Last week President Yoweri Museveni launched the long
overdue Naguru-Nakawa Housing Estate.
The project has been seven years in the making, running into
a lot of headwinds from politicians and rival developers all looking to cash in
on the 165 acre piece of prime property.
Under the plan a 1,700 unit estate is to be developed with
all the amenities of a modern community.
At the ground breaking ceremony Museveni was visibly upset
at the delays that made this project take so long from conceptualisation to the
present day.
The speech was a throwback to another speech made about ten
years ago on the banks of the river Nile.
Then, in January 2002, Museveni harangued his officials for
delaying the ground breaking of the Bujagali dam. It was then a project
sponsored by American firm AES Nile Power, which had been conceived seven years
prior.
The dam had been stalled by sniping from the environmental
lobby who argued that preservation of the Bujagali falls was more important
than generating electricity for Ugandans.
AES Nile Power didn’t eventually build the dam as the run in
to financial trouble, which forced it to give up their Bujagali project.
We and I suspect, Museveni knows what goes on with these
projects and what delays them.
Anecdotes abound of investors flying into Entebbe airport,
charmed by the greenery of the land and beginning to get comfortable when they
run into the first grubby fingered official looking for his cut to make a
potential project move to the next level. And these officials do not entertain
talk of payment on completion, they want their money up front and in cash,
thank you very much!
Some of the bigger companies quoted in foreign stock
exchanges, governed by stringent transparency requirements give up—the
risk-reward ratio for a small market like Uganda’s not being worth the pain.
Smaller investors for whom an investment in Uganda may have
significant implications for their balance sheet or serve a useful springboard
into the region, soldier own finding ways to play ball whichever way they can.
The net effect is that projects with transformative benefits
for this economy are delayed unnecessarily or when they come on line their
viability is so badly compromised they totter and not long after, grind to an
unceremonious halt.
We wonder how such things happen under the President’s
watch. How officials with impunity run rings around the President and even his
endorsement of a project is not a guarantee of smooth sailing thereafter.
The President argues that he needs evidence to deal with
these errant officials, the chattering classes grumble into their beers that he
should at least suspend them on suspicion and the president’s men counter were
that to happen government would be paralysed and not because every other
official has his hand in the till but because a lot accusations of this or that
official are instigated by the official’s rivals or worse still someone who
wants to bring down the government.
It paints a very gloomy picture going forward.
The truth is that after 27 years of rehabilitation and
reconstruction the big projects, the billion dollar infrastructure projects are
going to start kicking in. It does not take a biblical prophet to tell what’s
going to happen in coming years with projects being delayed or frustrated.
Albert Einstein said doing the same thing over and over
again and hoping for a different result is the definition of insanity.
Something has to give. Because as it stands now we may want
this country to go forward and take us along with it but we clearly we are our
very own worst enemy.
