The numbers are pitiful whichever way you look at them. Our
road coverage is barely 20,000km. Our power generation is under 1000 MW. We
have one working railway network that is barely 300 km.
These woeful figures fly in the face of any pretensions we
may have to being half a developed country. These figures – of infrastructure
development are important, because without infrastructure there can be no
development to speak of.
Another set of figures paint and even more abysmal picture.
There is one doctor for every 11,000 Ugandans. The pupil-teacher ratio is just
under 50 pupils to one teacher in primary school
These figures probably represent the main challenges of the
development, where development is the general upliftment of the living
standards of the people. Both e figures are indicators of not only how much
progress a country has made towards development but what its potential is.
A country that has invested billions in developing its
roads, railway and energy resources is an attractive place to invest but not
without the other side of the picture. Without a healthy educated and empowered
population your potential for development as a country is severely curtailed.
Economic growth is relatively easy to achieve, because it’s
a measure of the increased economic activity within an country. So for instance
if you spend a billion dollars building a dam it could represent significant
growth in a country with a small economic base to begin with.
To see development there has to be economic growth.
Development is the harder of the two to achieve, because it requires a
distribution of the gains from economic growth.
Distribution is not through handouts but through
improvements in education and health sectors and in encouraging business which
create jobs and pay taxes, which lead to improvements in education and health.
A virtuous cycle.
Failures of development especially in an environment of
economic growth, means the gains are being concentrated in the hands of a few
with the vast majority missing out on economic growth.
"In Uganda’s case a low revenue base in past years means we kow towed to donor demands for increased spending in social services and less than our required share in building transport and energy infrastructure....
The result as the recent loadshedding, poor road network and
less than inadequate railway network.
As result whereas we have pushed up our human development
indicators – primary school enrollment, infant mortality and general access to
clean water our infrastructure has not kept pace.
The net effect is that the cost of doing business in this
country remains prohibitive, therefore jobs are not being created at the rate
at which we are churning our graduates meaning there are more and more people
disgruntled with life.
Government realizing this in recent years and emboldened by
high tax revenues has decided to focus on infrastructure development.
Unfortunately because they are scrambling to bridge
cavernous gaps in our infrastructure they have deemphasized human development
relative to growth in infrastructure investments. Unfortunately that has
political consequences.
All more developed countries have made these decisions at
one time or another and most likely they made them in less than democratic
circumstances. From the events of the last few weeks we clearly do not have
that luxury in Uganda.
Government is not coming out smelling of roses in this
situation but to postpone plugging the holes in our infrastructure will only
worsen the process.
The MPs are onto a nice populist cause and thankfully many
of them are speaking on the record, so we will look back years from now and
hold them accountable.
In his book “The Elusive Quest for Growth” William Easterly
charts the meanderings the aid community has made over the last half century of
the industry and it makes you realize that engineering development is messy
business.
"I think it is so because development is an evolutionary process that involves governments creating an enabling environment for people to explore and exploit their full potential. The fallability of men gets in the way all the time making the process look like two steps forward and three steps back....
