SPORT AS AN INDICATOR OF PROGRESS

Last week the Rugby Cranes qualified for the 2018 Seven-a-side World Cup, winning all their matches against teams from Tunisia, Morrocco, Ghana, Zambia in a dominant display that was able to overcome a hiccup against Zimbabwe at Legends Rugby club in Naguru.

A few meters away at the Lugogo Indoor Stadium City Oilers defended their title as FIBA Zone V Club Champions to book a place in the African Club Championships in December.

While the Uganda Cranes fell short of keeping their hopes alive for a first ever berth in the Soccer World Cup in Russia next year by drawing against Ghana, they showed enough presence to keep the promise that it’s only a matter of time before they appear on the world’s greatest sporting stage.

"In recent years our sportsmen have been enjoying a rich vein of form. Arguably we are on the cusp of regaining our past reputation as a sporting nation....

For a country to be a sporting nation two ingredients must be in place – a deep pool of talent and the organisation to channel that talent into glory.

Our country’s rich ethnic mix ensures that we have a deep talent pool, we don’t have to import our talent. The playgrounds of schools and neighbourhoods are bursting with talent.

A nationwide public school system and network of public sporting facilities was the foundation on which the early successes of the 1960s and 1970s were built. However these fell into disrepair starting in the Idi Amin era and have continued downhill ever since.

This meant that the early promise of pioneers like boxers Eridadi Mukwanga, Leo Rwabogo and John Mugabi and hurdler John Akii Bua, saw no follow through with no younger athletes coming in the wake of their pioneering steps.

It is possible that just like Kenya, whose middle distance athletes burst on the scene around the same time, that now we might have been a power houses in one discipline or another.

Almost four decades after the glory days, we are seeing a resurgence in sports that in some way is hard to reconcile with the facts on the ground.

Our public schools no longer serve as a pool for sporting talent and sporting facilities from Arua to Soroti from Gulu to Kabale have fallen into such disrepair as to be almost irredeemable or worse still have been disposed of to the highest bidder and only remain as blurry memories in the minds of old men and women.

In addition sports has not enjoyed a big budget from the state in the last four decades as more pressing priorities of infrastructure reconstruction and the resuscitation of social services took precedence over supporting the “luxury” of sport.

What is happening now that is different is that we have come to the realisation, like the rest of the world, that sport has great value as a vehicle for commercial interests.

So our sports men have dusted up the remnants of our sporting infrastructure, brought them up to a reasonable standard and started practicing again. Some benefactors have supported these budding sportsmen, not always in a very structured way and the results are beginning to show.

Which bring us to the second condition for sporting success – organisation.

"Given the above scenario it is clear that recent success has come inspite of many shortfalls that still remain in the sports ecosystem. To sustain or build on this success our sports administration have to become more organised. As it is now our sports are run by volunteers at best and self-seekers at worst who on one hand are in the job for the “love” of the sport or looking to make some quick killings – per diems and sport equipment grants they can then flog on the open market for a few shillings...

This organisational capacity is important. We have it backwards when we think that we are disorganised for lack of money, while actually we lack money because we are disorganised.

It comes as no surprise then, that our best funded sporting associations or events are the more organised ones, but even in those the funding taps would have opened even more had they been even more organised.

A winning sportsman cannot be created in isolation of his surroundings that’s why the countries of the Eastern bloc are floundering today  despite their history of great sports achievement.

WHAT IF UGANDA HAD DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY AT INDEPENDENCE

Fifty years ago at independence the economic challenges of the founding fathers were clear – to accelerate and sustain economic growth and spread the benefits around equitably.

At current prices the GDP per capita of Uganda was $62 and the total economic output was $449m, according to World Bank figures. The economy was biased towards agriculture with just over half of all GDP coming from agriculture with services accounting for 36.18 percent, industry 12.61 percent and manufacturing 7.56 percent.

The structure of the economy has changed since. In 2016 services assumed pole position accounting for 55.8 percent of GDP, agriculture’s share plummeted to 24.4 percent, industry is up to 19.7 percent and manufacturing saw some growth to 8.8 percent.

During the same period the economy has grown to $25b from $449m in 1962. The population too has grown more than fivefold to 41.5 million from 7.2 million at Independence.

"Clearly one goal has been met with economy growing about 55-fold during the period or at about 7.7 percent growth per year on average. The argument can be made that the economy would have grown even faster were it not for the chaos of the 1970s and 1980s....

Kenya which has been relatively stable during the same period saw its economy grow more than 80-fold to $70.5b in 2016 from $868m in 1962. This makes for an average annual growth of about 8.4 percent.

A 0.7 percentage point difference between the growth averages may look insignificant but when you stretch over half a century it’s the difference between the size of the Kenyan economy doubling six times while ours only doubled five times.

So we not only started from a lower base but also because seeing as our economy fell below 1970 levels by 1986, new growth was only seen around the late 1990s, when the economy recovered to its previous heights.

The economic prescriptions in 1962 would still obtain today – increase agricultural production to not only raise rural household incomes but also to serve as a base from which to launch industrialisation; boost school enrollments to prepare the future workforce for industry; expand the infrastructure to support these ambitions among other things.

Even if Idi Amin had not upset the apple cart with his coup in 1971, we were already toying with centralising the economy – a disincentive for private initiative, and like other sub-saharan African countries would have taken us till the 1980s to liberalise the economy and attract private capital.

The motivation was purely political and not based on hard economics. The idea that the government should control the commanding heights of the economy in order to foster development for Ugandans rather than continue to feed the “imperialists” insatiable appetite for profit.

What ended up happening was mismanagement and corruption as government used state enterprises as avenue for patronage and looked the other way as their allies gutted them for personal gain.

Using the same method we put a halt to productivity gains in the agricultural sector to the point that the proportion of agriculture to GDP suggests not only that we are not producing very much more than we were per capita at independence but also indicates that we have failed to launch a credible agro-industry sector.

Kenya probably shows what would have happened to us had our momentum not been interrupted by the messy 1970s and 1980s.

But even better is the island nation of Mauritius, which had a smaller economy than either Uganda or Kenya at $213m. With no natural endowments except the weather and the soils, it has grown its economy to $12.2b in 2016. The World Bank’s figures for Mauritius GDP start in 1976 at $706m, so it safe to say that 14 years prior their economy may have been around the size of Uganda’s at Independence.

Given the figures the Mauritian economy grew by a factor of 17 in 40 years from 1976 to date, representing an annual average growth rate of 7.38 percent.

But while the size of their economy is nothing to write home about the per capita GDP of $9,627 – their population has grown to 1.2 million from 700,000 in 1962, set them apart from most on the continent.

How did they do it?

"The graduated from a monoculture economy that grew only sugar, went into textile manufacture —importing cotton from Madagascar and further afield, following the same principle became a hub from small industry by exploiting Export Promotion Zones, promoted themselves as a premium tourist destination – they have more than a 300 five-star hotels, and have set themselves up as an offshore financial hub – they have more deposits in the banks than the GDP of the country....

Maybe it helped that they were an island nation isolated from the madness of the continent, but clearly there was a clearness of purpose by its founding leaders in 1968, which allowed even encouraged  private industry and a democratic traditional that has ensured the sustainability of their economic model.

UNDERSTANDING A MAD SEPTEMBER

It might not be the wisest thing to try and analyse the events that occurred in parliament this week, seeing as emotions are still raw, but when is it ever a good time to have hard conversations?

This week we saw unprecedented scenes of rowdiness and outright violence in parliament, surrounding the proposed amendment of the constitution to lift the age limit, beyond which any one can contest for the highest office in the land.

First on Tuesday, when triggered by suspicion that junior minister Ronald Kibule had entered the house with a gun, a full blown fist fight broke out, the likes we have only seen on TV in Asian and Eastern European parliaments.

A black out on live coverage of the house should have warned us that worse was to come on Wednesday.

Security agents flooded the house to eject MPs who had been suspended from proceedings by speaker Rebecca Kadaga for their role in the previous day’s fracas. When the footage finally came through revolting MPs were seen trying to fend off security with microphone stands from atop tables and chairs.

"The theatrics were sad to watch easily understandable, but not justifiable, when seen against the political reality of our time...

In their seminal book “Marketing warfare”, Al Ries and Jack Trout likened marketing strategy to warfare.

But first they pointed out that the real battle in marketing was not about beautiful marketing campaigns or even selling more goods, than the competition but about dominating or at least carving a niche for oneself in the perception of the target market.

This is important because for people being creatures of emotion, when perception comes up against fact, perception wins. This has a lot to do with the way we make decisions, forever tempted by shortcut a tendency, which has its roots in our evolutionary struggles.

Back to Ries and Trout. The authors argue in the market’s perception there are four distinct positions to hold.

At the top of the pile is the market leader, whose main preoccupation is to fend off all comers using all the resources at their disposal --- capital and talent. Then come the challengers, whose obsession should be only to dislodge the market leader. Then there are those who don’t have the resources to challenge for the top, their mission is to occupy uncontested ground with the hope they can grow strong enough to launch a challenge on the summit too. And finally there are the guerrillas who carve out niches for themselves that neither of the aforementioned are really interested in and seek to dominate these niches.

These positions are not set in stone. A misstep from the leader can see him tumbling down the ranks or a sudden interest in an occupied niche may see a leader dislodge a guerrilla.

Seen in this context to understand this week we have to set aside moral judgements and see it as yet another step in the fight for the perception, hearts if you like, of the watching public.

On the one side is the ruling NRM, confident in its strength in numbers and ability to deploy the force of the state, has shown itself ready, and willing, to fend off any attacks on its dominant position. The ruling NRM cannot afford to show weakness but at the same time has to restrain itself. No one likes a bully.

"On the other hand are the opposition weak in number and organisational ability, have sought to project the perception that despite their disadvantages, they can threaten the status quo and that the fight they are in is worth throwing the rule book out of the window for. Their hope is to evoke public sympathy for themselves, force the government into disproportionate violence  and  eventually trigger a popular uprising a la the Arab spring....

I would like to think that the fighting in the house was not planned, especially on Tuesday, but as former heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth”.

It is too soon to say whether there has been a shift in public perception away or to either party – it’s not one way traffic, but one can safely say that the repercussion of this one mad week in September, will reverberate through time. For better or for worse.