BRANDING UGANDA, WHERE DO WE START?

In recent weeks a few sporting events have occurred which if we were ready to take advantage of would have done wonders to elevate Brand Uganda.

Last week the She Cranes our representatives to the 2015 Netball World Cup returned having exceeded expectations and jumped six places in the global rankings to eighth place.

Over the weekend marathoner Solomon Mutai won bronze in the World Championships to emerge as our latest marathon sensation. Defending champion Stephen Kiprotich did not embarrass, coming in sixth in a strong field.

And finally former Dutch striker Patrick Kluivert was in town on a UNICEF mission and had time to mug for the cameras. He announced that a match between Barcelona legends and the Cranes was in the works for later this year.

"Each of these events in and of themselves raised awareness about Uganda a notch. In a highly connected world the picture of Kluivert and President Yoweri Museveni holding up yellow t-shirt emblazoned with Uganda on its front went out to Kluivert’s 794,000 followers on twitter and who knows how many more people around the world saw the image if just one percent or 7,940 of his fans then retweeted the tweet?...

Marketers of brand Uganda led by Stephen Asiimwe at Uganda Tourist Board and tourism evangelist Amos Wekesa are doing a better job than was happening barely three years ago, but more work needs to be done.

Greater awareness of a brand, in this case Uganda, is less than half the battle fought. Yes, one cannot be a brand without widespread awareness but in addition what cements a brand in the mind is what it is associated with, people’s experience with it when they interact and eventually the loyalty to the brand by its consumers.

Making the point s survey done by international marketing firm FutureBrands polled 75 countries around the world but only 22 countries – mostly in Europe and none from Africa, could be classified as country brands under their classification.

In their Country Brand Index 2015 they said country brands were strong across six dimensions related to status and experience. A country’s quality of life, value system, business potential and good “made in” perceptions singles it out as  status country while a country with rich culture, history and tourism attractions would make it a great tourist country.

Of the top of my head we probably have a better chance of being an experience country and some ways to go before we can be considered a country where people abroad would want to live or do business.

Japan, Switzerland and Germany topped the rankings. Uganda was not polled. In Africa, South Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe led the continent.

The survey showed that a strong country brand gave the holders a competitive edge, with people wanting to visit, live and do business there, but it also suggested that country brand building cannot be the work of one agency or ministry maybe with one coordinating agency but it’s a collective effort.

"Ugandan officialdom should care about building a brand systematically over time, as it has serious advantages for the economy in attracting tourists and investment. Thankfully these days with the pervasive media it’s easy to get awareness – for the good and the bad things, but there are no short cuts to creating a pleasant experience or being associated with the positive perceptions, meaning we are only just beginning....

We are going to have to do more than shoot selfies with high profile guests to improve our image abroad.

LESSONS FROM THE UGANDA-KENYA SUGAR BURST UP

Last week Raila Odinga planned a series of public rallies in sugar growing western Kenya to protest easing the access to the Kenyan market for Ugandan sugar.

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.

Knowing our people, you would not discount the Kenyan authorities' fears, but they have sent three different teams form their finance ministry, bureau of standards and revenue authority to verify our claims that we are producing more than we can consume and have confirmed the veracity of these claims for themselves....

Last year Uganda produced 438,000 tons of sugar against local demand of 320,000 tons. This year it is projected that our sugar mills will throw off 500,000 tons, while demand will come in at 360,000 tons.

Kenya’s sugar industry is failing to keep up with its population’s demand producing about 500,000 tons, short by 300,000 tons of national demand. The sector dominated by government controlled millers.

That there is probably at the heart of the Kenya sugar industry’s problems.

Mumias Sugar is currently shut down for regular maintenance works but industry sources believe they have had to shut down for lack of enough cane to crush. By the time they shut down in July the factory, the biggest in east Africa, was only crushing between 2,000 to 5,000 tons of cane day compared to its potential of 7,000 tons.

This was mainly because farmers had gone unpaid since last year to the tune of kshs500m (sh17b) and had opted to supply other mills in the area.

The mill has been steadily run down since the previous managers Booker Tate, were shown the door in 2002. Things came to a head when a forensic audit pointed to mismanagement and corruption. To illustrate the latter the reported a one billion shillings (sh35b) hole in the accounts.

Kenya has been getting extensions from the COMESA to stay an opening of the market to sugar from the trading block, pleading that they needed time to restructure the industry so they could be competitive against regional sugar producers.

It costs at least twice as much to produce sugar in Kenya (at $500 a tonne) as it does in neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda, as well as significant exporters Zambia, Swaziland and Egypt, according to industry experts.

"Among the reforms of the sector was the total privatisation of the state controlled mills to allow private capital in and greater efficiency, unfortunately politics has got in the way of this development and so the industry has been bleeding...

As our own experience shows, it is easy to mobilise against privatisation of state enterprises and the liberalisation of sectors that were previously dominated by state backed marketing monopolies.

When such companies are privatised the new owners normally take an axe to any excesses in spending, especially by reorganising the workforce. The reorganisation of the workforce often begins with laying off excess workers before replacing them with more efficient workers as production increases.

Oftentimes in older state enterprises workers have been hanging on thanks to some godfather in government and rarely pulling their weight in terms of contributing to the company’s profitability.

Such “draconian” measures can become unpopular politically and throw a spanner in the works.

Staying privatisation of companies and general liberalisation of economies is an attempt to avoid short term pain to the detriment of a company or economy’s long term prospects.

In Uganda we do not need much convincing or economics theory to prove the veracity of this claim. Opening the economy to the free market caused pain in the initial stages but the net effect has been positive – higher productivity, greater product variety, improved work environments and more revenues for the treasury...

I shudder to think if we had let the populists win the economic argument what Uganda would look like today. We would probably still be waiting for telephone and power connections for months, lining up for everyday commodities and generally suffer little choice in every economic decision we had to make.

The trouble with economics is that you cannot run controlled experiments.

But events as are now wracking the Kenyan sugar industry will serve as good case studies when viewed against the largely liberalised Ugandan sugar sector of why not opening up a sector to private initiative is a bad idea.

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.

Mumia’s Sugar Company ltd which posted record losses for last year owes farmers more than Ksh500m (sh16.5b) from last year’s harvest. The western Kenya company with a market share of 30 percent nevertheless has been limping along at less than 50 percent capacity. It is currently closed for maintenance.

However connected to Mumias woes was a forensic audit carried out in 2012 which found a one billion (sh33b) hole in the company’s accounts attributed partly to the illegal importation of sugar from Sudan.

"Obviously Mumias’ inefficiencies affect the sugar industry in Kenya. But it is not a stretch to see that those inefficiencies leave the door open for powerful individuals to import sugar into the country to make huge profits...

Enter the Uganda sugar deal.

During a recent trip to Uganda by Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya agreed to lower the impediments to importation of Ugandan sugar.

 Uganda, which last year produced 438,300 tons against a domestic consumption of 320,000 tons expect that these production figures will rise again this year. It is projected that this year just over 500,000 tons will be produced which will more than match the increased consumption of 360,000 tons.

"The resistance to Uganda sugar by these powerful sugar importers is not too hard to see.
Kenyan sugar retails for about Ksh120 a kg or about sh4,000. Uganda sugar retails for about sh3,000 but sugar is landed in Kenya for an average of Kshs62 a kg or about sh2000 from the COMESA region or further afield...

Giving priority to Ugandan sugar would destroy the mouth-watering margins these importers have been enjoying or cut them out from the lucrative trade altogether.

The influence these sugar barons wield in Kenya is not to be underestimated. Kenya’s deputy president William Ruto recently claimed he was shuffled out of the agriculture ministry in the last cabinet after he dared to cancel some of their sugar importation licenses.

The influence of interest groups in politics is not new nor that they can influence policy to their own selfish aims and the rest be damned.

Through their political cronies they are selling the Uganda sugar deal as a threat to jobs and business in western Kenya but they have not needed any help killing these on their own.

Mumias for example owes farmers millions of Kenya shillings from last year’s harvest and their outgrowers have sold their cane to other players in the industry instead, partly causing the shortfall in cane crushing at the industry giant.

These same interest groups have resisted the privatisation of these largely obsolete and mismanaged sugar mills, which would allow private capital and efficiencies to take hold and several other initiatives critical to the revamping of the industry.

In fact Uganda with its privately controlled sugar industry has clearly not only caught up with the Kenyans but overtaken them in terms of meeting local demand and lowered production costs.

"The writing is on the wall for the Kenyan sugar industry. Either they restructure it completely, including uprooting the sugar barons in whose interest the status quo works or let the industry die, with no help from Uganda...

UGANDA MOST ENTREPRENEURIAL COUNTRY AGAIN BUT ….

Recently a UK business support outfit Approved Index released research which showed that Uganda was the most entrepreneurial country in the world, while Japan, Italy, Germany and Finland were among the least.

In a report published on the Virgin Entrepreneur web site they went on to wonder how Uganda could come top of the heap given our violent past (sounded like we had been reduced to some apocalyptic wasteland).

This report is not the first to find that Uganda is the most entrepreneurial country in the world.

In 2003 the Global Entrepreneurial Monitor – sponsored by the World Bank, published a study that ranked Uganda the most entrepreneurial country in the world. The next year it found that Uganda was second only to Chile as the most entrepreneurial country in the world.

"In trying to explain the apparent contradiction of why if Uganda was so loaded with entrepreneurs why wasn’t it growing faster and a more developed country, the researchers explained that there were two type of entrepreneurship – necessity and opportunity...

In the necessity entrepreneurship people start businesses to meet their daily needs, essentially they are not unlike subsistence farmers.

While opportunity entrepreneurs start businesses to fill a gap in the market and a ready to grow the business to its full potential, these kind of businessmen would be found among the founding fathers of the globe’s biggest companies.

From the outside the distinction may seem minor but it makes a world of difference.

Once the aim is to grow a business to satisfy personal needs once these are satisfied it’s difficult to grow it to become the job creating and tax paying giants that can have real transformative effects on economies.

It is not to say that necessity entrepreneurs can’t grow into opportunity entrepreneurs.

So the reason why Uganda has businessmen falling out of its years and yet not seeing a commiserate improvement in the people’s wellbeing is because most of our businesses are subsistence businesses.

This is a hangover of our turbulent history when jobs were in short supply but people had t live so they started a kabusiness.

As the economy has grown and become more formalised, the urge to start a business has been dampened as salaries have improved and one can expect that if the economy continues to grow we may see a further dimming of entrepreneurial ardour.

But that wold be a major loss. All big businesses start as small businesses. But due to the peculiarities of the market it is hard to determine at the beginning of the process which start ups will grow to become big businesses. The natural selection process that operates in the market is such we need thousands of small businesses to start up, thousands more to collapse for just one Google or ExxonMobil or Toyota to emerge.

So that companies are starting up around every corner is a good first start for Uganda. Now the trick is how do you keep these companies popping out of the woodwork, alive, thriving and growing?

The knee jerk reaction is for people to talk about financing, but money does not come first. It’s the idea and the execution of that idea that leads to a need for and access to more money.

Financial support is crucial even critical, but more importantly is that our businessmen need help thinking about their business. We need to provide the support to hold their hands through the difficult ups and downs of business. Mentorship programs where experienced businessmen can look over their businesses advise them on where they are going right and therefor do more of and where they are veering off the tracks and do less of.

In more developed economies where the pool of successful businessmen is large these mentorship programs are quite developed. But in addition they have government programs which help with advice, cheaper funding and access to investors, but up to a certain point.

But as my hero Warren Buffett says some things just take time you cannot impregnate nine women and hope to get a baby after a month.

"We are often impatient because we have seen better in our travels and on TV but the truth is we as a country are at the very rudimentary stages of creating many of these systems and institutions...

We are probably better off than most in that the default mode for most people seems to be to set up a business for some extra cash now we need to shift that thinking to setting up businesses to exploit any opportunity to the full.

It’s a lot easier said than done.

SHE CRANES OFFER VALUABLE LESSONS FOR UGANDA

In the last week the She Cranes our representatives to the Netball World cup in Sydney have been battling to maintain national pride and they have not disappointed.

Seeded 14^th in the world at the beginning of the tournament they made short work of Zambia and 7^th ranked Fiji in the preliminary rounds to qualify for the quarter finals.

Wales beat the She Cranes by the barest of margins before African top seeds Malawi fed them their second loss in the tournament, but not before our ambassadors gave them a torrid time, running them from end to end when in possession and hustling them relentlessly when they were off the ball.

By the time of going to press She Cranes had two more matches to play in the qualifying rounds --- an eight team round robin with the top four going to the semi-finals.

It is unlikely they can win over second seeds New Zealand or Fourth seeds Jamaica to make the semis, matches that had not been played by the time of writing ( I would love to be proven wrong on that) but you can rest assured our team will not go down without a fight.

"The She Cranes performance is to be celebrated when seen in the light of the inadequate facilitation they suffered even when it was clear they had qualified for the World Cup. It should be celebrated because these ladies without much fanfare and bombast have gone about their business quietly and with dignified stoicism. It should be celebrated as a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit...

Watching them compete against the best in the world, in unfamiliar circumstances and surroundings there are two lessons that the rest of us will do well to adopt.

To begin with all through their matches the easier first ones or the tougher ones that followed the ladies remained focused, did not get lost in jubilation when they scored or get rattled when the momentum was against them. They were on a mission and everything else was a distraction.  Their singular focus on the task at hand ensured they operated as a unit and team cohesion was never compromised.

It’s a well-worn cliché but team work in any endeavour of life is more sustainable and rewarding than the individual flashes of brilliance that can distract from the long term view.

And secondly that life is not fair and there is nothing any of us can do about it but we have responsibility to play whatever cards life deals us to the best of our ability.

"Their journey to the world cup was an odyssey of trial and tribulation...

In the Six Nations Cup in Singapore in 2013 they arrived late, forfeiting their first match as a result but went on to win the remaining the matches to win the tournament. For lack of funds they took a bus to Botswana last year for the World Cup Qualifiers, enduring swollen feet from the journey and playing a whole match without drinking water, they qualified for the sports premier event anyway. As if that was not enough, their training ground was handed over to developers who tore it up and started construction on it. And as the clock ticked away, there was a real fear that the She Cranes would not make the World Cup as our sports authorities dragged their feet on facilitating their preparations or confirming their attendance of the event.

We have made it national past time to be whiners and excuse makers, if there was one group of people who would have been forgiven if they had just rolled over and died instead of suffer for an ungrateful nation, the She Cranes are them.

Regardless of what happens to these young ladies all of whom were born after independence, they have showed us what can be done in our current, less than ideal circumstances.

We need more people like them if these country is to fulfill its true potential.

UGANDA MPS NEED TO GROW BEYOND THEIR SELFSERVING SELVES

Last week MPs passed the Parliamentary Pension (Amendment) Bill 2014 in which among other things they would be able to borrow from their own pension fund.

If we had any doubts that MPS were financially stressed, leveraged up to their eyeballs and tethering on the edge of financial ruin this single act dispelled them. In order to alleviate their own suffering, with the unintended consequence of creating more financial distress in the sunset of their lives, they have leveraged their power to legislate for their own immediate benefit.

We will not discuss the morality of that here.

"There are a few home truths that the MPs need to keep in mind. One, that it is not prudent to dig one hole to fill another and secondly, when you are in a hole you are best advised to stop digging.
Our honourable members financial indiscipline aside, the more universal problem is the high lending rates that prevail in our economy...

In a liberalised economy like ours high prices can only mean that the product on sale, in this case credit, is in short supply and does not match demand.

Of course the bankers shall argue that the cost of money as referenced by the Bank of Uganda’s central bank rate (CBR) is high to begin with. Also that the rate at which government borrows from the public – through its bills and bonds is high as well. It would be imprudent of banks to lend in the market at a lower rate than the double digit rates government is offering, since government is the safest borrower.

Parliament several times in the past have tried to bring pressure on the banks to lower the rates but the economic logic was such that they had to stop chasing that bone.

However there maybe something parliament could do for all of us and themselves to lower lending rates.

In 1985 when the government created the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), that was probably the last act they did to encourage savings. Now NSSF is the biggest financial institution straddling the sector like a colossus. NSSF has grown to a sh5.4trillion fund, monies which can have a real transformative effect on the economy.

Thirty years down the line it might be time to do something again.

What if parliament amended the existing law to increase the mandatory savings for employees by two percentage points to become seven percent. Even assuming employers do not double the workers contribution and maintain it at ten percent going by the current planned  monthly contribution of sh58b this would mean an increase in collections from the current pool of contributors of sh8b a month or about sh100b annually.

NSSF has various avenues to which it can deploy these funds. It can either bank them, buy government bills and bonds, invest on the capital markets, buy into existing businesses or invest in real estate.

Out of necessity their bank balances would increase and the banks would be pressed to shift more and more of that money out the door, after all banks make their money by lending it out. With too much supply, lending rates would have to collapse out of necessity.

However the threat of inflation will grow as the banks lend more and more.

But by the nature of its balance sheet it does little good for NSSF to be lending to commercial banks, which can only offer short term deposits. So NSSF would focus on development and mortgage financiers who need long term money. The beauty of this is that as the money will be used to boost the productive sectors of the economy, the increased productivity will stave off inflation.

Of course this hypothesis is rough around the edges.

But the principle that our honourable ladies and gentlemen should in legislation look to improve the general economic environment for the whole country and not only for themselves is a sound one, whichever way you look at it.

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.

The poll showed among other things that President Yoweri Museveni and his ruling NRM party still dominate our political conscience. The opponents then flew into a frenzy, complete with frothing at the mouth in denouncing the poll as unreliable. The NRM did not get around to it but some of their leading lights were considering rubbishing the poll too, but for understating their boss’ and party’s popularity.

Interesting for me was the sampling of people’s opinions on what really exercises their minds about the conditions of their lives.

Health related issues came at the top, followed by the state of our roads, water and sanitation, poverty, security, education, employment and agricultural issues before corruption got mention. People were quite clear about what they saw as inadequacies in the social services and infrastructure, when quizzed further.

This threw up the contradiction, if these inadequacies were happening under the NRM’s watch how come the ruling party continued to be more popular than the opposition?...

Going by the results, which show that  the overwhelming majority still think the NRM is best placed to sort out these issues it might mean things are improving generally – maybe not as fast as is wanted, and these improvements can be attributed to Museveni and the NRM. Or it could mean that for the vast majority of the voters they have known only the NRM administration so it could be a case of better the devil you know than the angel you don’t.

It would be interesting in subsequent polls to find out why the seeming contradiction.

I am convinced that the shortfalls in services and infrastructure are more an issue of corruption than inadequate resources but most people polled don’t seem to agree.

How can that be possible? There is no one who has not come face to face with corruption. Is it possible that we have become desensitised to graft, recognising it as the way to get things done, the new normal so to speak, to the point that it is not on top of our minds as this nation’s great challenge?

Obviously a cursory look at the symptoms that ail us is preventing us from drilling down to the root cause of our malaise.

Returning to Museveni’s numbers. I was not surprised, and expect subsequent well done polls will reflect the same, that he still leads his rivals. Even less so was I surprised that the margin of his lead seems unassailable too.

Things change but two things are feeding into this continued popularity of Museveni.

One, that as President he can, and does, canvass this country in the five years between elections. His facial recognition cannot be rivalled by anyone, and anything, bar the telecommunication companies’ logos. The voting process is not a scientific exercise and the one who is recognised is more likely to get the vote. It doesn’t happen for Museveni alone. Barack Obama or David Cameron don’t have to criss cross their countries pressing the flesh in between elections, but that is because they can reach most voters on television prime time, a similar advantage does not accrue to their rivals.

"And finally politics is not a popularity contest. The vast majority vote for one or the other person based on what they think they can benefit from them, Museveni has not been averse to play up this angle, urging electorates to vote his NRM MPs because the opposition ones just antagonise him and don’t push for projects to their areas....

But there are two groups beyond the usual suspects who would have more than a passing interest in the polls. I am speaking cynically here. There are his supporters who would not want him to have to big a lead over his rivals because then the incentive to release funds into the campaign wold be diminished. And then there are those across the floor, who would love to see him have a huge lead then they can go out and make a strong case for more and more cash to dislodge him from the top.

At the end of the day you need to follow the dollar to understand these things.

KENYA AIRWAYS A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR UGANDA AIRLINES CHAMPIONS

Kenya Airways last week announced a horrific $252m (sh882b) loss last year, blaming low tourism numbers and competition, while observers in addition, point to judgmental errors in route expansion and cost indiscipline as key to the airlines’ latest woes.

The airline saw a marginal growth in revenue to Ksh110b (sh3.3trillion) from Ksh106b (sh3trillion) the previous year which was not helped by a near 25 percent jump in costs.

A cursory look at their financial statements shows their fleet ownership costs doubled, as did their finance costs and they took Ksh7b (Sh210b) loss from realised and unrealised losses on their fuel derivatives bets.

Being a huge consumer of aviation fuel Kenya Airways seems to have bet fuel prices would rise last year and took out insurance (derivatives) to guard against that eventuality. However world oil prices have been falling since June, making the airlines’ derivative positions expensive to maintain or dispose of.

As if that is not enough the airline now has a negative net worth, its liabilities exceeding its assets. The company says it will look to borrow $200m and sell off some of its aircraft to raise an additional $100m.

"The aviation business is a volatile one in the best of times. It did not help, that Kenya has had several high profile terrorist attacks in the last two years, keeping tourists away or that the middle east airlines have made aggressive inroads into the continent, but one can bet that if you put the company’s expenses under a microscope you will find a lot of fat, wastage and downright theft embedded in the system...

Rumours of fat deals to favoured contractors, planes leased irregularly from connected individuals and hush money being doled out to people in the know abound.

In an increasingly competitive environment there can be no excess, companies need to be lean and mean so that they can not only fend off competitors’ maneuvers, like price wars but also initiate some aggression themselves.

Except for the Nairobi-Entebbe route where Kenya Airways has a freehand they are most likely taking a beating on all other routes on which they face competition.

With an eroded balance sheet, the pride of Africa is exposed and it maybe that only the Kenya government can fork out some more money to pour down that black hole.

Stripped to the bare essentials business is simple. For long term sustainability you need to make more money than you spend. The difference is profit, which may be parcelled out among the shareholders and ploughed back into the company to drive growth.

In a competitive environment the profit margins can grow increasingly thin, hence calling for increasing levels of efficiency and a healthy pile of retained profits. Companies can either hang in there giving as good as they get and hope to weather the storm or sell out, abandon the business. 

These are strategic decisions, which are not made any easier by the hard facts on display, but can be complicated by sentimentality and misguided loyalty to the business.

Which brings me around nicely to the champions of the revival of Uganda Airlines. The sum total of their argument for the return of the airline, which went under at the start of the century, is that it is an infrastructure such as roads or railways or ferries that government has to put in place regardless of its direct return on investment.

"That there is the fallacy of the argument. If the enterprise is not profitable it will not sustain itself and rely increasingly on the treasury for capital infusions just like Kenya Airways is doing and South African Airways is doing with disturbing regularity.
We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Money that would show a better, more sustainable return for this country by educating or treating a few thousand children....

One wonders which market research these people are referring to in pushing for a billion dollar investment on when British Airways with a monopoly over the non-stop Entebbe-London route only last week announced they were pulling out of this market?

It is not a crisis that BA has left our market, there a dozen other airlines flying out of Entebbe. A better way to spend money on the aviation industry would be to upgrade Entebbe airport which barely manages to handle three jumbo jets when they land at the little airport within minutes of each other.

Given what we know about our government’s workings, it is not a stretch to think that a stateowned airline would just increase the surface area for corruption,  especially as such an airline will not breakeven for at least a decade if it does at all. It really has nothing to do with improving access to Uganda for tourists or someone hazarded last week, to make our coffee more marketable.

If it was up to me we would put this “Force Uganda Airlines Back” to bed for at least the next decade or it put it down all together.

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.

In Addis Ababa, he wondered with a wry smile why Presidents would want to stay on forever, that he believed he could win a third term himself but not only can’t he run again as there is a two-term limit in the US, but also because he is really looking forward to shedding the trappings of power. But this was said to an audience that did not include any of the intended objects of his derision.

"The history of the US shows that where their national security issues are concerned they are not averse to overlooking the “puny” issues of democracy and human rights. Every US President’s foreign policy preoccupation is to diffuse or obliterate any threat to the country – as with all other presidents, the difference is that with the US they have the means to enforce their will around the world...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, the US’ main security threat comes from unconventional armies that can pack a disproportionate punch to their size. Not since America’s interventions in central America in the 1970s and 80s — an attempt to prevent communism taking hold in their back yard, has the US thrown all caution to the wind like it has in its war against terror.

Which brings us around to Obama’s choice of countries to visit during this trip.

Kenya was an obvious choice. His father was Kenyan, Obama hadn’t visited since 1987 and it would be nice to visit as POTUS (President of the US). Romanticism aside, Kenya is at the frontline of the war against terror with its involvement against Al Shabaab in Somalia and their history of horrific terror attacks – in 1998 and again in 2013, as well as numerous other smaller but no less significant attacks, along the coast and on its north eastern frontier.

During the planning of the trip there might have been concerns about the sticky issue of Uhuru and his deputy William Ruto being before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity during the post-election violence in 2007. The ICC dropping the case against Uhuru earlier this year must have caused a sigh of relief at the US State department.

We shouldn’t forget too that a senior US official had urged Kenyans not to vote Uhuru in 2012 because of the ICC case hanging over his head.

Ethiopia is also heavily committed in Somalia, but it also is the latest leading economic light on the continent. But they too are not perfect. Western human rights and environmental organisations incessant criticism of their treatment of dissenting views and journalists, as well as their disregard for environmental sensibilities in its huge infrastructural projects – the Gilgel Gibel III dam is a case in point, mean under other circumstances POTUS may have given Addis Ababa a wide berth.

For the same reasons that he visited Kenya and Ethiopia, he would have visited Uganda, Bururndi and even Rwanda, but then again maybe not.

"With Uganda the US may not have forgotten that we signed into law the anti-homosexuality bill against the White House’s best advice, even if the courts later overturned it on a technicality. Burundi’s just concluded election was held under a cloud, seen by many as an attempt by Pierre Nkurunziza to extend his tenure beyond the constitutional two term limit. And in Rwanda of course, moves are in advanced stages to lift the constitutional term limits.

Maybe for Obama these transgressions were a bit too much for him or for the constituencies he panders to back home and far outweighed the heavy lifting they are doing in the Horn of Africa and Darfur in Rwanda’s case.

Whichever way you look at it, Obama’s African trip was going to come  with a mine field of issues wherever Airforce one set down, but in the end sentimentality won over real politic to make the trip possible.

We are not complaining.