Sentimental as I clutch the last print edition of 'Newsweek'.

I am feeling sentimental as I clutch my copy of the very last print edition of Newsweek magazine. Truly the end of an era.

As a child, my father brought copies of Newsweek  at home. It was the days of bold font. I recall images of Ronald Reagan and 1980's America on one of the covers.

Newsweek was always there every single week. Nothing would beat a serene Saturday afternoon at Serena hotel reading Newsweek with its cousin TIME magazine . They always made for  terrific company. Unrivaled in many ways.

I still keep land mark copies of these magazines going back in time. A testimony to the timeless writing and journalistic standards set by these American imports.

Even when I was worked up and needed to unwind, a fine edition of Newsweek would do it for me in a way several pints of bear would do it for an Irishman after a long day at the office.

For expert analysis of current affairs, global events and those land mark events such as the 9/11 attacks, the Fall of the Berlin wall, the 2008 global financial meltdown. Newsweek was there for us.

Well  Newsweek is  not actually dead,  as it transforms into a  new digital life on ipads. In Uganda where we still like it in hard copy, this almost an obituary. The vagaries of modern commerce and changing consumer tastes, e-everything couldnt spare our beloved Newsweek. The end of an era indeed.

Arbitrage: My movie of the year

In a year where I am hard pressed to pick worthy Oscar contenders and where Ben Affleck 'Argo'is a shoo in for an award, I nominate 'Arbitrage' for movie of the year.

Give Richard Gere, the Oscar for best Actor already.

Who knew Richard Gere had stuff still in him for a movie turn like that he has put out  in for 'Arbitrage'?.

I will make it simple. The movie is about a hedge fund investor, who is adored by the American public and is on the cover of Forbes. However this is all a facade.

Trouble is he has made one major bad judgement by betting on a Russian copper mine and as search has stretched himself thin  financially enough to need a friend to pitch in $400 million to plug the hole in the books till he can sell his firm to a bank and pay back the loan.

That seems the least of his worries when his mistress is accidentally killed in an accident in which he is the driver. He desperately toils to keep the strings that bind his life together from unraveling. Eager to keep this news from flowing out as he is on the eve of a multi-million dollar sale of his company. He treads the path of a financial philanderer,criminal fugitive and family outcast. Its utterly amazing how the Richard Gere character manages to keep all the  various parts of his world together under the most intense pressures.

Given the enduring global financial crisis and the 2008 meltdown, the movie clearly takes a dig at Wall street excesses, financial impropriety, 'cooking the books' in the investment world and the facade that is the public image of ultra success. This is  clearly a morality tale in the frame of 'Changing Lanes',and 'Wallstreet'.

Without torturing you with financial and investment- world jargon, 'Arbitrage' is very accessible to the ordinary viewer.

It is hard to believe the movie is directed by a first-time director.

For me, 'Arbitrage' is the best movie I have seen this year and I have seen a couple of them this year.

Francis Imbuga is dead

I met him when I was hardly 15.  The man was a genius.
He really could tell the story of the disillusionment of post-independence Africa like no dramatist I knew.
And I was a young, skinny secondary school student but could still read into his play 'Betrayal in the City' way beyond my years.
I only learnt later that Francis Imbuga was Kenyan.
The fictionalized country of Kafira seemed more akin to  1960s Nigeria or some other hard-knock African tragedy. Kenya seemed a little more distant from his world of Kafira.
And the soliloquies of his protagonist (Mulili) were steeped in high-grade philosophy.
I actually didnt meet Francis Imbuga in real life. I met him through his works.
'Betrayal in the City' was a set play in O' level literature in English but I fell in love instantly.
We memorized those lines long after we had to pass O' level literature.
The year was 1990 and I was an impressionable student of literature in English at Mbarara High School.
It is these kinds of works of literature that set me on the path to liberal arts even when I vaguely wanted to be an engineer- a childhood answer to 'what do you be when you grow up?'.
As a student of literature, our task was clear in making a 'literary appreciation' of a play such as 'Betrayal in the City'.
Oh I still remember, the themes and ideas, dramatization, character and characterization,  use of language and choice of words...
I could very well do a damn national exam in that play if I was required to like I was in those grey days in 1992.
'Betrayal in the City' is a play set in a fictional country of Kafira but it could well be post independent Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia.. name it.
It is a story of dashed hopes of post independence Africa. The British Colonialists are replaced by African elite who actually  end up being 'an enemy of the people'to paraphrase another illustrious work of literature.
I still recall a line in the play 'the fruits of Independence, we get them second hand'.
Some say we were better off under the British. A little extreme there but look at all the corruption, mal administration, political thuggery, mass poverty, dilapidated hospitals and Schools and yet look at the top of the range Mercedes Benzes,Swiss bank accounts, the latest private jets..the sheer opulence of African elite amidst the crushing poverty and hopelessness of the African people.
'When the troubles of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say the man is mad'.
Fare thee well, Francis Imbuga. I was blind and you began to open my eyes.

The coming armageddon:HIV funding cuts amidst Uganda's escalating infection rates

On 1st December 2012,  the world will commemorate the annual World AIDS day.

For Ugandans, December 1st should offer a sobering reminder of what has gone wrong with Uganda's once touted HIV success story.

For the past  twenty years, Uganda has had reason to look forward to every first of December with glee. You see, Uganda for many years was a global leader in taming run way HIV infection rates from an all-time high prevalence rate of 30% in the  80s to single digits in a matter of years.
HIV epidemiologists and country HIV control teams  from all over the world shuttled in and out of Kampala for many years. Uganda was an HIV prevention mecca of sorts. But that was then.

Earlier this year, Health Minister, Christine Ondoa announced results from a large national survey that show that Uganda's HIV prevalence rate has risen to 7.3% in 2012 from 6.4% in 2005.

''We feel embarrassed when we attend international HIV meetings and are terrified to announce we are from Uganda. Everyone wants to know what happened to Uganda's HIV success story?'' a Health Ministry official who didn't want to be identified intimated to me.

Unless one hasn't been keenly paying attention, it is not hard to seen where the train run off the rails.
Dr  Charles Watiti, a renown HIV treatment columnist(who is himself is living with HIV) acknowledged in his Monday, 26th November 2012 New Vision column that antiretroviral treatment (ART) ironically, has bred a tragic complacency.Uganda's mixed HIV prevention messages and strategies have also been cited as have an increase in concurrent multiple sexual partnerships especially among supposedly monogamous couples.

A few days ago, UNAids announced an astonishing decrease in HIV infections in Sub Saharan Africa. Malawi registered a 73% decrease,Botswana 71%,Namibia 68 and Zambia 58.
 As for Uganda, it was among the 69 countries which have not registered a decline in HIV infections between 2005 and 2011.

Last year, AIDS Information Centre's Dr Byarugaba announced that Uganda's annual HIV infection rate have reason to 150,000 cases continuing a trend for the past four years.

Uganda is headed for an Armageddon unless current HIV infection rates are reversed. Over 85% of HIV treatment costs are met the American tax payer through PEPFAR with the Global Fund running a close second.

In a joint report, WHO,UNAids and Unicef in 2011 revealed that international funding for HIV programmes fell from $8.7bn to $7.6bn in 2010. Contrast this with a recent World Bank study which projects that Uganda's annual HIV treatment costs will rise from a current $ 250 million to$ 1.5 billion in 2025.

Uganda's dependence on the US and the Global fund for HIV treatment remains threatened by the enduring global financial crisis and changing political climates in the Western Europe and US( the Obama administration was initially keen on switching from PEPFAR to child and maternal health causes).

The Global fund last year deferred  the next round of funding for HIV/AIDS,TB and Malaria till 2014 due to declining contributions from the mainly western donor countries.

As I write, several of those who are becoming clinically eligible for enrollment on antiretroviral therapy (ART) are being turned away at ART treatment centres who citing funding caps dont allow for enrollment of new patients. TASO earlier this year closed several of its outreach centres.

Can we treat our way out of the HIV epidemic? A study published in the Lancet last year suggested that, yes we can with $ 63 bn, the world could eradicate HIV in a couple of years by testing and treating all with HIV.

Global HIV funding trends however suggest that this may fiscally be a tall order for as long as the funders of HIV treatment remain the rich western world and the epicenter of the epidemic remains a needy SubSaharan Africa.

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What Obama's second term says about the new America

The American grand old party(GOP) needs a major overhaul of its political direction and demographic support base re-think in the wake of Obama's razor thin triumph  over Mitt Romney.

It has been suggested that Obama won because of he won among women, African Americans and Hispanics (and other minorities), younger Americans and the traditional democratic states.

The Republican Party model of a core of  white-christian- male support base is no longer enough to earn a win.

The United States has undergone a major population and demographic changes since Ronald Reagan.
Ideologically, most Americans are moving away from the extremes of conservatism or even liberalism to the centre or middle. Indeed the past presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W Bush were pandering towards a middle ground which is how terms like ‘compassionate conservatism’ came into play.
Americans seem to slip into two ideologies and the country is dangerously divided into two almost equal parts. The  winning parties will be those that govern from the middle and diversify away from their traditional base.

Many republicans and democrats are increasingly uncomfortable in their own parties indeed Americans seem to have outgrown the bi-party model of their fathers into a more European model of needing coalition governments given the grey areas in political affliations.

Is Uganda walking the talk on tobacco control?

Uganda ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in June 2007. Uganda is currently in the process of domesticating the FCTC through a comprehensive tobacco control bill that is projected to be enacted by the Ugandan parliament in December 2012. There exist, however, regulations enacted in 2004 banning smoking in public places and a ministerial directive of 1995 banning Tobacco advertising.


This 2012 Shadow report by Civil Society, on Uganda’s compliance with the FCTC with specific regard to two articles of the FCTC; Article 8 on protection from exposure to second-hand smoke and Article 13 on Tobacco Advertising Promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) suggests that there are glaring gaps in enforcement of the standards in Tobacco control that Uganda committed itself to in June 2007.

Despite the passing in 2004 of the (Control of Public smoking)regulations, the regulations largely remain on paper, with no known enforcement practice by the agencies mandated to bring them to bear. There is low awareness among the general Ugandan public of the existence of these regulations but even more worryingly, among the judiciary and the Ugandan Police force. Many owners of public places do place ‘no smoking’ signs on their premises but this is only as much as they are willing to go.

The tobacco industry in Uganda continues to advertise, promote and sponsor activities aimed at increasing demand for tobacco products in contravention of the ministerial directive of 1995 with no known regulatory regime to bring them to account. There have been some gains registered as tobacco advertising is less explicit than it was in years past, for instance, there are virtually no billboards advertising tobacco products. Point of sale (POS) violations do however stand out prominently.

For this report, field visit were extensively done in Kampala, Mbarara and Gulu using FCA observation methodologies in the second quarter of 2012. A data collection workshop with Tobacco control CSOs was conducted in August 2012 with additional secondary data.

We wish to thank the Framework Convention Alliance(FCA) for the research grant that made this report possible and look forward to the Uganda Tobacco Control Act (2012) to bring the Uganda tobacco industry to account for the contraventions compiled in this report.

The futile politics of more public universities in Uganda

I have recently returned from a regional universities’ conference at Nairobi’s Kenyatta University supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Besides noticing the superb multiple-lane, Chinese-built Thika highway in Nairobi that would find a home in any western capital and which Jennifer Musisi should interest her self in, I observed an untold story.

Kenya is undergoing a quiet revolution in its university education which has far reaching consequences extending to Uganda.

Until recently, Kenya had seven public universities that included; Nairobi, Moi, Egerton, Kenyatta, Maseno and Masinde Muliro Universities. Many Kenyans unable to afford Kenyan private student tuition fees flocked to Uganda.

Since 2007 (election year, you recall?), Kenya has through legal notices, embarked on an ambitious drive of establishing a university college in each county with 25 new university colleges already established across the country, a move partly driven by electoral politics.

With new public universities expected in Uganda in West Nile and Teso regions and Kabale University set to benefit from public funding, Uganda is backing the trend.

The principle difference is that the newly established universities in Kenya are constituent colleges of the already existing public universities whereas in Uganda we are setting up entirely new public universities.

The dangers of hastily set up public universities are obvious.

African governments have scarcely been able to support the existing public universities characterized by persistent declines in funding and chronic strikes.

We have a small pool of qualified university lecturers that we are spreading too thin with declining research output owing to punishing teaching loads and overflowing classes. What quality of graduates are we producing? And aren't we churning out more business and computing degrees than we need?

Many lecturers at Kenya’s public universities have found themselves Vice Chancellors and Principals at the newly established university colleges in their home districts- a further example of the unfortunate ‘ethnicisation’ of public universities.

In Uganda’s case, setting up completely new public universities without established infrastructure (the proposed West Nile university initially didn’t even have electricity supply), human resources, university administrative structures, curriculum development resources etc make the Kenyan model seem even preferable.

The major Kenyan public universities have been mandated to nurture the constituent university colleges in Kenya whereas in Uganda, the new public universities are on their own except for two or four administrators seconded from the existing public universities.

Undeniably, there is an unquenched demand for university education in both countries if you imagine the number of Ugandans who earn two principles pass and actually qualify for university education but never make it to university.

But are thousands of more university degrees what poor African countries actually need? Why can't I get a qualified plumber to fix my pipes or a qualified electrician to fix my power or a qualified builder to put up a perimeter wall?

The multiplication of public universities in Kenya should be of interest to Ugandan universities especially private ones which have depended on the Kenyan market for many years now. From where I sit, I already see a decline in the number of enrolling Kenyan students.

In our national development plans and East African community strategy, it is assumed rather than known that Uganda has a comparative advantage over other East African countries with regard to the education sector. My visit to Kenyatta University has left me unsure.

To be fair, mushrooming public universities are not exceptional to Kenya and Uganda and a common to most of Sub Saharan Africa.

From the sole University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia has set up an astonishing new 30 universities in less than five years for its 80 million-strong population -part of the Meles Zenawi legacy. Malawi is setting up three more public universities in addition to its two existing universities of Malawi and Bunda.

Clearly, Sub Saharan African countries face a common challenge of rising young populations with no viable economies to engage them but setting up multiple public universities is the wrong answer to the right question.