Clinical Research Council) of Uganda has reported that many AIDS treatment providers across Africa are not enrolling any new patients on anti retroviral treatment programmes(despite the increase in demand for treatment). He also reports that rationing of ARVs is already in effect by some ART providers which compromises treatment and drug adherence and therefore raises fears of drug resistance. Millions of lives are at risk unless funding is matched with the incremental need for AIDS treatment.
Drug resistance is an even graver threat because it calls for second-line drugs that are much more costly and are not as readily available in developing countries, even commercially.
Cut backs in funding from international donors due to cited 'global credit crunch' and a lack of political will in African countries risks the lives of millions which may result in needless deaths.

A National Treasure Goes Up in Flames.An Obituary for Kasubi Tombs

2010-03-17T05:38:00.000-07:00

Kasubi Tombs, the burial site for ancient Buganda kings,the Kampala-based UNESCO heritage site has gone up in flames. It was reduced to ashes before my very eyes on live television Tuesday evening. The tombs were said to be 200 years old and the resting places of four kings of the ancient Buganda Kingdom. Reportedly set up in 1910 by the then King Mutesa I, the tombs have been a source of pride not only for enthnic Baganda but all Ugandans alike and I like to believe they were a national treasure which sadly we could afford to pass on to the next generations of Ugandans.
I watched as hundreds of youths cried helplessly infront of the raging flames as an ancient treasure of many years went up in smoke.
One was only left to wonder how the tombs which are only a few kilometres from the city centre couldnt be reached within minutes by the Kampala City fire Brigade. Was this just another case of the widespread public services incompetence and negliegence? Why should we be hard on critics who brand our nations failed states? Wasnt this just another illustration of a dysfunctional state?
The Kasubi tombs were a tourist site and a fixture for every foreign visitor to Kampala. They also offered spin-off employment to many as well as the traditional minders who lived on the premises.
I visited the Kasubi tombs as a child and I was in awe of all the traditional regalia that lay for all to see in the tombs and the extravagantly rich Buganda traditional on elegant display.
Many think that Africans have no achitectural heritage and Kasubi Tombs was always there to prove the doubters wrong. Now it is gone for good although an inspiring Facebook group is rallying wellwishers for a rebuilding effort.
The Kasubi Tombs fire is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in our Banana republic and puts to question whether we have a functional state in Uganda. Where was the police in all this?
And was screaming in agony the best the onlookers could do to save the tombs? Why do we spend billions of shillings arranging to host the Queen of England when we cant even afford to keep the country's jewels for the next generation of Ugandans?

IN THE RACE TO TREAT GLOBAL AIDS ARE WE PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE?

2010-02-18T21:35:00.000-08:00

‘The drugs are now expiring in our stores across the country because we seem to be pushing to have them but don’t have the expertise to clinically dispense them to the multitude who need them’ a medical doctor in the busy national referral hospital of Mulago in the Ugandan capital, Kampala tells this reporter as he struggles to clear a seemingly endless queue in front of his office in the biting Kampala sun.
Due to increasing international partner funding, anti retroviral drugs are increasingly becoming available in the developing world. International funding such as that from the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS,TB and malaria , the billion-dollar United States President Emergency Fund of AIDS relief programme and access initiatives such as those supported by the Clinton Foundation have made anti retroviral drugs widely available albeit at mostly urban health centres in the developing world.
In Uganda, despite reaching 42% of the population in need of Anti Retroviral Therapy in 2005, the number of those in need of Anti Retroviral Therapy continues to grow each year. It is estimated that there were 270,000 HIV-infected people eligible for anti retroviral therapy in 2007; this number is projected to reach 332,000 in 2012 . The most current figures as of September 2008, from the Ugandan Health Ministry are: 1.1 million infected; 357,000 in need; 43% on active treatment.
But in countries such as Uganda, questions remain regarding the capacity of the health care systems to scale up access to anti retroviral drugs. A few years ago it was reported in East African newspaper that $ 700,000 worth of drugs had expired in Uganda’s National Medical Stores and similar reports, more recently have run in the government-owned daily ’The New Vision’ with reports that some government drug stores across the country were reporting expiry of stocked anti retroviral drugs when thousands of clinically –eligible patients in Uganda are still waiting their turn to access these life-prolonging drugs.

Several recent studies in academic journals suggest that fiscal funding for AIDS treatment is no longer the most important barrier to access to antiretroviral drugs and that health systems in developing countries are the gravest impediment to accessing anti-AIDS drugs to the millions who need them. The notion that financial resources alone will not bring about accelerated access to AIDS treatment in resource-limited settings was emphasized further in a survey conducted in July of 2008 in six countries including Uganda by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC).
Some observers contend that even if these drugs were suddenly sufficiently available, there wouldn’t be sufficient capacity to absorb them and dispense them to those who need them as concluded in a study led by Dr Konde- Lule a renowned Ugandan AIDS researcher based at Makerere University

Analysts suggests that there are two conflicting schools of thought with one suggesting that scaling up access to ARVs is possible like has happened in Brazil while the other school argues that health care systems in developing countries don’t have the capacity to mount ambitious national AIDS treatment programmes due to institutional resource constraints. It is shown for example that there is a severe deficit in the health workers available to manage Anti Retroviral Therapy in developing countries which has compounded an already existing shortage of medical workers owing to many factors which include brain drain and uncompetitive reward systems.
It has been estimated that while Africa has 25% of the world’s disease burden, it has only 1.3% of the world’s health work force.

The absence of national laboratory networks to manage disease diagnosis-the first step of AIDS treatment, as well as unavailable CD 4 count machines all pose questions as to the feasibility of implementing ambitious AIDS treatment regimes in the developing world .An ART adherence study conducted in Botswana and Tanzania led by University of Amsterdam’s Dr Anita Hardon found a lack of laboratory facilities to conduct CD4 counts at the study sites visited . There was a lack of prescribing capacity in several health centres since they didn’t have diagnostic equipment .The study found that patients had to wait two weeks before they could be put on therapy owing to delays in diagnostic tests.

Interviews with regular clinicians at the fore front of treating AIDS in Uganda suggest the need to question the institutional assumptions underlying contemporary international AIDS treatment funding priorities. Should ARV drugs themselves be the current focus of drugs access initiatives or should the institutional resource base for administering them be the prerogative? A question whose answer would be critical to international bodies such as WHO,UNAIDS,UNICEF,PEPFAR,The Global Fund, The World Bank etc. As well as national governments in AIDS- ravaged countries,NGOs,HIV/AIDS advocacy networks and of course the millions living with HIV/AIDS .In the race to treat global AIDS, are we putting the cart before the horse? Drugs or health systems which should come first?

ARE REPORTS OF THE DECLINE OF U.S. GLOBAL POWER EXAGGARATED?

2009-12-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

‘More than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades-a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty’ President Obama, in a recent speech ,reflected on the US’s role in the world in the past half century.
But is the United States’ global power, influence and leadership on the decline? Persistent voices from strategic think tanks around the world and from within the United States it self suggest that there is an emerging consensus that US global leadership and its global hegemony in general is severely under threat and slipping steadily.
British academic, Martin Jacques has authored a new book with a telling title When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order he estimates that over the next half-century, China will emerge as the world’s leading power and that there is a shift of power from the west to the East. Analysts project that by 2025, Asia will be home to three of the five largest economies in the world.
In another thoughtful piece, Japanese analyst Hitoshi Tanaka, author of The Crisis of Global Governance and the Rise of East Asia argues that US leadership of the world has slipped for reasons that include the disastrous foreign policy of former US president George W. Bush, including the costly invasion of Iraq, the continuing costly war in Afghanistan in military and economic terms which Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria estimates will cost $ 2 Trillion by the end 2011, have taken their toll. Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz puts the cost of the US debacle in Iraq at $ 3 trillion.
One would add that the current global financial crisis and the declining US economy have not helped matters either and exposed the vulnerability of the US economy which has reportedly shrank – the engine of US geopolitical capability and prestige.
‘The US’s net external debt climbed by more than $1.3 trillion in 2008 alone and is expected to reach almost $ 3.5 trillion by the end of this year. ..Unless the U.S. quickly achieves and maintains a sustainable economic position, its ability to pursue autonomous economic and foreign policies will become increasingly compromised’ notes Fred Bergsten in Foreign Policy.
The US has borrowed excessively from China to finance President Obama’s stimulus measures to shore up the US economy which is showing faint signs of revival.
TIME magazine reports that the US owes China $ 763.5 billion in US Treasury department debt.
Signaling an emerging new world order, China has publicly called for the replacement of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency owing to perceptions of a long-term weakening US economy. China has threatened to introduce a new global reserve currency called’ the renminbi’ to replace the US dollar. China’s increasing importance is exemplified in its influence in the current global financial crisis. it is viewed as the ’primary driver of global economic growth’. Indeed recently reported economic growth in China was interpreted as a more optimistic outlook for the rest of the world economy.
According to Newsweek China is slated to surpass Japan this year as the second largest economy in the world.
The rise of China, analysts suggest, has altered the world order and will see the declining influence of the Group of 8 countries (G8) of US, UK, Canada, France Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia and in their place the G2, China and US. President Obama has said that Washington and Beijing will shape the 21st Century.

In regard to the U.S. and China, Daniel Drezner talks of the former and later respectively as ‘a declining hegemony with the willingness but not the capability to act as the global leader, combined with a rising power with the capability but not the willingness to act as a global leader’.
I would add that the rise of Arab states such as United Arab Emirates and Qatar with their burgeoning financial muscle from oil wealth and astute economic policy have added another dimension to the global balance of power scene. Arab financiers have bought a handful of English Premiership football clubs such as Manchester City and Portsmouth. It was reported that an Arab consortium bought a 25% stake in Germany’s Mercedes Benz group. In Uganda, telecom giants Zain and Warid are testimony to the growing financial influence of the orient in world business.
So, is US power really on the decline? Mark Twain, a writer, was prematurely announced dead and on reading his obituary remarked thus ’The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.

The Dream of One East Africa is a Distant one

2009-11-30T23:19:00.000-08:00

The East African common market was signed in Arusha,Tanzania a few days ago but as I noted during my travels through East Africa recently the road to one East Africa is still a long one.
The East African community doesn’t apply here, the immigration official at this Northern Tanzanian airport barked out at my attempt to seek a more East African reception with my Ugandan passport as I processed my entry into Tanzania recently. My illusion of a concretising vision of one East Africa was swiftly and rudely dashed. I decided to take a road trip back from Arusha to Kampala on return to see for myself how the dream of one East Africa is shaping up and was instead greeted with four immigration desks within Kenya and Tanzania. Waiting at any of these desks doesn’t make you feel any less foreign than say, the Australian standing next in line. The sense you get travelling in East Africa particularly in Kenya and Tanzania is that ordinary citizens in these countries don’t share the passion of their national leaders or at least their rhetoric when it comes to integrating into one East Africa.Even the strategic importance of one East Africa and that this drive for one East Africa is largely a top down vision which hasn’t yet found popular acceptance among your regular East African. Mobilising popular support among the citizenry of the member countries will be critical to any integration efforts. It should not be taken for granted that East Africans are for one East Africa. The current leaders are transitory and for this vision to be sustainable it has to take root within the populations of the member countries. The East African, in its latest issue, reports that Uganda manufacturers are making efforts to stall the East African common market for as long as they can because they loath the ‘blue band’ effect or the avalanche of Kenyan products in their domestic markets once the East African common market comes into effect. Tanzania has already put road blocks on the proposal for an East African common market. The future is in integration because small states are not viable and can no longer compete in an integrating world with countries the size of India and China which is why the Europeans are pushing for the highest possible union among themselves amidst these global blocks. I often find it ridiculous that a country the size of Uganda will compete on the same terms with countries such as the United States or China at the Olympics, the World Cup and yes, at the World Trade Organisation or at the United Nations given their clearly superior resource pool, economic, human and otherwise. That a country with the clout of Germany or France will seek strength in the wider European Union only tells you that countries like Uganda or Kenya need the East African community because on their own they can’t compete favourably. The current African political boundaries were established as a colonial convenience during the scramble and partition of Africa and countries such as Rwanda and Burundi were carved out as tokens to Belgium and in the case of DR Congo, as personal property of Belgian King Leopold. Most current African states have small markets that can’t support their home industries.Travelling in East Africa also illuminates the infrastructural impediments that stand in the way of the realisation of the full potential of integration. Only a leadership failure to grasp the strategic questions confronting their countries would explain why the road from the border town of Namanga in northern Tanzania to the now regional town of Arusha is not tarmacked. This road is clearly a lifeline for north-eastern Tanzania. For starters, Nairobi, in geographic proximity terms, is nearer Arusha than Dar-es-Salaam. On the way to Arusha, you meet several petroleum and other goods' trailers from Nairobi pointing to the economic importance of this route but you will be surprised that this route is not tarmacked. Paradoxically, it is easier to call Britain from our countries than say Burundi. In the words of Martin Luther King, ‘I have a dream’ that one day East Africans will walk the same road as fellow countrymen and realise that their destiny is one and the same.

Michael Jackson's 'This is it'-A Review

2009-11-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

Even the high end on-line movie reviewer Rottentomoes.com didn’t have an advance review. I had heard that the movie was coming out and that AEG the guys who had hired Michael Jackson for the mind-boggling 50 shows in London had sold their rights to SONY pictures. My first instinct was that Sony wanted to make a buck on the back of the global outpouring of emotion that followed Michael Jackson’s untimely death.
I always trust Rottentomatoes whenever I need a quick opinion on a new movie. They even award percentage scores and declare a movie fresh or otherwise depending on the verdict of their several seasoned reviewers.
But not even Rottentomatoes had prior knowledge of ‘This Is It’.
I then decided I had to check it out –this ’musidocumentary’.
Even in Kampala where you hardly find a full capacity movie theater on a day like monday it was full house.’This Is It’ has been declared a two-week release since 27th October and there will not be the traditional prolonged play at theatres.
And there he was, doing his thing like only he could. Vintage Michael Jackson in a series of rehearsals at the Staples centre in Los Angeles under the master direction of Kenny Ortega with whom they worked back in the day.
‘This is It’ is no movie or even autobiography. It is simply a testament of Michael Jackson’s rehearsals for the sold-out scheduled July 2009 London shows just a few days before his tragic death. It offers a uniquely intimate portrait of Michael Jackson. A portrait we have not seen anywhere before. Besides being an exceptionally gifted performer- the ‘king of pop’, a perfectionist who is never satistified with a perfomance he turns in,we see that Michael was also a creative genius and he is very much part of the creative drive behind the shows.
We see Michael Jackson keep up with dancers half his age with incredible physical stamina for a 50 year old man. His vocal ability is clearly not what it used to be at his peak but he still recalls all the lines to his greatest hits.
This is supposed to be a rehearsal but he gets carried away on a couple of occasions when he gets lost into the music and he is in his element.
‘This is It’ is clearly a film made for the true Michael Jackson fan. Its a parting gift from a master showman. There will never be another Michael Jackson.

Have NGOs replaced the State in African Health Care Provisioning?

2009-10-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

At the time of independence, many African countries aspired to provide western-style welfare state social provisions by providing free medical care and free university education and other social services to their citizens.
The prevailing political currents of socialist ideology around the globe in the 1960s occasioned by the cold war brought to birth the idea of ‘African socialism’ which in its crudest forms emphasized the sense of ‘African community’ and therefore the concept that ‘everybody’s welfare was everybody’s business’. In East Africa, Ugandan Prime Minister Milton Obote unveiled the ‘common man’s charter’ a socialist manifesto for newly independent Uganda. In Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere gave credence to ‘ujaama’ villages or communal villages that provided an all embracing community.
Social services were freely provided and medical services at government hospitals were free as were other social provisions.
However in the early 1980s the idea of an ‘African’ welfare state came under serious threat as being unsustainable owing to failing economies under hardship due to falling international prices of the cash crops on which many African countries depended coupled with chronic political turmoil and ethnic tensions ubiquitous in post independence Africa.
African countries, and Uganda in particular, sought budget deficit financing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The Breton Woods institutions prescribed the hugely unpopular Structural Adjustment programmes (SAPs) that called for radically reduced social spending in the social sectors of health and education by the introduction of ‘user fees’ and ‘cost sharing’ in social service provision as well as the full-scale marketization of social provisioning.
The introduction of market liberalization reforms, including privatization of the social sector, has turned citizens into client-consumers rather than social provision beneficiaries with millions falling through the cracks.
The prolonged diminished fiscal ability of the Ugandan state to provide social welfare has seen an increasing importance of non -governmental agency providers of health care. In sectors such as HIV/AIDS health care and treatment in Uganda, non governmental and civil societal organizations dominate. Hence the failure of the state and the market in Uganda has seen the emergence of new service providers and the expansion of space for alternate players. The central question would therefore be that has the ‘pluralism’ of social welfare providers in Uganda called into question the need for a paradigm shift to a tri-model of state, market and civil society?

Deng Xiaoping And The Cultural Revolution: A Daughter Recalls The Critical Years: A Book Review.

2009-09-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

Deng Xiaoping and the Cultural Revolution is an autobiographical book about the trials and tribulations of Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping during the ten-year disastrously tragic ‘cultural revolution’ in Mao Tse Tung’s 1970’s China. Deng Rong, Deng’s daughter, provides an exceptionally intimate first-hand account of China’s ‘reign of terror’ under Chairman Mao Tse Tung. In many ways it comes off as a therapeutic book Deng Xiaoping himself would have ordered to recount his pain and humiliation but also to defend and protect his place in the communist party and China’s history as a whole.
On a human interest level, it is simply the story of an extra ordinary man who weathered political storm after storm. He was twice ‘over thrown’ and stripped of all his elite positions and status in the Chinese government under Mao’s orders and evicted out of his official residences. After being ‘overthrown’ he worked for many years as an ordinary fitter in a tractor factory hundreds of miles away from the capital Beijing and the second time he lived under virtual house arrest after his second ‘overthrow’. Each time he fell, he got back on his feet much like the proverbial cat with ‘nine lives’. Deng Xiaoping had an incredibly indomitable spirit and even in his darkest day waited patiently for the tide to turn.
Reading this book reminded me of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom another tale of an extraordinary life and a man who defied adversity and rose to the highest office of his land, just like Deng Xiaoping in China.
Deng Xiaoping was the paramount leader of China after Mao Tse Tung’s death in 1976 , having previously served as Vice Premier of China. With his experience in China’s war of liberation and steady rise in the China’s communist party, he was widely viewed as the successor to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who died of cancer in 1976, leaving a gaping leadership gap at the highest level. Some even viewed him as a possible successor to Mao Tse Tung himself who in his 80’s was ailing and nearing his end as China’s paramount leader.
But there was one problem. Deng Xiaoping, who for a time lived in France in a ‘work-study’ arrangement, was not ideologically aligned to Mao’s extreme Marxist line of ‘class struggle’ and ‘dialectic materialism’. Although a member of China’s communist party of long standing, a hero of the China’s war of independence and an experienced administrator, many of the extremists in his party viewed him as a closet capitalist or to use their own term ‘a capitalist in-roader’.
In all fairness, Deng Xiaoping‘s ideological leanings were not strictly Marxist and asking what he was doing in a communist party is a decent question. He seemed more concerned with the pragmatic questions of state such as reviving the Chinese economy after the dysfunction occasioned by the cultural revolution, alleviating poverty in the country side, revitalizing industrial production, modernizing China etc. He once said he didn’t care whether a cat was black or white as long as it caught mice.Mao in fact had anointed the younger Lin Biao as his successor who in his estimation was closest to him in ideology and would preserve his beloved cultural revolution.
Mao installed Hua Guafeng as his successor whom Deng out manouvered after Mao's death and started China on its socialist market economy. In many respects, Deng Xiaopeng is the father of modern China. The China that is set to overtake Japan this year as the world's second largest economy.

The New Global World Order: The Emergence of China and the Decline of U.S.Power

2009-08-13T03:45:00.000-07:00

Is United States’ global power, influence and leadership on the decline? Voices from Strategic think tanks around the world and from within the United States itself suggest that there is an emerging consensus that US leadership of the west and its global hegemony in general is severely under threat and slipping steadily.
British academic, Martin Jacques has authored a new book with a telling title 'When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order' he estimates that over the next half-century, China will emerge as the world’s leading s power and that there is a shift of power from the west to the East.
In another thoughtful piece, Japanese analyst Hitoshi Tanaka, author of The Crisis of Global Governance and the Rise of East Asia argues that US leadership of the world has slipped for two reasons. The disastrous foreign policy of former US president George W Bush ,including the costly invasion of Iraq, without United Nations Security Council approval and a continuing costly war in Afghanistan in military and economic terms. Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz puts the cost of the US debacle in Iraq at $ 3 trillion.
The failure by the US to exercise global environmental leadership on the Kyoto protocol has irked many of the US’s own allies including Japan and the United Kingdom.
One would add that the current global financial crisis and the declining US economy have not helped matters either and exposed the vulnerability of US economy which has reportedly shrank - a major cornerstone of US geopolitical capability and prestige. The US has borrowed excessively from China to finance President Obama’s stimulus measures to shore up the US economy.
TIME magazine reports that the US owes China $ 763.5 billion in US Treasury department debt.
Signaling an emerging new world order, China has publicly called for a replacement of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency owing to perceptions of a long-term weakening US economy. China has threatened to introduce a new global reserve currency called’ the renminbi’ to replace the US dollar. China’s increasing importance is exemplified in its influence in the current global financial crisis., it is viewed as the ’primary driver of global economic growth’. Indeed recently reported economic growth in China was interpreted as a more optimistic outlook for the rest of the world economy.
According to Newsweek China is slated to surpass Japan this year as the second largest economy in the world with India not far behind.
The rise of China, analysts suggest, has altered the world order and will see the declining influence of the Group of 8 countries (G8) of US, UK, Canada, France Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia and in their place the G2, China and US. President Obama has said that Washington and Beijing will shape the 21st Century.
‘At the time of its formation in 1976,the G7 members accounted for 64% of global GDP, that number has now fallen to 56%. Meanwhile the economies of the so called G5 nations-Brazil, China ,India Mexico and South Africa have expanded and now account for approximately 12.7 % of global GDP. A figure that will continue to rise in the coming years’ writes Hitoshi Tanaka.

In regard to US and China, Daniel Drezner talks of the former and later respectively as ‘a declining hegemon with the willingness but not the capability to act as the global leader, combined with a rising power with the capability but not the willingness to act as a global leader’.
I would add that the rise of Arab states such as United Arab Emirates and Qatar with their burgeoning financial muscle from oil wealth have added another dimension to the global balance of power scene. Arab financiers have bought a handful of English Premiership football clubs such as Manchester City and Portsmouth. It was reported that an Arab consortium bought a stake in Germany’s Mercedes Benz group. In Uganda, telecom giants Zain and Warid are testimony to the growing financial influence of the orient in world business.

So, is US power really on the decline? The death of giants is often prematurely called.
Mark Twain was prematurely announced dead and remarked thus 'The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.

Why Capitalism Truimphs in Asia and Fails in Africa

2009-07-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

President Obama speaking in Ghana on his recently concluded Africa trip re -echoed a question that has puzzled economists and other social scientists. Why has South Korea which had about the same Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as Uganda at independence in 1962 gone on to become a global industrial power house while Uganda wallows at the bottom list of the league of nations ?
In fact Kenya’s GDP was even higher than that of South Korea at independence in 1963 but South Korea’s GDP today stands at--- compared to Kenya’s,,,,
In 1959 Singapore ‘s per capita income was $ 400 compared to today’s $ 22,000.
At the time of African independence many of the countries in Anglophone Africa were regarded as better prospects than the South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore of the 1960s.
Sixty years on, the African countries have not only become poorer than they were in the 1960s’ but trail their East Asian counter parts on just about any major development indicator ever formulated.
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime minister, writing in his memoirs From Third World to First recounts how, over three decades, Singapore was built virtually from scratch in the 1960s, with no army, parliament and other basics of a state to speak of.
In contrast, at the time, Uganda was a functional state with most of the apparatus of statecraft.
Lee Kuan Yew through astute leadership and indomitable will went on to build a state that today boasts a per capital income that rivals several members of the current European Union. This he did through encouraging entrepreneurship and economic freedom
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad between 1988 and 1997 transformed Malaysia into a manufacturing, financial and telecommunications hub. Malaysia started producing cheap appliances for western markets and providing home to the plants of major Japanese giants such as Sony and Panasonic owing to relatively cheap Malaysian labour.
China as recently as 1972 was a struggling state reeling from the disastrous ‘cultural revolution’ of Chairman Mao Tse Tung who pursued a radically communist agenda imprisoning and purging his party of any real or imagined ‘capitalists’ that bred untold poverty and dysfunction in a sleeping giant. Subsequent Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, strategically realizing that communism would not transform China made a u- turn and started China on the road to export-led industrialization dubbing it’ capitalism with communist characteristics’.
China, among other strategies, adopted a policy of population control and invested heavily in education especially in maths and science. It’s no wonder that Chinese and Indian students dominate natural science doctoral programmes in the United States.
Crucially, Asia ‘s example suggests that the state can be a major player and driver of growth and in Singapore, Taiwan and China, the state took the centre stage in driving national growth. It may not be widely known that the Chinese firms constructing stadiums and high rises from Luanda to Kinshasa are actually Chinese state-owned companies.
Tragically, in the place of the transformative leaders Asia has had, in Africa we have had ‘big men’. Although Asia’s success stories also suggest that a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship especially geared towards economic transformation is not entirely unwelcome considering that Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Deng Xiaoping of China, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia ,Suharto of Indonesia were not the most illustrious students of democracy but provided the leadership that turned the tide in their respective countries. Apologists for President Paul Kagame of Rwanda tend to take this posture.
It has also been suggested that Asian cultural values such as Confucianism, honour and a hard work ethic are conducive for productivity and spur economic growth. David Landes’ in his insightful ’The Wealth and Poverty of Nations’ Underscores the relationship between culture and economic advancement
While Europeans love their holidays and shut down on Sundays, Asians have no such proclivities.
The Chinese have won many civil works contracts in Uganda and the rest of Africa partly because of cost economics. Chinese engineers are said to be cheaper than their Ugandan counterparts, for instance, and they deliver that building when they say they will.
Next time we shall see how Africa took a wrong turn and why Asia continued on the path to the Promised Land.

The King of Pop is Gone too Soon.

2009-07-09T23:10:00.000-07:00

I first learnt about Michael Jackson when I was about ten. It was the Uganda of the early 1980’s and it was Obote II’s Uganda. Michael Jackson was my first major interaction with American pop culture. As I recall, it was the Thriller album days. The VCR was making an entrance in some select Ugandan living rooms. Those were the days of break dance and it was cool to do some break dance with the kids back at school.
I remember watching the full-length ‘Thriller’ music video and Rambo’s ‘First Blood’ at Namilyango Junior School when I was in form four of boarding school. . I recall the Ethiopian famine of 1985 and the anthem that ‘We are the world’ became at the time.
Michael Jackson was a very fascinating and unique act, even more so for a young Ugandan boy who didn’t have much alternative pop acts to compare him with. Of course I now know that MJ was ‘it’ and there will never be another MJ. In the words of the Motown founder who first signed the Jackson 5 ‘Michael Jackson was the greatest entertainer that ever lived’.
I had a soft spot for MJ and he didn’t lose me as a fan even when it become clear that his private life was a totally different script from the Michael Jackson we saw on the screen belting out, Thriller, Bad, Earth song, Heal the world, you name it.
He was very much a part of my childhood and initiated me into American pop and that fascination with everything American. As I child, I longed to visit the land of MJ and that dream came to pass in 2001 at Dallas, Fort Worth.
When he was announced dead, I couldn’t help but feel that a part of my childhood had gone with him. As children we sang his hits, imitated his signature dance strokes. Wore his trademark white socks, hat and fantasized about his red jacket.
His Thriller, Off the Wall and Bad albums stand out for me and when I think of MJ, I remember his ground-breaking music videos especially the ‘BAD’ video which is forever burned in my brain. Who's bad?!
As a school kid I remember using oil paint to label my cap with the letters ‘BAD’.
Yes, there will never be another Michael Jackson. Even Usher and Justin Timberlake would agree.

Dambisa Moyo's 'Dead Aid': A Book Review

2009-06-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Dambisa Moyo’s new book Dead Aid has sent ripples across the globe, particularly for those in the billion- dollar aid industry for whom this provocative book ought to make required reading. Dambisa argues that development aid to Africa ‘is no longer part of the potential solution but, its part of the problem-in fact aid is the problem’.
Dambisa Moyo is a London-based Zambian economist with degrees from Harvard and Oxford Universities with stints at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs.
Dambisa shows that over a 60 year period , US$ 1 trillion in development aid has been sunk into African countries with nothing to show for it in the recipient countries. Dead Aid maintains that aid money goes down the drain of corruption and props up despotic African regimes which are more concerned about appeasing paying donors rather than the disenfranchised populations they lead. Dambisa argues that development aid leads to market distortions, perpetuates an aid dependency syndrome in Africa and that enterprise, innovation and entrepreneurship suffer as a result when all African leaders have to do is’ wait to bank cheques’. Dambisa’s argument that aid is counter- productive is hardly original and William Easterly in earlier, more illustrious endeavors, White Man’s Burden and The Elusive Quest for Growth and Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion make even more compelling cases.
Even World Bank staffers have penned books around the subject such as Phyllis Pomerantz’s Aid Effectiveness in Africa but Dambisa takes it a notch higher
’ The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster’
Even African heads of states such as Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Paul Kagame of Rwanda are publicly making the case that trade not aid is a better hope for lifting millions out of poverty and deprivation in Africa and the rest of developing world. Although trade is the new buzz word among African leaders clearly foreign aid is still needed and its critics will be the first to acknowledge this much. The point being made is that aid should be more effectively targeted and it should not be seen as the panacea for bringing countries out of chronic poverty.
Dambisa’s call for the end of foreign aid altogether, which she calls for in the next five years, sounds at best hugely radical. In the place of western aid, she calls for African countries to cultivate fiscal discipline by raising finance through international bonds or international commercial lenders which in the current climate of the global credit crunch is an proposal dead- on-arrival .
Foreign aid may not have worked in Africa but to dismiss it outright would be to belittle the value of the Marshall Plan or US aid to Europe after the Second World War which transformed Europe or the case of American support to South Korea which is an emerging global economic power house. Clearly the debate ought not to be whether aid can be helpful but rather how it can be made much more effective and much more smartly targeted than it has in the past.
Indeed more innovative approaches to giving aid are gaining currency at a micro level and western entrepreneurs interested in improving Africa’s lot are thinking up some creative approaches. Aid is no longer purely humanitarian but has a tinge of business interest. For example computer companies which want to make contributions to development causes increase sales through declaring that US$ 5 will go to African charity from every lap top sale rather than make outright donations.
A Uganda entrepreneur in Denmark through his initiative byc4.com creates a forum for European humanitarian capitalists to lend money to deserving Ugandan businesses with friendly interest loans.
The days of conditions-free money seem to be in the fog of the season’s end.In summing, Dead Aid ‘s diagnosis on aid merits attention, the prescriptions offered, less so. African poverty is a multi-faceted animal with structural, cultural, institutional, attitudinal and even historical

Wangari Mathaai's Unbowed:A Pedestrian Book Review

2009-06-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

I am reading a May 2009 copy of TIME magazine and Liberian President,Sirleaf Johnson, in her 'Ten Questions' TIME interview mentions Kenyan activist,Wangari Maathai as one of her role models. And she is in good company.The first elected female president in Africa also mentions Julius Nyerere(former Tanzanian president)and Nelson Mandela among her other role models.
When Wangari Maathai was awared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, many were taken by suprise. Many know Wangari as an environmental activist, the founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya which as has chapter around the globe.
Reading a copy of Unbowed, Wangari Maathai 's memoir convinces any doubter that she deserved the Nobel prize.
Wangari Mathaai was one of former Kenyan president- Arap Moi's solitary opponents. And this is a shocker given that we know Wangari mostly as a green- crusader.
In a country where there was only one official political party-KANU, Wangari and colleagues provided the only opposition that Kenya knew. Its a miracle that she survived death which many of her peers were not so lucky to survive. Her methods like those of Martin Luther King and Mahtama Gandhi were decidely non-violent.
The book though is a remarkable testimony to the birth of an environmental advocacy group operating in a tyranical state in Africa. It took enormous personal sacrifice and sheer guts to beat the odds in keeping the green belt movement's candle burning in Moi's Kenya. The police, the judiciary and even the academia in Kenya all at different times proved to be road blocks in the way of Wangari Mathaai. In fear of the Moi government, they frustrated the efforts of Wangari and her environmental cause as appeasement to the Moi regime which understood Wangari as a threat to the regime in Kenya even when all she did was just to get women to plant trees! Of course it was alot more complicated than that. Wangari was treated as an opponent for many reasons, including, her external support from the west and her clout among women in Kenya and also because of partriachial perceptions that as an 'african woman' she had claimed more than her fair share of public affairs and belonged to the domestic realm.
The books begins off beautifully with a nostalgic tale of life in rural kenya during British colonial rule through Wangari's teenage eyes and takes us on a journey to colonial Nakuru,Nairobi and then the United States back to Nairobi and then to Germany and then back to Nairobi again-the story of her incredibly remarkable life. Wangari' s tale is seemingly larger-than-life. Her stuborn, fearless and selfless will amidst trials and tribulations seems beyond mere mortals.
Unbowed is also a story of one woman's effort to save the environment in Kenya and an african woman's treatise on the perils of environmental mismanagement and in the words of Mahtama Gandhi, being the change that she wanted in her world.

Adieu Tajudeen Abdul Raheem

2009-05-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

From Facebook, the news began trickling in. Tajudeen , that behomoth of Pan Africanism and African thought was no more. Tragic road accident in Nairobi,Kenya is all the news we could get.
I knew about Tajudeen in 1994 as a secondary school student. He was the Secretary General of the Global Pan African Movement secretariat, then with offices in Muyenga,Kampala suburb.
At the time,current Trade Minister Kahinda Otafiire was the Chair. Tajudeen served for many years at the secretariat.
He has been a regular columnist in 'The Monitor' and a weekly column at Pambazuka an on-line Pan African content provider. He was also Deputy Director of the UN ,Milenium Development goals-Africa chapter. The news of his passing was utterly devastating and completely shocking - yet another case of an illustrious life cut hot in its prime. Tajudeen was indeed one of Africa's premier public intellectuals. He commented with distinction on African politics and on local Ugandan politics.
The world, especially Africa, is a poorer place because of his passing. We have lost a powerful voice that feared not to say and see it the African way with inspiring optimism of the promise that is Africa despite the tragedy that falsely seems insurmountable. Adieu Tajudeen. You live on in your works and in the movement you have spawned.

THE AK-47 IS STILL KING IN AFRICA

2009-05-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

Want to become president in Africa? Well, how about starting out as a guerilla leader first? A recent survey by The Economist magazine of 5,000 politicians in the International Who’s Who to determine why some professions are so well represented in politics and why different countries favour different professions for choice of their political leaders turns out some interesting findings. In Africa, the findings are perhaps not that surprising considering that several presidents in Africa started out as guerilla leaders. Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda , Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso are all sitting heads of state who started out as guerilla chiefs. Jacob Zuma of South Africa is a fresh entrant to the club. Two decades ago, the rule rather than the exception in Africa was that you started out in the military or as a guerilla chief before becoming president. Think here of Samora Machel,Sam Nojuma ,Robert Mugabe,Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Muamar Gaddaffi etc.
In the west, the picture is starkly different. An amazing a third of all members of the German parliament are lawyers. We all know that a certain Barrack Obama, Clinton (Bill and Hillary) are all lawyers and so is current Vice President, Joe Biden. Obama’s inner circle is said to be filled with old boys from Harvard Law. And if that wont do it for you consider that over a half of the entire United States Senate is made up of lawyers.
In China, the current and previous presidents are engineers. Chinese President Hu Jintao is a hydraulic engineer. The immediate past president Jiang Zemin was a soviet-trained electrical engineer. The current Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao is a geological engineer and eight out of the nine-member elite Chinese politburo is made up of engineers.
In Britain, the selection bias is said to be more dynastic than professional and the political class network there is formed at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
The United States too is no stranger to political dynasties if you think of the Kennedy Clan or more recently, the Bush Clan. In France, the elite Ecole Nationale Administration or ENA has trained most of the ‘super-civil servants’ who run the French civil service- a favoured route to politics. Seven out of the last 11 prime ministers of France have been alumni of the ENA. Lawyers still dominate in France as well and nine out of the Nicholas Sarkozy’ s first cabinet of 16 was made up of lawyers who included the President, Finance Minister and Prime Minister. Businessmen are said to be the second most important players in politics in Europe represented by two-time Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi ,the proprietor of AC Milan foot ball club. Business men’s foray into politics is clearly out of self-interest.
The Economist ‘s survey further shows that certain professions dominate politics in some countries. It’s shown for example that in Egypt academics are favoured, in South Korea, civil servants and in Brazil its doctors.
Politics itself has emerged as a profession on its own with many of the politicians in Britain and the United States jumping straight from university to party politics without getting a ‘real job’ first. Here we can cite the examples of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron and to a certain extent, Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Going back to a country’s preferences for political office based on profession, interesting explanations which range from history, culture and stage of development are offered. For instance it is suggested that that lawyers are favored for political office in western democracies because they are given to ‘marshaling evidence, appealing to juries, command of procedure’ and that engineers are favoured in China because they know ‘how to build physical structures and keep them intact’ a preoccupation of communist regimes. Former Russian President, Boris Yelstin was an engineer-turned politician.
In Africa, the guerilla leader has been the most favoured occupational pathway to the presidency owing to the historic struggles for independence but also because of the political economy of armed violence in Africa.
So, next time that little kid asks you what it takes to become president of a country in Africa you know what to say.

THE G 20 ECONOMIC SUMMIT: THE UK AND US NEED TO TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORN

2009-04-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

Press reports indicate that French President Nicholas Sarkozy has publicly expressed his displeasure at his British and American counterparts for stalling on a G20 joint accord to respond to the global recession. Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel are pressing for more stringent measures to clean up the financial and banking worlds in advanced economies particularly the push for regulation of the industry and a rethink to the financial stimulus measures that have gained currency especially under the Obama administration.
In one sense the rift is ideological. The US and Britain want to bail out the financial and Banking worlds without requiring a radical surgery or a more stringent approach such as statutory regulation and other checks and balances in the industry, what in the US would be the republican standpoint.
France and Germany prefer a more regulated industry, that is cautious and see the US and UK as preserving a system that smacks of reckless capitalism that has brought the world to the brink of financial catastrophe. Clearly the execesses in the US and British markets impact the rest of the world which is why Europe see these reforms in the financial and banking industry as critical to the health of the rest of the world economy. Thomas Friedman was more right that he imagined. The world truly is flat.
The US and British governments need to step up to the plate and make bold decisions( inspite of the political costs that come with it) if another financial down turn is to be avoided and industry regulation is clearly at the heart of any such measures.
The era of banking and financial industry execesses such as off- shore banking,tax havens, cooking books of account, lending carte-blanches is over.
The evidence suggests that more prudent banking and regulation of the financial services industry is the way foward and indeed the Franco-German approach saved the duo from more severe effects of thedownturn as compared to the US and the UK.
The UK and US owe to the rest of the world to 'get it right' this time and save the world from another recession years from now.

The Global Financial Crisis: Is this the end of the Asian Tigers’ Model?

2009-03-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be a straight forward model. To get out of the poverty trap all countries needed to do was to set up industries and factories for producing cheaply priced goods for the American and European markets. That setting up industries would create jobs and jobs would come with high incomes and millions would be lifted out of poverty and deprivation.
On the basis of this export-led growth model, Japan’s Toyota and Nissan produced reliable but competitively priced vehicles, South Korea’s Hyundai and LG produced electronics and China ,’ the factory to the world’ produced all these goods and almost everything else . Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore and others soon joined to complete the ‘Asian Tigers’ club.
For decades the Asian Tigers recorded unprecedented economic growth rates and established themselves as world- class industrial production power houses and not even the 1997 Asian financial crisis could stop them. Many western companies couldn’t compete with Asia’s low production costs, especially low-wage labour and soon moved many of their production houses to Asia. Have you noticed that it seems all computers are now manufactured in China?
Then came the global financial crisis or the credit crunch which unraveled in 2008.Suddenly
consumer spending in America and Europe drastically reduced, heralding the ’ end of free-wheeling consumption fueled by easy credit and the wealth effect of ever rising asset values’. As the economic slump deepens, export demand from the west can no longer sustain Asian industry. Tens of thousands of thousands of factories are closing down and millions have become newly unemployed.
According to a recent issue of TIME magazine, it is estimated that last year, 60,000 enterprises were shut down in China’s Guandong province alone, as export orders and credit dried up. In India, the organization for Indian Exporters warned that 10 million Indian workers were set to lose their jobs as a result of the slump in export demand.

Ajay Chhibber, the director of the Asia bureau at the United Nations Development programme says’ in a medium and long term sense the export-led growth model is coming under stress’.
The export-led growth model adopted by Asian leaders, including China ‘s Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and India’s Manmohan Singh in 1991 was responsible for lifting millions in Asia out of poverty as farmer workers become factory workers and their incomes skyrocketed overnight.
According to the World Bank, In 1981, nearly 80% of East Asians lived on less than$1.25 a day and by 2005 only 18% did In a comparable period, Sub Saharan Africa’s poverty levels have remained at 50% between 1981 and 2005 owing to our inability to hop on the globalization train by producing cheap toys, textiles, TVs that the west demands.
Critics of the export-led growth model point out the exclusion of the rural population who are left out in the mainly urban-based industrial jobs. For example despite India being touted as an emerging economy still has 70% of its population as being regarded as rural and poor. The number of poor Indians increased from 436 million in 1990 to 456 million in 2005. The majority have been largely left behind by the production-for-export sector that is majorly based in urban centres such as Mumbai. It is therefore clear that the export-led growth model on its own is not sufficient to lift entire populations out of poverty if it’s not accompanied by other initiatives such as land reform and investments education, roads and other infrastructure.
Dependence on western export markets and the global financial crisis has brought into focus the need to nurture domestic markets. The Chinese premier speaking at the World Economic Forum earlier this year has conceded this much and clearly China’s huge domestic market should be tapped as an alternative market.

In the words of Charles Dickens, these are ’ hard times’ for the export-led growth model but clearly there don’t seem to be many tested models for lifting millions out of poverty.

CAN UGANDA ESCAPE THE 'CURSE OF OIL'?

2009-02-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

‘A growing body of evidence suggests that oil, far from being a blessing to African countries is a curse. Without exception, every developing country where oil has been discovered has seen its standard of living decline and its people suffer, while its less endowed neighbors have gone on to relative prosperity’ writes John Ghazvinian author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. The example of Nigeria is instructive on its own here. Nigeria, the world’s seventh largest oil producer is ranked among the twenty poorest countries of the world, with 57 percent of the population living on less than a dollar a day according to the World Bank .
Many African countries have recently discovered oil among them, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Sudan and until recently, Ghana and our very own Uganda.
The American charity, Catholic Relief Services projects that$ 200 billion in oil revenue will flow into the coffers of African governments over the next decade. This can only be good news, right?
Paul Collier in the 2007 bestseller, The Bottom Billion: Why the World’s Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it goes one better and provides economic evidence that shows that oil or broadly natural resources discoveries in poor countries actually retard economic growth or create distortions in fragile economies. And this is no arm-chair treatise. He illustrates with hard-nosed evidence how natural resources are a ‘trap’ for developing countries citing examples such as Nigeria, Gabon and Angola. Economists refer to this sudden inflow of petroleum dollars in economies as the ‘Dutch disease’ or ‘ the paradox of plenty’.
According to John Ghazvinian , only about 5 percent of the billions of dollars invested in African petroleum projects every year are actually spent in Africa.
Because most oil production is capital intensive and relies heavily on ultra modern extraction technology, only limited highly skilled openings are available and these often go to foreign nationals The paradox is that oil exploration in Africa creates far more jobs for western nationals who have the requisite skills than it does for locals.

In Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil it is shown that the oil boom in Nigeria had a negative effect on agricultural production.’ From 1970 to 1982, production of cocoa fell 43 percent, that of rubber 29 percent and ground nuts 64 percent. The percentage of Nigerians living in poverty went from 28 percent in 1980 to 66 percent in 1996.Average annual income, which in 1980 was$ 800 per person, today stands at a mere $300’.
Several studies suggest that oil booms in developing economies result in a decline in national tax revenues. That because of the sudden inflow of foreign exchange accruing from oil revenues, the incentive to generate national tax revenue diminishes. ’Between 1970 and 1993, countries without oil saw their economies grow four times faster than those of countries with oil’.
Let us lose the economic theory and bring this a little closer to home. Picture this. Uganda has started exporting oil to the international market. The proceeds from the oil will not come in Ugandan shillings but in US dollars or euros. Suddenly, the country is awash with foreign exchange. The result is that the value of the Uganda shilling artificially inflates. The effect is that imported products become cheaper and consequently, a huge national appetite for imported goods like Hummers and Plasma screens grows. Meanwhile Ugandan coffee or iron sheets from Roofings become expensive for Rwanda and Congo because of the appreciating Ugandan shilling. The local agricultural and manufacturing sectors take a hit. But the government is not too bothered about the decline in tax revenue after all there are petrodollars It doesn’t stop there. Local food production is no longer commercially viable due to reduced export demand. Agricultural farm lands are abandoned as everyone rushes to the cities to get a piece of the oil boom. As a result there is less domestic food production and urban dwellers such as those in Kampala take to imported food stuffs. This is not an imaginary story. This is the story of Gabon, a veteran oil exporter in Africa which now imports 80 percent of its food from Cameroon.
Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs’ Oil Revenue Management Plan’ for the management of Sao Tome’s future oil wealth that includes the establishment of a permanent fund dedicated to development projects and poverty reduction and a Norwegian-style fund for future generations should be endearing.
So, next time you hear that Uganda’s discovery of oil in Hoima and Amuru districts can only be a good thing. Think again.

THE BOTTOM BILLION: A Pedestrian Book Review

2009-01-09T04:08:00.000-08:00

A few days before christmas a friend from Boston,MA brought a book along which he thought I would like.And Like it I did. In fact very much. Paul Collier's 'The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Falling and What Can be Done About it' turned out to be an immensly cheerful and worthy companion during the holidays and it was for good reason.
Collier's 'Bottom Billion' has been described by 'The Economist' as 'set to become a classic' and its no idle praise. It's praise that is well earned. Reading Collier's book reminded me of Jeff Sachs''The End of Poverty' and William Easterly's 'The Elusive Quest for Growth' and'The White Man's Burden' it fits in well with them-dutiful efforts by eminent economists to diagonise the causes of African's economic malaise and the road map out of it.
Paul Collier should know. He was head of development research at the World Bank.He has worked ex-chief economist at the World Bank,Joseph Stiglizt-a Nobel Prize economist.
Collier is economics professor at Oxford university and head of their centre of the study on African economies.
'Bottom-Billion' breaks new ground in understanding African economies by introducing a new paradigm with in which to understand the roots of Africa's worsening poverty. Collier talks about 'traps' which bind Africa to the ground. The traps include the usual suspects, conflict,natural rseources(especially oil), being land locked and 'bad' governance. The 'traps' are not especially new in development economics but Collier has moved scholarship further by adducing enormous quantitative evidence to show their influence on African economies.
Collier's book is backed up by years of development research in Africa which he has done with coloborations with several other researchers and clearly his book is no arm-chair treatise but a work generated out of over twenty years of economic research on African economies. Some of the work is plain fresh, never having been presented before in the way he does in the book.His work on the economic significance of coups,military and civil conflicts is especially endearing coming as it is from an economist. He also lends to his work some political science methods and research in a way that is unprecedented marrying ecomomics and political science in the quest
for answers to African economic dysfunction.
The book is full of invaluable findings that are instructive. For example his research shows that countries that have been in the pits(economically speaking) take 59 years to turn the corner!
Collier brings to the fore, the dimension of international trade and its relation to African poverty suggesting that opening western markets to African goods and services can be a life line for the 'bottom billion'.
'Bottom Billion' pushes the frontiers of mainstream development economics and goes beyond the body of knowledge we have become accustomed to explain what afflicts Africa beyond the tools of traditional economics.
His book is really one on Africa and it is clear he has been to many African capitals and is aware of the inner workings in contemporary African state craft as well as having a slew of contacts from Nairobi to Abuja.
The title is a little misleading because his attention is especially focussed on Africa and not the wider developing world as the title may suggest. His last chapter' The struggle for the bottom billion' which is a call to arms to rescue African economies doesnt keep up with the high tempo that starts of with the earlier chapter and seems some what of an anti climax.
The prose has a poppy feel.Its very accessible to the lay reader and it is easy to follow without the arrogant diction of scholarship or the' linguistic sophistication' you will find in many other works of development economics. The book doesnt take itself too seriously and there are many light hearted moments and occassionally his diction induces hearty laughter(uncommon for an economists) although in this he reminds me of Robert Guest's'The Shackled Continent' or even William Easterly's 'The Elusive Quest for Growth'. Yes, even with all the tragic and desparate poverty in Africa it is possible to squeeze out a laugh.And they come plenty in 'Bottom Billion'.

ARE NGOs THE NEW COLONIAL POWERS IN AFRICA?

2008-12-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

An article in a recent issue of Foreign Policy doesn’t mince words and calls international NGOs in Africa ‘the new colonialists ‘. In many countries, international NGOs have replaced traditional western donors and absentee states’ influence by providing services that are traditionally the responsibility of the home governments Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president prefers to call it ‘NGOism’-the growing trend where international NGOs wield increasing power and resources in fragile states or failed states as some would have us call them.
Hamid Karzai has reason to worry. In Afghanistan, 80% of services such as health care and education are provided by international and local NGOs.
International NGOs are gaining new importance in the developing world owing to the increasing preference by western countries to route donor funds through international NGOs rather than national governments which are perceived as corrupt, bureaucratic or incompetent.
According to Foreign Policy, an influential American magazine, the amount of aid flowing through NGOs in Africa rather than governments has more than tripled.
Recently the French embassy in Kampala signed an agreement with an international NGO to distribute relief supplies in Karamoja. In a bygone era this aid would be routed through the disaster ministry or the Prime Minister’s office. USAID has been channeling millions of dollars of AIDS money through intermediary International NGOs such as CARE. Considerable British relief aid in Uganda is sometimes routed through Oxfam or Save the Children.
Foreign Policy shows that spending by CARE, the international NGO, has increased by 65% since 1999 to $ 607 million in 2007. Save the Children’s budget has tripled since 1998 while Doctors without Borders (Medicine san Frontiers)’s budget has doubled since 2001 signaling increasing command of financial resources by international NGOs.
In 2006, total aid to the developing world from countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) amounted to $325 billion. Just a third of that sum came from governments. The rest came from non-state actors principally, international NGOs.
A 2005 Newsweek report estimates that if the world’s NGOs were grouped together as a country they would rank fifth in the world in terms of the value of funds controlled.

If truth be told, NGOs have been a godsend for the millions in our countries who can’t cope unaided From safe water provision, to life -saving health care, to relief supplies, NGOs have reached our needy people faster and more efficiently than our governments. Most of what they do is ordinarily the preserve of the state but in banana republics, the state is often dysfunctional or simply cash strapped. “Like failed cousins, they are increasingly unable to and perhaps unwilling to fulfill the functions that have long defined what it means to be a state.”
An analyst has observed that we live in a period when the nation state is distrusted, or more precisely, its institutions are considered ineffective and unreliable’.
International NGOs operating in Uganda like Plan International or World Vision will tell you that they are always under constant pressure from local politicians to locate their operations in more politically expedient areas, which speaks volumes about the increasing power of NGOs in relation to that of the state in Africa.
International NGO support perpetuates a dependence syndrome by the state on NGOs and doesn’t help states develop capacity in sectors such as relief or disaster response where NGOs dominate.
It has also been observed that international NGOs suck all the best local talent on the market because of attractive salaries that the public or even private sector can’t match. A good example in Uganda is HIV/AIDS treatment health care. Some of the best medical workers have left the public health sector and are on the payroll of international AIDS research agencies.
There have also been concerns that NGOs don’t have many checks and balances or are not as accountable as say governments to the electorate or private companies to shareholders and that more regulation is needed, a kind of requiring the ‘do-gooders to prove they do good’.
‘No matter how well-intentioned, these new colonialists need weak states as much as weak states need them’ couldn’t have put it better.

OBAMA WILL WIN A SECOND TERM.

2008-12-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

Four years from now dont tell me I didnt tell you what I am telling you now. Obama will win a second term as President of the United States. His political genuis has already shown even before he swears in. His cabinet picks and economic stimulus plans give a glimpse of what a tactician he is.

Some have called it the 'cabinet of rivals' and yes, only a deft politician would have gambled to have on the team as a bitter a rival as Hilary Clinton . Obama has said he was inspired to include his rivals after inspiration from Abraham Lincoln who claims copyright to the idea of a 'cabinet of rivals. His inclusion of Robert Gates,a republican defense secretary hold-over from Bush says good things about him. Gates is credited with turning around the pentagon after the divisive reign of Don Rumsefeld and helping turn the tide in Iraq. What one would read from this is that he is willing to make compromises and of course to address the commonly held notion that republicans are prefered when it comes to the security and defence docket. At least dubya didnt get it all wrong. Most of the rest of the team are experienced clinton-era hands such as attorney general appointee Holder and Susan Rice,ambassdor to the United Nations.

You get the sense that he will govern from the middle and if he continues on that path a second term will be within grasp.

Obama enters office with enormous public will and immense political capital. He needs to make good of his election promises. He has already indicated he will close the infamous Guantanamo bay prison. He has reitariated his plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq with a new escape clause' in consultation with the commanders'. Many will see this as backtracking and Obama will need to go through with plans to withdraw troops before the end of his first term.
It already feels like he is president even when W. still reigns at 1600. One president at a time he counsels but americans cant wait.
I am telling you, that skinny kid with a funny name will get a second term.

IS BARACK OBAMA THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD

2008-11-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Obama on the telly,Obama in the papers, Obama on bumper stickers. Why, you wonder, has the world taken on to Obama to almost mystical, spiritual proportions? And its not in Africa alone. Although the Africans have clearly outdone themselves on this one. Sometimes you wonder, who is happier about Obama's poll victory- the Americans or the Kenyans for instance? Obamamania has been witnessed in Japan, europe and the middle east. A friend of mine thinks this cant-get-enough- of Obama thing is a commentry on our own state of affairs. That because we are so repulsed by our own politics especialy down here in Africa, we look to Obama as alternative political redemption. That if we loved our politics enough we wouldnt be too distracted by Barack Obama. That its the same reason the english premiership has a cult following in Africa. That we cant stand our own soccer clubs, match fixing and mal foot ball administration. The truth of course is that Obama is a very inspirational human interest story in its own right but does our craze for him say something about how we feel about things in our own countries? Is the world looking for a saviour out of all the hopelessness, the despair, the financial quagmire in which we are mirred?. Its food for thought.

IS THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS OVER HYPED?

2008-10-23T00:57:00.001-07:00

Clearly the world is in the midst of a serious financial crisis and my intention is not in anyway to belittle the seriousness of the situation. It does appear though that the response of the global markets and world governments has been an over- reaction. Almost all major world economies have announced rescue packages to banks and financial institutions to stabilize economies. The US$700 billion congress- approved package as well as the bail out of AIG in the US are all well known. Europe has also caught the cold with many countries announcing rescue schemes and guarenteeing bank depoisits. The dutch government has made a loan to ING bank.
One of the the inardvertent concequences of all this has been to trigger off panic in the financial world with many institutions wary of lending and a cut bank on investment financing. There has been a rush of panic all over the global financial system and even institutions that are not yet touched in a real way by the credit crunch are in an artificial crisis mode. The result is that fear is dictating business decision making and the credit crunch has been made out to be much larger than it really is. The western financial system, from which the rest of the world takes cue, is behaving as though we are in the worst case scenario already and have skipped the preliminary stages. Consumers are wary of spending and banks dont want to lend to businesses, further excerbating the crisis. Yes, there is a crisis but is our response measured? Are we building confidence in the global financial system?

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UGANDA'S JAZZ SENSATION!

2008-08-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

In mid August this year,I attended Isaiah Katumwa's Jazz perfomance at Kampala Serena Hotel. It was everything it was billed out to be. Isaiah Katumwa is a truly world-class act which is not what you can say for many Ugandan artists. I kept asking my date why he is not an international star already. Boy, he has sure got the goods. Absolutely professional. He put on a several -hours, non- stop show without any opening acts or interlude.He gets the biscuit for stamina alone.

The jazz he plays is a unique brand unlike much of what is on the market. Its John Coltrane meets Hugh Masekela with an infusion of Ugandan traditional ganda beats. It was a sumptous feast for the ears and even for the eyes. The brother knows a thing or two about grooving too!

Katumwa must have been abroad for most of his earlier career because he burst on the scene only about last year. At least I got to know about him last year at a local Kampala church where he was introduced and did a short gig. It was endearing from the start.

At the show, all his hits were perfomed and were started off with a brief intro. There was a clear crowd favourite. The crowd simply couldnt get enough of it.

The stage organization and multi media outlay was another plus. Most of the video aids were appropriate to the music played and they spiced it all up.

The supporting band deserves mention too. They were up to it and a handful have what it in them to break out on their own. But Isaiah Katumwa was the offering of the evening and he didnt dissapoint.
As advertized his is truly Jazz with an African accent!

HIGH INTEREST RATES HAVE PUT BRAKES ON UGANDA'S ECONOMY

2008-08-01T05:47:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year a scheme was announced to enable public servants own lap top computers. Unless one paid cash upfront, the catch was a bank loan with a 20% interest rate. A quick calculation showed that payments one would make on the interest alone would be much
more than on the lap top itself!
Many Ugandans are choking under the weight of high loan interest rates and despite the pleas of Ugandan authorities, the banks have kept the interest rates up there. Little surprise then that virtually all banks in the country turned handsome profits last year on the back of a very lucrative lending regime.
The Bank of Uganda is reluctant to intervene more directly and lower rates and hopes licensing more banks will bring the rates down. Thanks to the earlier era of structural adjustment, money markets were liberalized in Uganda.
The truth of the matter is that on interest rates, Uganda is more catholic than the pope, because interest rates in the United States are set by the FED, and the interest rates in Japan, Australia United Kingdom are set by their central banks. Closer to home, the central banks in South Africa and Kenya set interest rates.
Interest rates are too critical to the economy to be left purely to market forces and not even the most capitalist economies practice what they preach. Interest rates determine almost everything else in the economy. High interest rates discourage consumer spending, they influence returns savers can make on their investments and therefore investment spending, the cost of mortgages for home owners, the outlook for jobs and perhaps more, critically inflation. Ultimately it is the Ugandan consumer who pays the price of high interest rates as these are passed on in form of the pricing of products consumed.
The bank interest rates in Uganda are within the range of 20-35% on average. In the microfinance industry, the rates are even scandalously much higher. Some charge between 12 % a month. There have even been adverts of those who charge interest rates per week!
A recent study showed that the majority of new small businesses in Uganda don’t make it beyond the first year mark. The cost of credit in Uganda is undoubtedly part of the story.

If the borrowing rates were much lower, the economy would get a big boost and economic growth rates would go up. When lending rates are down they encourage borrowing hence investment and in turn creation of jobs. When rates are high the price of goods and services becomes high and then you get into inflation. Now imagine a situation where these rates are significantly reduced and the impact they would have on commerce and economic growth.

Ugandan banks will argue that the price of money is high as well as operation costs and that lending in Africa carries much risk. The public will continue to view high interest rates as efforts by banks to maximize profits in an oligopolistic market.
In neighboring Kenya, parliament in 2000 passed a bill to regulate interest rates. Under the bill, commercial banks can not set their rates more than three per cent higher than the rate fixed by the central bank. Interest rates in Kenya hover between 12-16% while in Rwanda they are between 16% and 18%.
A limited intervention in setting interest rates by Bank of Uganda is advisable. Intervention in interest rates was credited, partly, for the rise of the economies of South East Asia. Joseph Stiglitz, ex- chief economist at the World Bank and a Nobel prize economist, favours this approach. Unless Interest rates in Uganda are reassessed, the brakes on the economy will remain in force.

CHINA'S EMERGENCE AS A DOMINANT ECONOMIC POWER IN AFRICA

2008-07-01T00:51:00.000-07:00

First we were afraid of the wolf, then we wanted to dance with the wolf now we want to be the wolf’ a Chinese Central bank official used this analogy to describe China’s world trade rivalry with the United States.Ever since Chinese President Deng Xiaoping declared ‘to get rich is glorious’ and launched China into an era of industrialization and export-driven growth, China has never looked back. Chinese industrialization is unfolding at an unprecedented speed while driving an enormous demand for raw materials and new markets. China has been branded the ‘factory of the world’ for dominating global production of all goods imaginable from safety pins to domestic appliances. The most popular products on American and European supermarkets shelves now carry the ‘Made in China’ label, favored because of their cheaper prices owing, partly, to low labour costs in China.Pick up a souvenir from any western capital and chances are that beneath it will be the label ‘Made in China’. According to Thomas Friedman author of ‘The world is Flat ’ Wal-Mart , the world’s largest supermarket chain, in one year imported $18 billion worth of goods from its 5,000 Chinese suppliers. (Friedman doesn't do the math, but this would mean that of Wal-Mart's 6,000 suppliers, 80 percent are in one country -- China.)And it’s not only safety pins that should worry the west. China recently announced that it was going to begin production of commercial jets, long the domain of Boeing of the United States and Airbus of Europe. And it doesn’t stop there. Petro China is now the third largest company in the world having displaced General Motors of the United States. According to Newsweek, China now has three of the world’s biggest five companies by market capitalization. With US$ 1.2 trillion dollars market capitalization, Petro China is now the world’s most valuable company.The United States has for long battled China because of an unfavorable balance of trade position. China exports much more to the United States that the latter imports from the United States. The Chinese avalanche has not spared Africa as well. Its scramble and partition of Africa all over again, only this time, its China’s turn. It has been widely reported that China now lends three times more money to Africa than the World Bank.Take a moment and think about that. We are in the midst of a shift in balance of power in Africa with the Chinese coming in as the new kids on the block. Considering that the west has long dominated financial inflows into Africa as well the IMF/World Bank system and therefore called the shots in these parts, China’s new investments and lending to Africa give it unprecedented influence and clout on the continent. Indeed when the west wants a change in Sudan’s Darfur policy, it’s to Beijing they run. China is the leading export destination of Sudanese crude oil. Recently, a billion dollar infrastructure loan to Democratic Republic of Congo was announced by China which has a keen eye on Congo’s rich mineral wealth.For a country that has known conflict for most of its post- independence history, the prospect of finally having financing to build basic roads and railways is an offer Congo can’t refuse. The African Development Bank says African trade with China rose from 10 billion dollars in 2000 to over 40 billion dollars last year. Reuters estimates this figure to have leapt to US$ 55 billion this year.Already the banking sector has been hit with the news that China’s ICBC bank has bought a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank, the parent company of Stanbic Bank Uganda, and this was done with a record cash purchase of US$ 5.6 billion dollars, the single biggest foreign investment anywhere in Africa.There has been market speculation that China Mobile is set to make a bid for MTN, Africa’s largest phone operator with the share price increasing by 6% on the prospect. China Mobile recently bought an 89% stake in Pakistan operator, Pakistel.All this is going down well with African leaders. President Mogae of Botswana has already remarked publicly that the Chinese treat them as partners for a change compared to the Europeans who treat them as subjects.Locally, the lure for Chinese products has proved too strong to resist for Spear motors, the local Mercedes Benz franchise. Spear Motors now deals in new Chinese vehicles made by the Great Wall Motors of China at some of the cheapest prices available for brand new vehicles in Uganda.A Ugandan entrepreneur is doing brisk business exporting recycled mineral water bottle material to China at very lucrative rates. Consider that Uganda’s State House was built by a Chinese Contractor and that the biggest conference centre in Dar Es Salaam is to be built and funded by the Chinese.So, what does China’s new scramble for Africa portend for the continent?China doesn’t have the imperial ambitions that came with the earlier players in the scramble and partition of Africa.However, the fact remains that African nations are largely raw material exporters and markets for Chinese Industry and until that changes, true partnership would be anything but achieved.

OBAMA CAN WIN IN NOVEMBER

2008-06-11T01:33:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama’s nomination as the Democratic Party’s nominee for United States President has been met with utter euphoria in Africa. His victory was greeted with street celebarations in neigboubring Kenya where his father originated. In Kampala, the day after it emeged that he had clinched the nomination, Obama was the talk of the town. I have even seen a handful of cars with Obama ’08 stickers on Kampala streets. Indeed it would seem that Obama carries not only America’s hopes but those of Africa as well.
His nomination has been historic being as it is that he is the first African American, ever, to clinch nomination of the Democratic Party. At the start of the primaries few would have given him more than a long shot at winning He was up against Hilary Clinton,a former first lady, New York Senator, husband to Bill Clinton. The duo are a dominant force within the democratic party .There political savy is legendary and has been dubbed the’Clinton machine’. Despite starting the race as an underdog in the polls, the American public gradually warmed up to his message of change. His win in the Iowa primary gave him the momentum and turned him into the front runner with a string of wins in more than eleven states.
Obama has had strong showing among college-educated Americans, the affluent and young people in addition to his appeal to indendents, those neither democrat nor republican. At the start of the primaries, African Americans were reluctant to embrace him given that he has no slave-roots and many questioned whether he was ‘black enough’. At the start, the African Americans stuck with Hilary Clinton who seemingly had a better shot at the white house. With a string of wins, the African Americans graduallly came on board and they are now a core constituecy of his and have backed him with 80-90% in recent poll results.
Winning the nomination is only the start. Obama takes on republican John McCain at a time when their prolonged democraticc primary with Hilary Clinton has left the Democratic Party divided. His candidature has shown gaps. Hilary continued in the race partly because she had more support among blue-collar workers, older Americans as well as strong hispanic support. Obama needs Hilary Clinton as a running mate to unify the party. There are of course questions about how well Hilary can play second best. Her defiant speech after Obama’s victory didnt help matters.
Obama needs to brace himself for the Republican party’s legendary attack machine. His background will be doubly scrutinized. Remember John Kerry and the Swift boat veterans?
The state of the USA economy favours him. There are high oil prices, the housing market is in a down turn and the economy is said to be in a recession. Obama needs to take advantage of this in his campaign.
John McCain has vowed to stay in Iraq for ‘a hundred more years’, a very unpopular stand and Obama needs to step up to the plate on Iraq which he did effectively in the primary.
Unlike other countries where the popular vote is the decider, in USA different states have different electoral weights. Obama has to win battleground states such as Florida and Ohio. Remember Al Gore who won the popular vote but lost Florida?
Obama’s nomination is testimony to how much progress USA has made on race relations since the Jim Crow years. The jury is still out on whether Americans can overlook the colour of Obama’s skin and consider him purely on the merit of his candidature.
For Africans, a propsective Obama presidency would not bring any signficant change in Africa’s fortunes. Unlike African presidents who wield enormous power and influence and can make things happen, In the USA, institutions are greater than individual presidents. Major decisions have to go through the legislature or both houses of congress.As Africans, Obama’s candidature has largely symbolic value, about the possibilities open to those with roots and heritage in Africa. Yes we can!

OBAMA WINS NOMINATION

2008-06-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

Stayed up late last night on CNN waiting for returns from South Dakota and Montana, the supposed last states in the Dem primary.Even before these states' returns were in, it was reported that Obama was just a handful of delegates away from clinching the nomination and one by one they began going Obama's way. It was a truly historic moment. No African American had ever won nomination by the democrats or republicans so Obama was making history and we were in the moment- watching as history was being made. One by one the delegates pledged themselves to the Obama column and eventually Obama surpassed the minimum required delagates to emerge winner. And bang! history was done. Few would bet that Obama would win at the start of the Dem primaries. Its testimony to how much America has progressed on Race since the Jim Crow years. For Obama it was an awesome audacity of hope to believe that he could ever do it. Even the most optimistic people would never have given it to him. Indeed, yes we can!
Obama will need Hillary Clinton on the ticket. The primaries showed she has strong support among white blue collar workers and hispanic voters, which are not Obama's strong points. It would be a dream tiscket that would unite the dem party behind his candidature. There are of course questions about Hilary, how well can she play second?, and the role of Bill Clinton in such an arrangement. Her defiant speech after it emerged that Obama had emerged winner didnt help matters. Presidents always prefer vice presidents who are loyal. George W. Bush chose Cheney as running mate mainly because of this.
To attain victory in November Obama will need to win battle ground states such as Florida and Ohio. He has brought many new young voters on board who were initially indifferent to politics. He is also favoured among independents and should build on this to reach out to the more traditional demographics. He has shown this ability before. Initially African Americans were skeptical about his prospects and some even questioned if he was'black enough' but they have gradually embraced him with 80-90% percent in recent state polls. Obama needs to be aware of the Republican attack machine in the general election and should brace himself for dirt tricks and a dig -up on his background.Ask John Kerry, remember the Swift Boat Veterans?
In Novemeber we shall have an idea of how far America has progressed on race and whether Obama can be see purely for the 'content of his character' and what he has to offer America and not the colour of his skin.

SYDNEY POLLACK IS DEAD

2008-05-26T22:11:00.001-07:00

Sydney Pollack is dead. Truly tragic news today. I am a movie buff and had seen seen him in a couple of films. I know he won the 'Out of Africa' best director oscar. A movie which has become iconic. As an actor, I saw a little more of him intimately in 'Changing Lanes'. Where he played a law firm senior partner to Ben Affleck. His role in that movie will stay with me for a very long time. It was a morality piece. He played the part to perfection. I remember Ben Affleck asking his character how he as a lawyer continue in the business when its full of arm-twisting, intrigue and twisting the truth. The lawyer stereo type. His reply wa along the lines 'because I know at the end of day I do more good than evil' and he said it with so more authenticity and character. To Sydney: Fare Thee Well.
You live in your works and all the actors you have directed in your distinguished career.

UGANDA MAKES FIRST TOYOTA CAR!

2008-05-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

I drive a beat- up 1990 Toyota corsa. I have been driving it since April 2002 when I bought it from a local city car bond as a 'reconditioned' car. It has been on the road for over six years now.It ceased being Japenese made, i reckon, about two years ago. From about 2004, it has been're-engineered' by Ugandan car 'techincians' whose ingenious antics have been responsible for keeping it on the road since. The car has been re-assembled and then assembled again, bit by bit,part for part, every time I take it for mechanical repairs. To make sure I understand that this is really the first Toyota car made in Uganda, the mechanics are glad to put it apart in a matter of minutes,before my very eyes, at the slightest excuse. They then meticoulously put the parts together as I await on them. And when a new spare part is needed they quickly board a boda boda and head to a downtown motor car spare parts market where a hasty bargain is made and a 'new' spare part is quickly returned. Now, all the parts on sale here are not too legit!. Some parts are actually locally made or modified in jua kali spots in town or make- shift steel fabrications. Some of the parts are not actually parts meant for my Toyota which I learn, the hard way, in a matter of days. Some of these parts are expertly modified by the mechanic.And when a new spare part purchase is not so, so necessary, the mechanic will pull it out of the car and panel beat it before your very eyes and hurriedly plug it back. My car engine cannot, in good conscience, be called Japenese-made.Mine is the first Toyota car made in Uganda!

FORMALIZING PROPERTY RIGHTS CAN REDUCE AFRICAN POVERTY

2008-05-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

The recent move by local commercial banks to offer housing loans and other mortgage financing products such as recently announced by Stanbic and Standard Chartered banks is a welcome development in Uganda. It has been argued by economists that one of the reasons why Africa is poor is because most Africans are unable to turn their assets into liquid capital. In the west, taking a mortgage against one’s house is typically the first line of credit. If you want start-up capital for a new business or a new vehicle you usually borrow from a bank against your house.
Many development specialists have observed that most Africans who own their homes do not have the title deeds to prove it and therefore they cant use their property such as houses to acquire more money hence ‘dead capital’ since these properties cant be deployed to create wealth. Many argue that even when banks give loans without collateral, the loans would be bigger and on fairer interest rates if there were secured with property such as land titles. The World Bank estimates that between 70-80% of loans in the developing world require some form of property rights or collateral.
Many Ugandans hold huge assets in the form of houses, buildings, land and small businesses which if brought into the mainstream of the economy through property rights registration would constitute a massive source of capital for investments and further capital accumulation.
Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, author of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else has estimated the total value of dead capital, which includes land that is unregistered in Africa and the rest of the developing world and puts it at US $ 9 trillion dollars. This is mind-boggling considering that a trillion dollars is roughly three times Africa’s entire annual gross domestic product.
Tales of difficulties in processing a land title in Kampala are legendary with many saying the processes involved are exceedingly burden some which in effect means Ugandans are losing out in terms of missed capital for investment. Banks are constrained lending to clients with unregistered land which constitutes lost revenue in interest earnings. It has been estimated that only one African in ten lives in a formal house with title deeds. A research study would I am sure conclude that over the years Uganda has lost millions of dollars due to difficulties in property registration.
The ‘dead capital’ land includes homes and land without valid title or registry, with legal irregularities or restrictions for its transfer. It has been argued that failure to extend property rights to the bulk of the population is a feature of many poor countries and is one distinguishing factor between wealthy and poor nations.
Although land titling per se is not a magic bullet for poverty eradication, it has tangible benefits as research has shown in Ethiopia where land value increased by 5% after a mass land titling initiative which cost US$ 3.50 per household. In Peru, a World Bank study revealed that US $ 4 billion was realised as additional income for poor people as a direct result of legalizing dwellings and small enterprises between 1990 and 1996.
Robert Guest author of the 2004 book The Shackled Continent: Poverty, Corruption and African Lives reckons that in most African countries the informal economy is larger than the formal one and he estimates that one African in ten holds a formal job. Hence the matatu driver at the old taxi park, the barber at your salon, the matooke trader at your local market all operate outside the formal economy in Uganda and hence they don’t file income tax returns yet these are the majority Ugandans.
Uganda’s dependence on donor support would be diminished further if these businesses that are not registered or operate without full legal permits are brought into the fold of the formal economy.
As things stand, Uganda has a small middle class that is shouldering the nations’ tax burden yet the net can be widened to include the larger informal sector.
As Africans we need to unlock the wealth trapped in informal property because clearly the alternative is to remain poor.

World Bank-IMF Policies Have Failed Poor Nations

2008-05-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

It is now widely acknowledged in economics circles that IMF/World Bbank development economics have largely failed the developing world. Why their models for economic growth still influence economic thought and policy in developing countries remains a puzzle.
In his 2001 book, The Exclusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, William Easterly, himself an ex-World Bank economist of long standing, presents a body of evidence that illustrates the failure of the World Bank and IMF prescriptions in the past 50 years. It is shown, for example, that between the second world war and 1995, the West has invested one trillion dollars in developing countries with nothing much to show for it.
The belief by the World Bank and IMF that foreign aid, investment in education and technology, population growth control, loans pegged to reform conditions and debt relief were the panacea for growth is a model that has not delivered results. In some cases countries, which have religiously embraced the Breton Woods economic policies, have actually become poorer. Easterly’s research shows that between 1980 and 1994, 12 countries, including Uganda received 15 or more World Bank and IMF adjustment loans.
The median per capita growth rate for these countries over the loan period was zero!More recently, renowned economist Jeffery Sachs in his 2005 best seller, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time, recounts his work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, Zimbabwe and Kenya were he has been directly involved as economic advisor.
He presents evidence from the field, amassed over a twenty year period, that is highly critical of the one-model-fits-all approach the IMF and World Bank propose to all countries seeking their loans and patronage. He calls for innovative and holistic approaches. He proposes a fascinating approach called ‘clinical economics’.
The basic argument is that economies are complex systems and require a ‘differential diagnosis’ much the same way a physician would probe an entire person’s body to pin point the cause of an illness and therefore the remedy.
As far back as 1982, Margaret Hardiman in her book, The Social Dimensions of Development observed that most economic growth approaches for the developing world are erroneously modelled on Western countries without due regard to the peculiar background and the complexity of developing economies.
You will find that the PhD holders that populate World Bank and IMF offices and dictate economic policy in the third world are mostly from Western universities with limited practical understanding of the developing world terrain. It is deeply surprising and even scandalous that African economic authorities and even academics are still intellectually inclined to the World Bank/IMF growth templates despite evidence that their model has largely failed.
Often it is foreign protesters in Seattle or Davos who call for the abandonment of the strategies preached by the IMF and World Bank altogether when African leaders and economists sit back.
It is common to hear government officials continue to tout IMF/World Bank development economics despite available evidence that these approaches haven’t had many true success stories. Many economists, with the benefit of hindsight, have acknowledged this much with many discrediting IMF/World Bank strategies as flawed.
There is no concrete indication on the part of the world of the need for a pradigm shift or a new prototype. The basic truth is that not all economic problems facing countries are the same and one model cannot be the answer.
The Finance ministry in Uganda should therefore endeavour to think outside the box and call for a debate on the need for new economic approaches. As has been observed, the only thing more dangerous than an economist is an amateur economist.

Does Africa have a Culture of Poverty?

2008-05-13T04:01:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Dr Watson, one of the founders of DNA science and a Nobel-prize laureate sparked an uproar in the Ugandan media, and I am sure in the rest of Africa and the Diaspora when he infamously declared that black people are inferior to white people in terms of intelligence.Well, it appears the controversies don’t end there. According to the author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, Africans are poorer than Europeans because their culture is inferior to that of the whites.David Landes, a retired professor at Harvard University, argues that the west is vastly richer than the third world primarily because of superior cultural traits. Landes’ conclusion is drawn from an economic history of the world he undertakes to determine why some countries have prospered and continue to do so while others wallow in worsening poverty.Why for example is the actual per capita income of the Swiss today 80 times superior to that of the Mozambicans, when this ratio was 1 to 5 in the 16th century? This is the starting point of his reflection and he comes to the conclusion that cultural values, such as hard work, honesty, open-mindedness and a commitment to democracy make the difference. Naturally, some would say Landes’ book is controversial or even offensive but are his arguments entirely without merit?Economists dislike culture as an explanation for disparities in economic development because it doesn’t play well to models or measurable criteria but agree that culture matters when understanding differences in economic progress between countries. Landes in his book maintains that nations prosper depending on national attitudes, specifically, their ability or inability to exploit science, technology and economic opportunity.The idea that culture is important is one that argues that certain cultures have characteristics that are more conducive to promoting human progress and prosperity than others. The notion that culture is important in understanding economic development is hardly new and has been around for many years.Landes is certainly not the only contemporary economist to argue that culture is the key to economic success. Japanese economist Yoshihara Kunio for instance writes, “One reason Japan developed is that it had a culture suitable for it. The Japanese attached importance to material pursuits; hard work; saving for the future; investment in education; and community values.In Landes’ own words “there are cultures that I would call toxic that handicap the people who cling to them.” So, what are some of the cultural differences between African cultures and western cultures for instance? It is argued that western culture is individualistic whereas Africans are more collective and communal in nature.In Africa, the individual submits to the clan or community which is said to discourage innovation or the incentive to take risks or make personal investments since property such as land is communally owned such as in some societies in Uganda.It’s not uncommon to find that virtually every Ugandan you meet who is gainfully employed has a line of relatives for whom he or she is a benefactor. In the west the individual is paramount, protected by a bill of Rights, property rights and patents which drive enterprise. The cultural ideals in the west emphasize self-reliance.Moving away from culture and onto geography, Landes blames the weather for African poverty claiming that warm climates encourage leisure whereas cold climates encourage hard work. He argues that hot climates are given to extremes of weather such as drought or torrential rainfall which make farming and other endeavors difficult. That tropical climate is conducive for debilitating diseases such as malaria compared to winter which kills many of the organisms that cause disease.Landes’ book doesn’t offer much in the way of a growth strategy for the rest of the non-European world except that countries that want to industrialise have to embrace European culture.So, does Africa need a cultural adjustment programme strictly following Landes’ cultural description? Given the transformation of South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong or even the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, it doesn’t entirely seem to be the case since there seems to be more than one route to economic success. However some cultural traits such as hard work, the rule of law and free market enterprise are common to countries that have had economic transformation.Landes’ book does however offer a very keen insight into the rise of the west and the influence of culture in that growth. It seems however that today’s emerging economies are re-writing the script and crafting a whole new path to the promised land.

China's Emergence as a Dominant Economic Power in Africa

2008-05-13T03:49:00.000-07:00

First we were afraid of the wolf, then we wanted to dance with the wolf now we want to be the wolf’ a Chinese Central bank official used this analogy to describe China’s world trade rivalry with the United States.
Ever since Chinese President Deng Xiaoping declared ‘to get rich is glorious’ and launched China into an era of industrialization and export-driven growth, China has never looked back. Chinese industrialization is unfolding at an unprecedented speed while driving an enormous demand for raw materials and new markets. China has been branded the ‘factory of the world’ for dominating global production of all goods imaginable from safety pins to domestic appliances. The most popular products on American and European supermarkets shelves now carry the ‘Made in China’ label, favored because of their cheaper prices owing, partly, to low labour costs in China.
Pick up a souvenir from any western capital and chances are that beneath it will be the label ‘Made in China’. According to Thomas Friedman author of ‘The world is Flat ’ Wal-Mart , the world’s largest supermarket chain, in one year imported $18 billion worth of goods from its 5,000 Chinese suppliers. (Friedman doesn't do the math, but this would mean that of Wal-Mart's 6,000 suppliers, 80 percent are in one country -- China.)
And it’s not only safety pins that should worry the west. China recently announced that it was going to begin production of commercial jets, long the domain of Boeing of the United States and Airbus of Europe. And it doesn’t stop there. Petro China is now the third largest company in the world having displaced General Motors of the United States. According to Newsweek, China now has three of the world’s biggest five companies by market capitalization. With US$ 1.2 trillion dollars market capitalization, Petro China is now the world’s most valuable company.
The United States has for long battled China because of an unfavorable balance of trade position. China exports much more to the United States that the latter imports from the United States. The Chinese avalanche has not spared Africa as well. Its scramble and partition of Africa all over again, only this time, its China’s turn. It has been widely reported that China now lends three times more money to Africa than the World Bank.
Take a moment and think about that. We are in the midst of a shift in balance of power in Africa with the Chinese coming in as the new kids on the block. Considering that the west has long dominated financial inflows into Africa as well the IMF/World Bank system and therefore called the shots in these parts, China’s new investments and lending to Africa give it unprecedented influence and clout on the continent. Indeed when the west wants a change in Sudan’s Darfur policy, it’s to Beijing they run. China is the leading export destination of Sudanese crude oil. Recently, a billion dollar infrastructure loan to Democratic Republic of Congo was announced by China which has a keen eye on Congo’s rich mineral wealth.
For a country that has known conflict for most of its post- independence history, the prospect of finally having financing to build basic roads and railways is an offer Congo can’t refuse. The African Development Bank says African trade with China rose from 10 billion dollars in 2000 to over 40 billion dollars last year. Reuters estimates this figure to have leapt to US$ 55 billion this year.Already the banking sector has been hit with the news that China’s ICBC bank has bought a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank, the parent company of Stanbic Bank Uganda, and this was done with a record cash purchase of US$ 5.6 billion dollars, the single biggest foreign investment anywhere in Africa.
There has been market speculation that China Mobile is set to make a bid for MTN, Africa’s largest phone operator with the share price increasing by 6% on the prospect. China Mobile recently bought an 89% stake in Pakistan operator, Pakistel.All this is going down well with African leaders. President Mogae of Botswana has already remarked publicly that the Chinese treat them as partners for a change compared to the Europeans who treat them as subjects.
Locally, the lure for Chinese products has proved too strong to resist for Spear motors, the local Mercedes Benz franchise. Spear Motors now deals in new Chinese vehicles made by the Great Wall Motors of China at some of the cheapest prices available for brand new vehicles in Uganda.
A Ugandan entrepreneur is doing brisk business exporting recycled mineral water bottle material to China at very lucrative rates. Consider that Uganda’s State House was built by a Chinese Contractor and that the biggest conference centre in Dar Es Salaam is to be built and funded by the Chinese.So, what does China’s new scramble for Africa portend for the continent?China doesn’t have the imperial ambitions that came with the earlier players in the scramble and partition of Africa.
However, the fact remains that African nations are largely raw material exporters and markets for Chinese Industry and until that changes, true partnership would be anything but achieved.