UGANDA: OUT OF THE FRYING PAN IN 2015 AND INTO THE FIRE IN 2016?

Ugandans are looking to the New Year with a combination of hope but mostly concern as 2015, a year characterised by economic hardship and rising political tension, winds down.

In April the central bank raised its policy rates, a move for which they received a lot of criticism as inflation was only at 1.9 percent. They explained that the action was taken in anticipation of rising inflation as the shilling begun to plummet and commodity exports slumped.

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THE TOP 10 OF SHILLINGS & CENTS 2015

It has been another year in our journey through time.

During that time Shillings & Cents has taken more than a passing interest in events affecting us. Sometimes with cheeky irreverence, often with head shaking incredulity but always with well meaning sincerity this blog has attempted to uncover the meaning behind and implications that will follow everyday events, which will determine our futures and the very course of history, and even there, I fear I understate the reality.

Below is a ranking by hits per story of the most read articles off this blog in 2015, from the fate of floundering generals to the shamelessness of grubby fingered officials to the geopolitical storms brewing in all around us and further afield to the brainless upbringing of future generations.

The list is by no means comprehensive. Stories of noteworthy importance that did not make the list, but which also enjoyed great popularity include Uganda's tourism gets a short in the arm, How the rich save, The scandal of NSSF's billions and The scent of roses and wealth , all deserving of mention just that there were better entries, but let me not spoil it for you....


10. LESSONS FROM THE UGANDA-KENYA SUGAR BURST UP

Kenyan authorities have been restricting sugar imports from Uganda. They argue that our factories are not producing sugar surplus to our requirements therefore we must be importing sugar for onward sale in Kenya.

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9. OBAMA WALKS TIGHT ROPE IN AFRICA VISIT

US President Barack Obama’s landmark visit to Kenya had him sticking to the script -- extolling democracy, hinting on human right concerns but all the while being careful not to upset key regional allies in the fight against terror.

At a press conference in Nairobi he chastised Kenya for not respecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights, a rejoinder by his counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta to the effect that it was a non-issue for him and his countrymen, put paid to that discussion.

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T7. THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH THE UGANDAN POLLS ARE THROWING UP

Over the last two weeks the New Vision has been running a poll that sampled people’s opinions on the Social, Political, Economic and Cultural issues in our society.

The poll, which randomly sampled more than 6,000 respondents from 43 districts around the country is bound to be a trigger for many other polls coming out in the lead up to the elections next year.

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T7. UGANDA SUGAR STIRS UP KENYAN POLITICS

Perennial nearly-man of Kenyan politics, Raila Odinga is kicking up a storm in the sugar growing regions of western Kenya, mobilising the population to resist the importation of Ugandan sugar to bridge the shortage in the market.

Kenya’s sugar manufacturing industry, which is mostly controlled by the government has failed to keep up with the population’s demand for sugar. As a result their local industry only produces 500,000 tons of the 830,000 tons the region’s largest economy demands.

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6. GENERAL SEJUSA’S TRAVAILS A STAGE IN UGANDA'S EVOLUTION

It started much earlier but let us use January 26^th 1986 as a reference point to chart events and place the events surrounding our most recent headline grabbers, Amama Mbabazi and General David Sejusa’s, in a bigger context.

When the rag-tag National Resistance Army overran Kampala, the city’s state of disrepair was emblematic of the general state of the nation. Electricity supply was intermittent or non-existent for most of the capital’s residents, roads were in such a sorry state as the normal traffic rules were suspended, bread, sugar, paraffin and even bar soap were a luxury.

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5. THE UNWHOLESOME PRESSURE WE PUT ON OUR CHILDREN

Last week 23 year old Joan Abua, frustrated with her third O-levels failure, committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree behind the family home in Akongo village, Otuke district.

In letters she left behind for her family, she lamented, “This world is not easy, I tried my best in vain” and while thanking people for coming to her funeral, she promised to curse her relatives if the letters were not read out for the mourners.

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4. SHILLING COLLAPSE IS OUR FAULT NOT THE DOLLAR’S

Last week the US dollar burst through historical highs against the shilling raising inflationary fears and more stress for local businessmen.

The dollar traded above sh3,000 on Tuesday and held there by the time of publication. This is the highest the dollar has been against the shilling.

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3. UNRA’S FATE IS AN INDICTMENT ON OUR SOCIETY

This week the Uganda National Road Authority (UNRA) board took a chainsaw to its staff, sacking all of them to facilitate a complete overhaul of the organisation, which has become the poster boy for corruption and greed.

The almost 900 workers will be let go over the following weeks but have been given the option to reapply for their jobs when applications are called.

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2. IS OUR SOCIETY IRREDEEMABLY CORRUPT?

This was yet another week in which corruption dominated our headlines.

Uganda National Road Authority (UNRA)’s Allen Kagina took a slasher to the organisation’s hierarchy, sacking some, encouraging others not to seek contract renewal and causing soul searching in the authority, which had become the byword for the worst excesses of corruption in this country’s history.

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1. NOW WE ARE GOING INTO CAR MANUFACTURE?

Last week the Kiira Motors Company (KMC) unveiled their 25 year old business plan.

The company which started as some engineering undergraduates tinkering around resulted in the development of the Kiira EV prototype, a car that runs on electric power in 2011. According to the business the planned car assembly plant will employ up to 10,000 people, is projected to be profitable by 2023 and at full capacity in 2039 will be rolling out 60,000 units.

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HOW TO TURN AGRICULTURE AROUND

Two weeks ago Uganda’s best farmers, as judged by a New Vision poll, congregated on the lawns of the Serena Hotel to decide who was the fairest of them all.

The choice of the five star hotel as the venue to celebrate farmers seemed counter-intuitive at first, but why not?

"Farmers, account for about 30 percent of our economic output, more than half our export earnings and provide a livelihood for seven in every ten Ugandans. What better way to begin to start acknowledging their importance than to wine and dine them at our top hotel?...

At the end of the night Tonny Kidega from northern Uganda put another exclamation mark to the event. A dairy farmer from northern Uganda, he upset the stereotypes that dairy farmers come from western Uganda, and with his victory made the emphatic statement that northern Uganda is ready to take its place in the development of this country.

There were several things to note on the night and which provide useful pointers in our effort to use agriculture as the springboard to industrialisation and beyond.

First of all, the winners relied more on individual initiative, not seating around waiting for hand outs from government or elsewhere. Secondly, they employed vastly improved agricultural methods, which while they are not perfect ensure that the outputs from their farms is way above their contemporaries who farm for subsistence or own farms as a status symbol.

However it is in these related issues that government needs to intervene in the sector to level the playing field, so to speak.

Kidega is himself a veterinary doctor so in effect he provides his own extension services. The other winners were united in their use of expert help, either public or private, in extracting the maximum from their farms.

"The singular failure of the government towards the sector in recent years is the collapse of the provision of extension services especially for those, who unlike Kidega and his fellow winners cannot afford to pay for pricier services. Extension workers would help improve farming methods, keep farmers up to date with the use and adoption of inputs, organise them to improve their bargaining power and to take advantage of economies of scale...

During a recent tour of the Madhvani’s Kakira sugar plantations it was reported that the 9000 –odd out growers are serviced by about 100 extension works – called outgrower superintendents, who looked into everything from scheduling planting to credit provision to welfare services.

Using Kakira as model would mean that Uganda’s four million agricultural household would need at least 40,000 extension works roaming around the country side assisting them improve the productivity of their farms.

The reality of course is much different. According to an agriculture ministry survey in 2011 barely 700,000 families or least than one in five farmers had come in contact with an extension worker.

It’s no wonder that agriculture is growing at less than five percent a year, probably buoyed more by the Kidega’s than the majority small holder farmers who populate the country side and, God bless them, feed the rest of us.

Not to belabour the point but this is key.

 All the competing farmers were ordinary men and women who decided to jump in feet first in an enterprise that, while it is central to this country is treated with disdain, and find a way to not only make it work but make serious incomes from it. And all of them have, by no means reached their full potential.

Unfortunately and unnecessarily they have gone through a process not unlike reinventing the wheel to iron out the kinks that come with farming in this country. The learning curve could have been much improved with the help of better advice about the peculiar circumstances each found themselves in.

"If we are looking for a game changer in agriculture, to raise output from our farmers, which can form the base for a robust agroprocessing industry, we can do little better than investing more determinedly in agricultural extension services...

And we will not be reinventing the wheel. Older generations talk of young eager – mostly, male , extension workers scouring the countryside on foot and bicycle, servicing farmers.

People think that the difference between the great agricultural concerns of this country the sugar plantations of eastern and western Uganda, the oil palm plantations of the islands or the coffee farmers of the Mubende-Mityana area is there size, but on closer analysis it is the access to quality advice that makes the difference.

BURUNDI TRAGEDY HAPPENING AT THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME

A tragedy begins to unfold before our very eyes in Burundi.

Since last week about a hundred people have been killed following an attack on three military installations in the small east African nation.

Some observers say these were just the latest in an insidious campaign, which begun as a drive to snuff out opposition to a third term bid by President Pierre Nkurunziza, but which now threatens to spin out off control as the victims resort to retaliation as the state offers no redress.

The tension between the Hutu and Tutsi in that part of the world is always bubbling under the surface threatening to flare up at the slightest provocation. Fuelled by bad politics, dehumanising poverty and callous geopolitics a repeat of the 1994 Rwanda genocide is never discounted.

"The historical context is long but to summarise, when Belgium colonised Rwanda and Burundi they found dichotomous societies where the minority Tutsi ruled over the majority Hutu. The Belgians amplified this divide – as was the wont of all colonialists, by favouring the ruling Tutsi against the rest in terms of access to education, health and the general economic advancement.
They then upped and left, leaving the fissures and tribal animosities not only intact, but festering, presumably for us to sort ourselves. Well, we are doing that the best way we know...

Post-colonial governments since have been able to keep the lid on by sheer brute force. But these pressures are always looking for release and the more they are capped, the more likely they are to explode with devastating and unanticipated consequences.

Ideally what should have happened is that through stability and economic development, these ethnic divides would have been smoothed out, even eradicated. With stability as both sides become more and more economically dependent on each other for survival, and even to thrive, commercial interest would subsume tribal fidelities.

It did not happen, so the populations of that region find themselves in a perpetual death clinch where mutual distrust means there is always a sense of foreboding.

It has come at a bad time.

To begin with the general international posture seems to be, like it was for Rwanda in 1994, that it is happening in a small place in the center of Africa, there is little risk of a regional conflagration, so make some appropriate sounds, half-hearted threats and let it work itself out.

Secondly, there are regional rivalries that are staying local actors’ hands.

In the East Africa Community Burundi has aligned itself with Tanzania, while the action men of Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya have gone about fast tracking regional integration. While Rwanda, with most to lose by a flare up of those ancient animosities, very similar to the ones at home, would love to offer some leadership – especially military, in resolving the issue, it daren’t do so without a regional consensus, which maybe hard to come by now.

Uganda is leading an already existing mediation process, Kenya is not known for military adventurism and in Tanzania, the leadership is only just finding its feet.

But as if that is not enough the regional actors’ economies are reeling from a strengthening dollar and falling commodity prices. There is little room to manoeuvre in terms of playing a more active role in Burundi unilaterally or collectively.

It is a sobering reality.

I imagine the diplomatic cables are being employed over time, favours are being called in and less charitable words are being exchanged, to see this issue resolved as quickly as possible. Which is as it should be.

It however raises real questions for the East African Community.

"In the event of likely future episodes like this, with the rest of the world distracted or apathetic to  our plight, can we build the capacity to clean up our own mess?..

UGANDA’S TOURISM GETS A SHOT IN THE ARM

Former Dutch and Barcelona FC striker Patrick Kluivert’s spectacular goal in a weekend exhibition match in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, may be the shot that launches a thousand ships towards Uganda’s shores, tourism promoters’ hope. The goal, whose video has been viewed by more than 85,000 people after…

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NOW WE ARE GOING INTO CAR MANUFACTURE? #SMH

Last week the Kiira Motors Company (KMC) unveiled their 25 year old business plan.

The company which started as some engineering undergraduates tinkering around resulted in the development of the Kiira EV prototype, a car that runs on electric power in 2011. According to the business the planned car assembly plant will employ up to 10,000 people, is projected to be profitable by 2023 and at full capacity in 2039 will be rolling out 60,000 units.

The project will be developed by Makerere University and the government.

You will forgive me if I do not share the same enthusiasm for the project as its promoters.

When the Kiira EV was launched I struggled to put the development in its place in the wider context of Uganda. It was a great achievement for the students and their supervisors without a doubt. I wondered whether maybe they could license the process to someone else. Then disturbing noises started about how we are going to commercialise the concept and even build buses.

Disturbing because whereas the car may have passed muster technically, it did not mean the market will embrace it. It was hard to even get a price of how much a Kiira EV would cost on the road.

So when last week the promoters revealed that KMC’s cars would go at $20,000 (sh66m) I had to pinch myself.  I would have dismissed it as a bad dream were it not for the fanfare that surrounded the business plan’s launch.

Let us start from first principles.

Despite the congestion there are less than a million cars on Ugandan roads today. Easily nine in ten of these are second hand cars bought for less than $10,000. Most if all of them bought cash down.

For years the dealers of brand new cars have tried to bend government’s ear towards making new cars easy to buy. They suggested more taxes on second hand cars, relax conditions on asset financing, to name a few. Government made some concessions here and there but nothing to get the new car industry flying.

These concessions pale in comparison with what KMC will demand to be a viable enterprise. Already it was reported that the land and infrastructure required will cost $36m (sh120b).

Concessions are necessary to make the car affordable, a $20,000 car in Uganda would be dead on arrival, setting 2023 as a breakeven date would have to be taken with a tablespoon of salt.

And if you can’t sell the car locally do we believe we can compete abroad?

"Secondly, as a country we have neither the comparative advantage --  that we can make cars better than any other product, nor the competitive advantage --  that we can make cars better than other people, which is a red flag for the enterprise. Both conditions are not insurmountable but at great cost and without guarantee of success...

Essentially, we will have to deny much needed funds to social services and infrastructure development to indulge in this adventure and after we have poured in millions of dollars, only to find that after all, we cannot make a commercial success of it. Ask the Kenyans.

And finally and connected to the last point is, is the push into car assembly the best use of our hard earned cash? Wouldn’t we be better building more roads or dams, whose outcomes would have a more far reaching effect on the economy?

One can argue that the car assembly industry would be a technological leap for us and would throw off many more industries that would have wider applications like electronics, metallurgy and upholstery. But advances in technology and supply chain management suggest that to make the industry viable the plant will require fewer than the 10,000 workers suggested and most components will be sourced abroad.

Indian industrial conglomerate, Tata in 2008 started producing the Nano car, a small energy efficient, inexpensive car with a $2,500 price tag. They thought the 30 million middle class would lap it up. They are still waiting. Initial indicators were that the car was too expensive, being more costly than a motorcycle so they stayed away.

"I would love to be wrong on this but whichever way you look at it this project has no wheels, is a whacky distraction from more serious priorities and can only be justified as a vanity project – until it doesn’t work...

OF HOES AND THE CHATTERING MASSES

A few weeks ago President Yoweri Museveni set off the chattering masses with his announcement that he was going to see that government distributes 18 million hoes to villages across the country.

The response from the urban elite was unbridled derision, we the chattering masses were rolling in the aisles our sides threatening to crack with the absurdity of the campaign pledge.

Aren’t we supposed to be modernising agriculture? Shouldn’t we be distributing tractors? Credit to the chattering masses they dusted up their primary arithmetic skills and did a quick calculation.

That if a hoe is sh25,000 (that should have warned us to how out of touch the calculator was, a hoe goes for sh7,000 in Arua.  But never mind him) government would spend sh450b. The calculator then divided this by sh120m – his proposed cost of a tractor,  and came up with 3750 tractors he then divided this by 110 districts (actually there are 112) and came up with about 34 tractors per district.

Even I was amazed at the possibility.

But then when one thought of it, one wondered whether a lack of tractors more than hoes was the key issue in the agricultural sector?

For the chattering masses modernisation of agriculture is synonymous with mechanisation, which is not entirely wrong.

"A cursory look around Uganda’s agricultural sector shows that yes hoes are still very much in use, but also that they are in short supply...

Ever since the Chillington tool company based in JInja folded up its plant and left the country in the early part of the last decade we have not been making hoes locally. They folded because they couldn’t compete with the cheaper imports.

In 2011 then finance minister Maria Kiwanuka scrapped the 10 percent import duty on hoes as a way to lower their costs and eventually raise productivity. That intervention was missed by the chattering masses but signals a recognition that there are issues with our farmers getting this much needed implement.

The majority of farmers – 96 percent of the 3.95 million farming households, in Uganda are small holders with farms of less than three acres according to official statistics. A tractor is not their immediate need. 

Interestingly of all the farming households 3.4 million of them have hoes according to a 2011 statistical abstract from the agriculture ministry. So one wonders about the half a million households without a hoe, what do they use to cultivate their crops? And is one hoe per household enough?

The numbers also show that only about 30,000 households employ tractors.

But to see mechanisation as the only evidence of modernised agriculture is to keep a narrow view of the issue. Essentially mechanisation suggests increased productivity, defined as out per unit input be it land, labour or capital, but increased productivity can be managed in our context without mechanisation as we the chattering masses think.

In the areas around Mubende the Neumann foundation is working with coffee farmers to improve the productivity of their holdings. According to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) the average yield of a coffee farm in Uganda is half a ton a hectare, but the farmers in the project double even triple, this out put on their own, with not a tractor in sight.

The key to their improved yields is the extension services made available to them by the Neumann Group, which means they benefit from information about better coffee farming and handling practices, setting up and running farm organisations, improved bargaining power and access to inputs on credit.

To make the argument that giving farmers hoes is backward thinking is fallacious.

"As the numbers show hoes are urgently needed. However beyond hoes it is clear that our farmers are getting little to no guidance, and therefore unable to improve productivity and therefore remaining in poverty...

The same Agriculture ministry figures showed that of the nearly four million farming households 0.68 million or about a sixth of all farmers benefit from extension services.

In an ideal world we should be clamouring for tractors instead of hoes, but in the current circumstances that will be like me pining for a private jet to go to work when I need a car or better public transport.

In my mind the joke is really on us the chattering masses.

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THE IDI AMIN ERA

There seems to be some confused thinking about the Idi Amin era.

Revisionists point to the building of the Nile Conference center – now the Serena Conference center and the Mpoma earth satellite station as some of the achievements of his eight year period.

Some for good measure throw in the expulsion of the Asians. To hear some of these people who were not born by 1986 speak about it, the Asians had a stranglehold on the economy and were it not for the Asian expulsion we would not be where we are today. Which is exactly nowhere.

The record shows that by 1979 when the Conqueror of the British Empire was overthrown the Ugandan economy was on its knees having regressed back to a subsistence economy, as all industrial capacity had ground to a halt.

"But the more you examine the period you realise that the breakdown in physical infrastructure was not the worst legacy of the era. The real tragedy was the break down of the spirit of a once proud people and the missed opportunities for development that cannot be recovered...

The spiritual, as opposed to the physical or material loss to this country was brought into sharp relief when a fortnight ago journalists were conducted on a tour of Kakira Sugar Works, the centrepiece of the Madhvani empire.

The 10,000 hectares that is the nucleus plantation – they also have an additional 25,000 hectares overseen by their outgrowers, the sugar plant, which produces 180,000 tons of sugar annually, the 50 MW power generation operation and a planned plant that will distill 20 million liters of ethanol from molasses, were all impressive in their scale but even more impressive was to imagine the work, organisation and perseverance into building this industrial complex.

Easily each of those four units is a multi-million dollar operation.

The patriarch of the Madhvani clan, Muljibhai came to Uganda in 1908 but only went into the sugar production business in 1930. So from a purely mathematical standpoint the sugar works have been in existence for at least 85 years. However I prefer to think that the sugar works were in the making for at least 100 years, because to ignore all the work done by Muljibhai in setting himself up to launch the project.

The lesson here is that given the size of our economy, which is not very big, the undertaking that we see at Kakira has taken 100 years and two generations to build.  There are no shortcuts.

Which brings me back to the losses that go beyond the destruction of the physical infrastructure during the Amin era.

Kenya had many more Asians than Uganda did in 1972. At independence in 1963 the Asian population in Kenya was about 180,000, the number of Indians expelled from Uganda in 1972 were about 50,000 give or take a few thousand.

This single decision denied our businessmen the mentorship that would have gone on to launch thousands of indigenous businesses, as has happened in Kenya, which has a much more influential and vibrant indigenous capital base.

In fact our biggest indigenous businessmen learnt their craft from their Asian bosses in the 1960s and 70s.

"We celebrate the cronies of the state to whom businesses were dished to in 1972. But if you look for where they are now, you would be hard pressed to find a handful who parlayed those assets over the passing of the last 45 years into sizeable business with at least a national presence, live alone regional presence....

Anyone who has attempted business knows that serving apprenticeship at the feet of a more accomplished mentor, will serve you better than all the business management books listed on Amazon.

Of course the argument can be made, because of the collapse of the economy Ugandans are by default the most entrepreneurial people in the world. The flip side of this is that, few businesses ever make it to their fifth birthday. Maybe if the Asians had stuck around we would have fewer business men but better quality ones.

In expelling  the Asians the loss to our economy was much more intangible than material and while the economy may have recovered to its 1971 level almost a decade ago, I fear we may never recover the otherworldly losses that arose out of, not only the expulsion of the Asians, but also the breakdown in ethics and cultural values during the time.

MAGUFULI, THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESIDENT

Last month Dr John Magufuli took office as the President of the Republic of Tanzania after a hotly contested campaign against Edward Lowassa, a defector from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party.

Whereas some observers held out that Lowassa had a real chance of overturning the CCM’s half a century hold on power, Magufuli beat him handily polling 58 percent of the votes.

Sworn in as president on November 5, Magufuli lost no time in making his presence felt. Days into his presidency he visited Muhimbili Hospital, a major referral hospital, and finding it in a deplorable state fired the administrator and gave the staff days to get some vital equipment up and running or risk going the same way as their boss.

He was not done yet.

He then slashed the budget for a celebrations for MPs and used the savings to buy beds and mattresses for that same hospital.

"What some might have dismissed as kasigiri and thought would burn out as soon as it erupted were sorely disappointed...

Magufuli then took an axe to foreign travel trips for officials, dictating that Tanzanians embassy staff will represent the country abroad. The savings for this he has earmarked for social services.

Unfazed by the grumbling of government bureaucrats, Magufuli questioned the wisdom of the paying public servants allowances for work they were supposed to do anyway.

The coup de grace – until the next one, Magufuli scrapped this year’s independence celebrations which fall on 9^th December, wondering how the country can spend millions on these celebrations when cholera is running amok in some places. He has directed that instead Tanzanians will engage in public cleaning of their surroundings.

And oh yes! He has also stopped the sending of Christmas cards by government offices staring this festive season.

They may look like tokenism, even grand standing from afar, but h they have succeeded in setting the tone of his presidency and sending out the message that it will not be business as usual with the good doctor of chemistry.

Two things have managed to swing the regional and international spotlight on Magufuli.

People who know Magufuli are unsurprised by the devout Catholic’s willing ness to overturn the status quo but even they express surpise at the speed and extent of what he has done.

He has held several ministerial briefs under his predecessor Jakaya Kikwete, including the lucrative works ministry, where some of his contemporaries vouch for his clean reputation.

Magufuli is no political novice, after all you do not capture for yourself the leadership of the CCM by being a wall flower, but the explosion in social media means that his exploits were being broadcast in real time to networks of thousands even millions finding its way across the world before the TV bulletins, something that was impossible even five years ago.

"Of course it helped that he served as breath of fresh air into an ossified political landscape and played to an audience – around the region, used to government fat cats living  first world lifestyles amidst their dehumanising poverty...

If anyone had any doubts about how social media can be a game changer the Magufuli phenomenon has to have put those to rest.

Two things can happen.

Buoyed by the groundswell of support Magufuli can ride it to do a much needed clean-up of Tanzania’s politics and carry the momentum to introduce other unpopular measures, like the complete opening up to the East African Community and the unlocking of this sleepy giants full potential.

Or he can succumb to the blow back from the rattled beneficiaries of the status quo, who are undoubtedly burning the midnight candle to subvert his “people’s revolution” and return things to business as usual.

On a purely sentimental basis I hope Magufuli beats back his detractors and continues on his pro-people crusade, but I fear that the inertia of Tanzanian bureaucracy, which is the slowest in the region anyhow, will bring the bulldozer – a soubriquet he earned while for his indomitable spirit in the face of obstacles in his previous ministries, to a grinding halt.

In the latter case I would love to be wrong. Time will tell.

UGANDA’S SUGAR INDUSTRY IN DANGER OF IMPLOSION

The El Nino rains and cane poaching are expected to affect Uganda’s sugar production, the latter issue will also affects the long term viability of an industry which has made a remarkable recovery after years of neglect. Uganda last year produced 438,000 tons of sugar way above the local demand…

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THE POWER OF CONSISTENT CONTRIBUTION

Last week the New Vision Staff Savings & Credit Cooperative commemorated ten years of its existence.

What started off as a lunch time discussion has blossomed into a company with more than a million dollars in assets and a net asset value of a billion shillings.

Those numbers look like nothing compared to the biggest tax payers in the country (The New Vision SACCO also pays taxes) but it has taken a decade to grow the business with our own resources. Even more noteworthy is that members who did not have two cents to rub together at its inception have accounts that run in the millions of shillings.

At the event the Dunstan Kisule, the CEO of the Y-SaveSACCO, which inspired the New Vision SACCO, gave us a snapshot of what they have achieved in the last 16 years, which was enough to snap us out of our complacency at what we have achieved so far and give us new targets to aim for going forward.

"Cooperative organisations in their various permutations are a powerful tool for pooling resources and deploying them in direct response to the societies that they serve...

But the even more powerful lesson from the Cooperatives is they debunk the fallacy that we do not have the resources amongst ourselves to cause local development. By employing the time and proper organisation we can achieve more in time than we can ever believe possible.

My best SACCO story is the Wazalendo story, the biggest SACCO in Uganda, whose members are the officers and men of the UPDF.

After a decade of operations the 73,000 strong organisation reported total assets of sh130b ( $36m) and shareholder equity of sh67b. This is all the more remarkable because we all know that our soldiers are not the best paid members of our society.

This organisations are formed with a social mission at the center of their raison d’etre but they all make profits, so profits and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive. In fact businessmen are coming around to the fact that revenues and profits are only a by-product of providing a service to society.

And we are not reinventing the wheel. SACCOs dotted the countryside for years, only disrupted by our turbulent past, they are still there trying to make the best of a difficult situation. But their mobilising resources nevertheless, putting to shame people who think there is no money in the rural areas.

"It is a well worn cliché but whose wisdom is irrefutable that when there is collective action the sum total of its effect is more than the sum of the individual parts. They call it synergy, one plus one is not two but eleven...

Decades of donor dependence means that every time we have a need we look outside ourselves, be it as individuals, communities or even nationally when if we put our minds to it most of the resources we need we can mobilise domestically.

But beyond that SACCOS if run soundly take advantage of what Albert Einstein called the eighth wonder of the world – compounding, essentially that benefits (in this case interest) beget benefits begets benefits.

So if one saved a million shillings in year one and there was say a five percent interest on that money every year, it would take fourteen years to double that figure. But for a saver who is consistent adding a million year for those fourteen years a rough calculation suggests they will have accumulated about sh21million – sh14 principle and sh7m in interest.

And we have not even begun to look at the capital gains from the increase in value in members shareholding in the coop, which if the costs are kept down and profits retained aggressively can grow multiple times faster than the savings.

Across the border from us in Kenya where SACCOs have gone largely undisturbed at least since independence, the hundreds of SACCOs peppered around the country control savings of more than $20b or the equivalent of Ugandan economy. But the Kenyans have moved to the next level and are now forming investment clubs with as much vigour as they did the SACCOs in the years gone by.

The SACCOs when well-run serve a useful social service but beyond that as a force for transformation of societies where access to finance is restricted.

They do not need hand-outs, though money injected in well-run SACCOs can produce prodigious returns, what they need is advisory services on how to run them properly and build their capacity in sustainable ways.