REALIGNING THE STATE WITH THE PEOPLE’S ASPIRATIONS

Last week Karomoja affairs minister Mary Goretti Kitutu was charged in the Anti-corruption court and spent the Easter weekend in Luzira.

This happened because she was the alleged mastermind of the Karamoja iron sheets scam that has held our attention over the last few weeks. Minister Kitutu, it has been reported, dished out hundreds of iron sheets meant as relief aid for Karamoja, to her well-heeled minster colleagues and other senior government officials, who among other things used the sheets to roof their animal pens.

This column has had a thing or two to say about corruption since it begun almost 20 years ago. Looking through the archives I came across this gem (If I may say so myself) from September 2014 which run under this very headline, in which I tried to put this whole corruption thing in perspective.

Beyond showing that the more things change the more things stay the same, a less cynical me thought there was hope for the anti-corruption fight, with a hopeful ending that I think has been overtaken by events. You will be the judge.

Read on dear reader.

What is corruption? Corruption is the employment of public goods for personal enrichment.

 

Or maybe we should add, employment of public goods for personal, family and friends’ enrichment.

By this definition corruption goes beyond stealing money, but will include employing company facilities – using official cars to ferry charcoal or official computers to do private consultancies or official time to do private errands.

 

To complete the definition we might add, corruption is the employment of public/company goods for personal, family and friends’ enrichment. And you can be sure we have not covered all the bases.

 

Corruption comes from a misalignment of ambitions between the government officials and the public or between the employees and shareholders or clients. If you can align those two ambitions, corruption need not exist. I think.

 

The theory is that governments are in place to improve the welfare of their people, be it in terms of improved security, services and infrastructure. Generally governments are, or should be, in the business of creating a conducive environment for their people, to not only survive but thrive.

 

It is not automatic.

 

"For government to execute its mandate, its bureaucracy needs to one, appreciate the end goal and two, make their own personal ambitions subservient to this overarching goal...

Without the latter it will matter little if everyone understands the former.

 

So, under what circumstances do personal greed override the well-meaning intentions of the government?

 

It progresses slowly but increases in pace as more and more people are roped into the scam.

It starts when the bar of what is considered corrupt is raised. One minister famously complained that he had only eaten a few hundreds of thousands of dollars when others had eaten more. That the press should stop witch-hunting him!

 

Proceeds on to when public officials get away with more and more without getting caught. When we hear official so-so and the other have stolen billions of shillings, it rarely is the case that they did it in one fell sweep. Often times the stolen billions are the cumulative effect of years of “hard” work.

 

And then when the bosses start co-opting subordinates in their shady deals.

 

The story is told of former Zaire now Democratic Republic of Congo president Mobutu Ssese SSeko. Whenever he wanted some money from the central bank he would send his personal assistant with a note for say $10,000, the personal assistant would trot over to the central bank, but only after adding a zero to the request to make it $100,000. The central bank governor would unlock the vaults,  but only after adding his own zero to make it $1,000,000.

So at the end Mobutu pocketed his $10,000 (maybe even tipped his PA $100!), the PA got $90,000 and the central bank boss got $900,000. Makes you wonder whether Mobutu was truly the richest man in Zaire.

 

And finally, the institution becomes a machine for the promotion of private enrichment for its officials. It may even hire out its competence to people outside.

Of course, the logical conclusion to all this is that eventually the government is captured, it forgets its original raison d’etre and becomes a free-for-all-but-the-people eating spree.

By this time even inserting your most upright citizens to cause a clean-up is an exercise in futility, as the “eating” networks are so pervasive and coordinated, that the most righteous individual will soon be subsumed by the sheer magnitude of the racket.

And the people?

Well, they will get a few crumbs when the officials charge down to the village in government monster four-wheel drives or pay fees in decrepit schools, in a bad state because they do not get enough funding from the government or a few contributions for weddings, whose standards have been blown out of all reasonableness by the example of these thieving officials' own parties.

"Actually, the worst thing that can happen is not that the government becomes a machine feeding off the people’s sweat for the enrichment of the few. The worst thing that can happen is that the whole population – the thieves and victims, slowly but with increasing pace accept this state of affairs as the new normal....

When your brightest minds clamour for government jobs over the private sector, where the jobs are more enriching – in the sense of professional development and advancement, you know all is lost.

Thankfully that last part has not happened in Uganda. Not yet!

 

TAKE A LONG-TERM VIEW ON THE POWER SECTOR

Last week the South African power company Eskom’s 20-year concession to run the Kiira-Nalubaale power complex came to a close.

The plant was handed over to Uganda Electricity Generation Company Ltd (UEGCL) who will continue to run it on behalf of government for the benefit of the consumers.

Eskom’s involvement begun following the unbundling of the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) into its constituent parts of generation, transmission and distribution at the end of the last century. Given the major overhaul the sector needed and government’s financial handicap, the idea in breaking up UEB was to attract private investment into the sector and benefit from the specialization that comes with the operation of individual parts of the value chain.

These objectives have been largely been met.

"Since 2000 more than $5b has been invested in the sector in terms of increased generation capacity and extension of the distribution network. For government this was a win-win situation since the private sector put up most of this investment, in addition government has seen increasing tax revenues from the sector and of course increased the electricity coverage in the country....

As an indicator when Umeme took over distribution the number of accounts stood at under 300,000. This number has now grown to more than 1.6 million. Umeme’s concession too is not being renewed when it comes due in 2025.

What has happened is a complete turnaround of the sector through the judicious use of private capital.

The sector has been good to all the investors who have been involved, no doubt.

Part of the reason government is not renewing the various concessions is because of the drive to push the cost of power from the generator to below US5cents. President Yoweri Museveni has set this as a goal for the sector and his people have advised that taking back the industry will go some way in bringing down the tariff.

"What they may not be telling the President is that while a lower tariff is desirable, even yesterday, it has repercussions on the maintenance and replacement and eventually the long-term sustainability of the sector...

The tariff charged by Kiira-Nalubaale has been the lowest of all the generators at about US1cent per unit of power. This low tariff has helped reduce the average tariff across the sector but at the expense of the health of the plant.

An audit of the power plant before last week’s hand over showed that the Eskom had only invested $51m on the plant over the last 20 years, woefully below what they should have been investing. According to the World Bank they should have invested at least two percent annually of the initial investment, which would have been at least $5.4m a year in the case of Kiira, which was built for $270m.

"By maintaining an artificially low tariff, UEGCL has inherited a plant that is in urgent need of $10m worth of remedial works and a potential $150m refurbishment bill for Nalubaale, which will be making 70 years next year....

The US1cent tariff allowed Eskom barely enough to operate and maintain the plant and not much else. To illustrate, one power unit has gone unused for ten years – from 2013, meaning no power has been generated there. Instead, it was being canibalised for spare parts.

We all want lower power tariffs, especially since our power demands have grown exponentially since 2000. We now need to charge multiple phones and devices, power TVs and cookers, not to mention keep multiple security lights on through the night. But we have to be careful not to settle for short term comfort at the expense of long-term sustainability.

Again, ask Eskom. In 2000 when we were being ravaged by daily load shedding, South Africa Eskom’s home country did not know the meaning of load shedding. However, a system inherited from the apartheid era, which while adequate for serving the white minority was beginning to buckle under the strain of the new demand from black majority.

While the political demand was to bring more and more black communities onto the grid, not enough attention was placed on how to do it sustainably, first of all using the existing generation capacity and provide for increasing this capacity.

Between 2000 to 2022 Eskom South Africa has only increased generation capacity to 45,000 MW from 43,000MW. In the 10 years prior Eskom’s generation capacity grew by 3,000 MW. While the headlines about Eskom’s failing revolve around corruption, pandering to short term comfort over long term sustainability is central to the problem.

As a result, Eskom now peak time demand has surpassed supply by as 6000 MW, which is three times Uganda’s total generation capacity, and the economy is suffering for it and the ruling Africa National congress (ANC) is paying a political price.

"The private sector rescued the sector and brought it to this stage, which for all intents and purposes, is barely the take off stage. To ensure that the take off is not aborted we need a realistic tariff which maybe painful in the short term but as the economies of scale kick in (assuming we have increased our generation capacity sustainably) the lower tariff will come....

AGENCY BANKING AND THE QUEST FOR FINANCIAL DEEPENING

A very quick measure of an economy’s dynamism is the amount of money in circulation -- money in our hands, pockets and under our mattresses versus the total amount of money including that being held in the banks.

The less the money in circulation compared to the money in banks, the better for an economy. Banks play an intermediary between those with the money and those who need the money. Money in your pockets is not helping you or anyone else, its just seating there. But you shift that money in to an account and the bank can on lend it to someone who needs it to consume or produce.

"The trick is to create a mechanism to liberate people from their cash and pool it in a place that those in need can have access to it. The more efficiently society can do this the better for the economy...

On Monday last week the Ugandan Bankers Association (UBA), the Agency Banking Company (ABC) and German aid agency, GIZ hosted an event to assess the rollout and impact of agency banking in northern Uganda over the last five years.

Five years ago Bank of Uganda opened the doors to agent bankers, who collect deposits, effect withdrawals among other financial services for their clients.

The rationale was simple. Since it costs too much -- $300,000, by some estimates to open a bank branch, why not coopt the business community in providing banking services.

This had the effect of increasing the banks’ reach into our communities and easing the pressure on their banking halls.

Similar was found in northern Uganda though not at the scale we see in Kampala.

Since the central bank’s approval of agency banking UBA and its partners have been working to popularise this mode of financial services in northern Uganda.

Ravage by war during 1990s and early 2000s northern Uganda proved a challenge for banks to spread their branches. With little urbanization and populations spread far and wide across the region the traditional model of bank branches would be a hard sell or at least would take longer than desirable to make a traction.

The study showed that the number of agencies or distribution points increased to 692  by end of 2022 from nothing five years prior. This reduced average distance from user to agent to 1.8 km from 6.8km increasing the value of transactions during the period by 18 percent. As a result, just under a thousand jobs were created directly by the agent banks.

The numbers may be a bit underwhelming, understandable coming from a low base, but the researchers also pointed out that agency banking found better traction in the region’s urban rather than rural areas.

 A raft of recommendations were made among which were that agent banking should be further promoted in the region through sensitisation of agents and the users,  reduction of initial cost of investment for agents and organize the agents into associations with a view to improving the business model.

Invariably the model will be greatly helped by improvements in telecommunications technology and the uptake of these technologies by more people.

"The ground has been set and its possible the north will leap frog the rest of the country in adopting agency banking and therefore getting financial services to more people than the rest of us who were hung up on branch networks. From there it will be a small step to adopting fintech....

Returning to the earlier explanation about money being more useful in banks than in pour pockets, believe it or not there was a time our salaries were paid to us in cash. God forbid you were paid on a Friday.

Today they post salaries to your account. If you don’t drain your account immediately someone will use your money to consume or produce.

And this is more important than we appreciate. According to central bank figures more than half the local currency in circulation is in our hands – sh14trillion of sh24trillion in February 2022, the most recent figures available. In more advanced economies this figure is much lower at under 10 percent. That makes a world of difference.

"It suggests that money is transmitted more efficiently from those who have to those who need it and has a huge bearing on the cost of borrowing. Banks make their money mostly through lending, if their cash holding increase they will be under pressure to get it out of the door quicker and hence a lowering of lending rates...

The rise of mobile money can only be a boon for agency banking as it will quicken transactions and widen access.

Its still early days for agency banking in Uganda, but the initial signs are very promising.

 

KIIRA-NALUBAALE MAYBE UEGCL’S POISONED CHALICE

At the beginning of this week South African power company, Eskom ceremonially handed over the Kiira-Nalubaale dams, they have been running for the last 20 years, back to Uganda.

And on Saturday, a day after the concession is over, they will officially hand over the 380 MW plant to Uganda Electricity Generation Company Ltd (UEGCL).

At the beginning of the 2000s the Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) was broken up into it constituent parts of generation (UEGCL), transmission (UETCL) and distribution (UEDCL). In addition, a regulator, Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) was created to oversee the sector.

The idea was that more investment could be attracted into the sector and  we would benefit from the specialization that would come with one operator focusing on distribution or generation. A consortium of investors and operators won the deal to distribute power and formed UMEME Ltd while several private operators set up generation plants. UETCL remained operated by government.

"A dark cloud hung over what would have been a joyous occasion at the hand over of the plant, because as it turns out, UEGCL is inheriting a plant that is in urgent need of remedial work and the prospect of multimillion dollar rehabilitation of the Nalubaale dam, which will make 70 years in operation next year...

Immediately UEGCL will need at least $10m (sh37b) to make repairs, which are a result of a back log of maintenance works that have gone undone over the last few years.

A battery of issues await UEGCL’s takeover, which may lead to financial loss, danger to workers’ and the general public and reputational damage to UEGCL, if not handled promptly.

Eskom clearly did not look after the plant very well. More than half the rehabilitation work on the dam of $51m was done over the last five years, with the under investment in the plant falling to as little as  $91,174 in 2017.

As an indicator of how woefully inadequate these outlays were the World Bank has recommended that between 2.0 and 2.5 percent of the initial investment should go into equipment and civil works annually. Given that the Kiira dam cost us about $270m, annual maintenance costs should be at least $5.4m. Eskom averaged about $2.5m a year in maintenance costs, explaining the backlog of headache UEGCL is set to inherit.

"Eskom officials argue that they could not manage that level of investment because ERA set their tariff artificially low, from which they would have got funds to finance a higher commitment...

The Kiira-Nalubaale plant  have the lowest tariff at just over US 1 cent per unit of power of any  generator who sells to the grid. Other generators are earning at least US7cents. This is mainly because of the finance costs of the plant have long been recovered.

The ultra-low tariff from Kiira-Nalubaale has been convenient for ERA to keep the weighted average tariff low but if Eskom are to believed, has prevented them from investing properly on the plant.

It did not help too, that for years there have been questions about Eskom’s capability to execute the concession properly, its parent company having been rendered bankrupt in 2019.

The aforementioned should have a bearing on what government pay Eskom as compensation for the non-renewal of the concession, but will not as deficiencies in the original concession agreement means government cannot fine Eskom for these breaches of the concession agreement. Parliament is currently mulling over a government request to pay Eskom sh45b in compensation.

So UEGCL will have to shoulder these urgent remedial works, after they have seen Eskom out the door on Saturday.

"Clearly ERA will have to revise their thinking on suppressing the tariff, if UEGCL is to fund these remedial works and a long overdue refurbishment of the Nalubaale dam, which it is estimated will cost $150m....

Over the years UEGCL has been in running battles with ERA to allow them charge for depreciation of the plants and a small return on equity. Charging these would ensure that UEGCL would when need be have enough internal resources to rehabilitate and even develop new projects.

As it is the UEGCL will have to go bowl in hand to beg for fund from the finance ministry to pay for Nalubaale’s overhaul, totally unnecessary if the tariff had been adequate over the last 20 years.

Government currently strapped for cash may not be very accommodative of new charges on the consolidate fund, especially if it could have been avoided.

President Yoweri Museveni has made it a goal to bring generation tariffs down to the magic US5cents, but this has to be achieved within reason and be adequate enough to allow the sector stand on its own feet.

While talks to give UEGCL an adequate tariff that will allow them room to maneuver and guarantee the future sustainability of the sector, are in advanced stages, one cannot help but think that the Kiira-Nalubaale handover to UEGCL, which has been profitable for the first time over the last two years, may very well be a poisoned chalice.

 

UPE AND THE FLIGHT FROM POVERTY

Getting out of poverty follows a simple formula.

But first what is poverty? Poverty generally, is the inability to meet your basic needs. The opposite of which is being rich, where you can not only met your basic needs, but have surplus income that comes from your assets.

"The formula of getting out of poverty is to trade value for income and with that income create more value and therefore more income. A virtuous cycle. A simple formula but not easy to execute...

The trick is to have something – a good or service, of value to trade. It is possible to have value and fail to trade it, either because there is no market for it or that the market is not aware of your value, but that’s a discussion for another day.

At the heart of the challenge for most anti-poverty programs is how do you create value and then get it to market, and do this sustainably over time.

The reason you are poorer than the richest man in your town is because he knows something you don’t. What he knows that you don’t, makes him behave in a way that ensures he earns more than you.

So invariably creating value often comes with mindset change.

Last week the education ministry commemorated the 25 years of Universal Primary Education (UPE) program. What started off as a response to a campaign promise by presidential candidate Paul Ssemogerere in  1996, was a good idea that was long overdue. Since then primary enrollment has jumped to  about eight million today from two million in 1996 and seen literacy levels  almost double to 75 percent from 43 percent in 1986.

As suggested above education, which by definition entails a mindset change and therefore creation of value, is a useful first step to lift people out of poverty.

There are questions about the content of our education system, but if one is literate can overcome these shortcomings with continuous learning.

It should come as no surprise that Kenya and Tanzania, which in the case of the former has had bigger enrollments at primary school or in the case of the latter started UPE in 1977 are bigger economies than Uganda. Their literacy levels reflect the earlier adoption of UPE with Kenya at 82 percent and Tanzania 81 percent.

"The thing with such social engineering initiatives is that it takes time to see tangible results, which may discourage people with shorter electoral time spans. But the benefits are there, its just that they may just creep up on you.

What value can you put on being able to communicate in one language all around the country? How much easier is trade? How much easier is it to mobilise populations? How much market do you create when more of us are educated or at least literate?

It’s happening already. While ideally we should be communicating in an indigenous language other than English, you can now go anywhere in the country and manage just fine with English, as most people now have studied English to some basic level. Hopefully with the introduction of Kiswahili at primary school, in another 25 years we should more improved communication around the country.

That being said there is a lot to be done. The education ministry reports that there is no government aided school in 1,617 of the more than 10,000 parishes in the country.

The ministry estimates that it will need sh1.89trillion or about sh1.2b per school to bridge this gap. Apart from questions of value for money there really should not be any hesitation in releasing these funds.

The best investment a nation can make is to invest in its people, and providing education as well as health services should be key.

A country like Singapore with a tenth of our population and for all intents and purposes, a rock in the sea has a GDP of about $400b.  Beyond basic literacy Singapore’s education system is ranked in the top 20 in the world. It helps of course that there has been an education system in that country since 1823.

Coming full circle to poverty eradication, there are two ways that I know of for an individual to create value, either through education or experience.

UPE has its issues. The idea is sound but the execution may be wanting.

"A previous generation, which did the proverbial 10 mile trek to and from school, have countless stories about how education made a difference. In single families there are siblings who had climbed out of poverty and others who were wallowing in poverty, the difference being one sibling went to school and the other did not.

Interestingly they started their schooling writing in the dust using sharpened pieces of wood (we call them stylus these days), often under trees and many times there was no school when it rained.

They came out fine and many of them lead or have led this country.

 

 

 

 

MTN AND THE FUTURE OF THE ECONOMY

Last week telecom company MTN released its 2022 results.

Revenues, profit were up and for investors in the company they will be paying out their final dividend for the year, which will have seen shareholders pocket a total of sh15.9 per share for 2022.

Everybody has their favourite numbers, I am always interested to see how the data and fintech subscribers and revenues are moving, especially against voice numbers.

First of all in 2021, it was the first time, that revenues from voice – what we pay to call, fell below half the companies total revenues. While these grew by 3.6 percent, data and mobile money revenues grew in double digits upsetting the status quo.

"In 2022 data and fintech revenues continue to gallop ahead while voice revenues slipped 0.5 percent, the first time in the company’s history that voice revenues did not grow...

The writing is on the wall voice is out and data and fintech are in.

It reminds me of former Safaricom CEO Bobby Collymore’s prediction when he took over the reins at the Kenyan telecom firm, that one day voice will be an add on, given away for free, that the action will be in data and fintech services. I could not relate at the time but it is coming to pass every day.

When Airtel lists its shares – they were supposed to do so by July last year, we will be able to tell whether this is an industrywide trend or restricted to MTN. I bet it shows across the industry.

This is an important, even critical, to the development for the economy.

Beyond the ever-increasing access to information that come with improved and more widespread data services is the fact that credible business transactions can be done quickly and safely using data.

The spoken word has its limitations. Information transmitted via this medium – unless recorded, can be dismissed or refuted in the future. The written word is more easily verifiable, hence the need for written contracts.

While its possible that most of our data is consumed by entertainment, it just as likely that its use in business is expanding.

"The efficiencies to the whole economy will creep up on us, because it is easy to take these new services for granted, but let us look back to an earlier time.

There was a time when there when we did not have mobile phones ( for those born after 2000, just believe it) and the country was good for about 50,000 landlines, many of which were down anyway.

So things we take for granted now like making and confirming appointments, deliveries, calling a cab these were all none existent activities. How did we go about these things? We did not. Booking appointments was done in person or by mail (if you had a post office box), deliveries? How! And you walked to where the special hires (do you remember those guys) to get a ride. The explosion in boda-bodas has been largely facilitated by the mobile phone. There were no bodas, expect maybe at the border.

Efficiency is the ability to do more work per unit of input. The input may be time or money or effort. So we are now doing more work than we used to because we can communicate better.

Taken to the next logical conclusion is the rise of mobile money or fintech as a sector. The efficiencies here are obvious ( at least to me). To give my friend or relatives money I had to meet them in person, send someone with their money or they send someone to pick the money Now for the cost of less than a return taxi fare I can move money around at the speed of light and the other minutes, which would have been spent going to and fro can be used for something else.

Some stoneagers would rather stand in line at the bank to pay their bills than pay the transaction fees charged when they pay online. They cannot be helped.

And these our most basic transactions in a day scale it up now to companies, schools and traders and the numbers begin to bogle.

In June last year it was reported that the total number of mobile money transaction stood at sh145trillion in the first six month so last year. To put this in perspective the national budget was about sh48trillion for the whole of 2021/22.

"By definition when money moves it moves to where is needed from where it less needed, broadly speaking. These trillions of monies a large part of it, was probably doing nothing under our mattress, in our socks and bras. It has taken mobile money companies to liberate them from those dark, smelly corners into the light of day...

MTN reported that last year fintech users grew about ten percent to 11 million users. Assuming they show the same rate of growth (my feeling is it will actually accelerate) we will be doubling mobile money users ever seven years. What seemed like a pipe dream a few years ago, becoming a cashless society,  is happening before our very own eyes.

The more of us who are signed on to mobile money and other fintech applications the faster transactions will be done in the economy. And if time is money it follows that the economy will be the better for it.

It probably explains why you can turn up at a bar on a Monday night in Kampala and it seems like the weekend – money is flowing more efficiently boosting consumption and inevitably production.

 

 

THE POWER OF COOPERATIVE SYNERGY

BOOK: MAKING COOPERATIVES WORK

AUTHOR: CHARLES KABUGA

I have long held the view that Uganda and Africa in general, is poor because of our inability, unwillingness or external schemes that prevent us from aggregating our resources be they land, capital or labour.

We try to got it alone as individuals, communities or countries preventing our ability to take advantage of economies of scale and the synergies that come with. I have seen synergy defined as one plus one equals 11 not two.

"The point is, when we come together we can unlock potential that is greater than the sum of our individual parts...

That is why I am a big fan of the cooperative movement and the book “Making cooperatives work: Optimizing development through social capital” by long time cooperator Charles Kabuga could not have come at a good time in the history of our country.

It is an opportune time because there is a rush to start savings & credit cooperatives (SACCOS) around the country, to take advantage of the Parish Development Model (PMD) funds. When the dust settles there will be a handful of cooperatives left standing, hundreds of others set up opportunistically will have fallen by the wayside. Which will be sad but inevitable.

Hopefully the failed SACCOS will not discourage people from staying the course and joining the more viable SACCOS.

In his book Kabuga does a commendable job of charting the history of the cooperative movement, internationally and in Uganda, outlining the theoretical framework on which they operate, the oftentimes uneasy relationship with state and what he sees as the future of the movement.

In Uganda the cooperative movement was severely weakened by the economic troubles of the 1970s and 1980s. Structural adjustment of our economy, which required a cut back on public expenditure, privatization and especially liberalization of commodity marketing dealt a near deathblow to the cooperatives.

He points out that cooperatives relied on the commodity marketing monopolies the government put in place and the cooperatives were the main suppliers to these marketing boards. When these were disbanded and private players begun exporting commodities, the cooperatives whose management failed to move with times found themselves adrift at sea with the inevitable collapse following soon after...

The closure of the Cooperative Bank in the late 1990s sounded the death knell for the cooperatives as we knew them at worst or forced a reset of how they had to operate in the future. Few cooperatives survived this carnage.

Kabuga has some time-tested advice on how sustainable cooperatives can be set up and some thoughtful ideas about how they may have survived the structural adjustment period.

I agree wholeheartedly with him that cooperatives need to make a deliberate decision to build their capital base. The practice now is that cooperatives tend to distribute a lot of their profit to the members annually. While this is good for morale and endears the leadership to the members it counterproductive in the long term. Weak capital bases is a major reasons why the cooperative movement failed to overcome recent economic upheavals.

That being said the relevance and the importance of the cooperative movement is needed now more than ever before.

Despite decades of economic growth the wealth inequalities are widening and the cooperatives Kabuga maintains may be just the mechanism needed to help bridge or at least slow the rate of inequality.

The beauty of the cooperatives is that they do not need any one’s permission to begin. While to legally operate in the country one needs to register with the trade and cooperatives ministry, the will to cooperate has to be self-generated. This is an important point because cooperatives are not about positioning for handouts but a tool for building self-reliance in our communities, leveraging the power of numbers to advance society.

"For those with cold war hangovers he says cooperatives are not a socialist tool. That in fact there are cooperatives even in the most capitalist of societies albeit going by different description....

The book is potentially a powerful reference for the industry a critical resource in a world where the reality is settling in that we are going to have to develop ourselves and not rely on foreigners with  alternative agendas that do not necessarily rhyme with ours.

It is written in very accessible language and is must read for any leader political or otherwise who has a genuine desire to uplift his people.