UGANDA, BEWARE OF WHY NATIONS FAIL

The current move by parliament to have sittings in four regions of Uganda is disturbing and part of an established trend, where public officials seek to extract the maximum they can from the treasury and Ugandans be damned.

Last week parliament announced it is going to have sittings in West Nile, Lango and Karamoja ostensibly to bring the workings of parliament nearer the people. They would spend at least three days a week in each region. In the face of it, a noble endeavor but it can be argued there are more cost effective way of doing this.

This means parliament will have to provide for the more than 500 MPs to make the upcountry trips, in addition to about 200 staff, per diems all around. It has been reported that, at the minimum this will saddle Ugandans with a bill of sh5b a day.

"We should be concerned, because this is part of a trend of shifting resources away from production to consumption, a trend that history has shown does not end well...

In their book “Why Nations Fail” authors Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, after researching centuries of data on political evolution, came to the succinct conclusion that nations fail when their institutions are more extractive than inclusive.

Invariably extractive institutions derive from extractive politics where the power elite use these institutions to consolidate their power.

Extractive institutions are those that concentrate wealth and opportunity in the hands of a few as opposed to inclusive institutions in which broad based participation is encouraged, property rights are protected, which in turn foster innovation, investment and economic growth.

It does not take a nuclear scientist to work out that the inevitable outcome is poverty and wealth inequalities for the greater majority of the population.

It’s a vicious cycle, which if let alone leads to social chaos and political instability.

"These are serious issues, especially in this time when the economy is still struggling to recover from the Covid-pandemic, money is short and for many hopelessness is beginning to set in...

The lessons of the book, written in 2012, endure and we would be best advised to pay attention.

Uganda’s economy has grown by an average of six percent for the last 38 years, the longest single stretch of unimpeded growth in the history of the country. The challenge is that this growth is not being equitably enjoyed.

As it is the urban populations – despite our incessant whining, have been the biggest beneficiaries of this growth. So much so that, more than half the nation’s economic output (and I fear this is an understatement) is concentrated in Kampala.

This means that while the rest of the nation is struggling to get into middle income status -- $1,100 the per capita GDP of Kampala is easily over $5,000.

We have historical antecedents to this, the colonial state concentrated opportunities in a few hands, educating a handful of Ugandans for instance – there were 300 A-Level students at Independence and focusing infrastructure on extraction of raw materials rather than on availing access to markets for all.

Our post-independence governments have continued the trend, perpetuating the cycle of benefits accruing to a small group disproportionately.

"This move by parliament is just a symptom of this disturbing trajectory towards a failed nation....

There are hundreds, if not thousands of school going children or sick in those very same regions that would prefer that money is channeled towards education and health services.

The education ministry says it would take about sh14m to build a primary school classroom, so about sh98m to build seven classrooms add another two million for the head master’s office to round off the number to sh100m. So the sh5b a day spent on MPs pontificating and fulminating means 50 primary schools go unbuilt, a primary school every third district. So the three days the want to deliberate per region would account for a primary school a district.

Do we want to go into the beneficial ripple effect of educating a few hundred kids a district?

Or that Mulago spends about sh200,000 per out patient annually and therefore 75,000 out patients would be denied treatment at Mulago because we chose to splurge on an upcountry junket  for MPs.

Whichever you look at it, this is an ill-conceived expenditure we can do without, as a poor country trying to make sure everyone benefits from the miraculous recovery and growth of the last four decades.

Let us be serious. We are already on a very slippery slope, what with all our corruption, for us to indulge in such flights of fancy. Whether we continue to the slippery slope’s logical conclusion or not, will depend on how our political elite and public servants are restrained from gouging themselves at the public trough.