Annually to open the Lenten season Brazil has a series of
carnivals, an elaborate display of costumes and dance routines. The most famous
one is the one held of six days in Rio de Janiero.
KCCA is borrowing from this tradition, which is dated back
to the beginning of the 19th century.
The Rio carnival can draw in as many as 850,000 tourists to
the city, create up to a quarter of a million temporary jobs and attract $628m
(sh1,600b) into the city’s economy. The Brazilian government last year
estimated that the total impact on the economy amounted to about $3.2b from
tourism alone.
The smaller, relatively understated Noting Hill carnival in
London, which happens over two days in August, racked in about £93m.
These are contrived events set up, executed and marketed to
generate interest in a place and make some money along the way.
On Sunday Uganda played hosts to hundreds of tourists in the
country to witness the hybrid solar eclipse.
This eclipse is so rare. The last time it happened was in
1854 and will not happen again until in 2172.
The tourism ministry gleefully estimated the financial
benefits to the country -- about sh10b ($4m) from all the tourists who came to
the country. It projected that the ripple effect from the 2,000 visitors to the
country, spectacularly down from the earlier expected 30,000, would have a long
lasting effect on our tourism numbers.
The carnivals in Rio and Notting Hill have as their center
pieces gyrating, semi-nude women and the festive atmosphere as selling points.
In addition they are an annual event, essentially a variation of the same theme
year after year after year. We can even be tempted to say if you have seen one
you have seen them all.
The eclipse on the other hand, was unique on various fronts
but especially because Uganda would have some of the best viewing points of
this phenomenon and secondly, and probably more marketable, is that the next
time this even will happen will be in 2172 – 159 years into the future.
Forget CHOGM, this was the event of the century, all two
minutes of it. The ingredients of near monopoly, the rarity of the event and
the limited duration of the viewing made it a veritable marketers dream. So
forgive me if I am not bawled over by the peanuts the country made from the
event.
Two things conspire to ensure that such opportunities will
always go begging in this country. The first, is the debilitating view that
government should always take deal in any such event and secondly, that the
private citizens and companies that would be the major beneficiaries of such an
event are pulling in different directions as to suggest they would rather cut
off their nose to spite their faces.
People don’t want to hear this but the truth is that
government’s role in our lives to create an enabling environment for us to
prosper and thrive. An enabling environment includes but is not restricted to
providing security, provision of basic social services, investing in transport
and communication infrastructure and formulating and creating a consensus
around a broad national vision.
Some people insist that government should also invest in
“strategic” businesses but I think that is just a ploy to sponge off the state
by some who can’t qualify to work in or supply the private sector.
These basics are what we should demand from government and
then it should get out of our way as we go about leveraging them to improve our
own welfare. Through our own diligent effort and/or creative entrepreneurship.
They say time and tide – add the eclipse to this list, wait
for no man. Our squandering of the eclipse opportunity is a symptom of our
casualness about our affairs and should call for some major soul searching.
