VENEZUELA AFTER MADURO: WHEN EXTRACTION EMPTIES LEGITIMACY

The US' weekend arrest and extradition (Abduction?) of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro landed  with the force of history breaking through the door. 

Legal outcomes will be contested, delayed, and politicised, but the symbolism is already set: a regime that ruled as an extraction cartel rather than a national steward has finally run out of road. For many Venezuelans, this moment is not about court filings; it is about a long-denied reckoning.

Venezuela did not unravel because of one doctrine or one foreign adversary. It collapsed because power mutated into entitlement. Oil rents stopped financing institutions and started feeding patronage, secrecy, and personal accumulation. The state ceased to arbitrate fairly and began to loot efficiently. Once that happened, trust evaporated, incentives died, and the social contract dissolved.

The testimonies pouring out of Venezuela—some gathered and archived on Shillings & Cents 

are not ideological pamphlets. They are grief accounts. Endless food lines. Businesses nationalised into extinction. Imports choked. Production shattered by price controls. Savings erased by inflation. Families fragmented by migration. This was not a slow decline but a violent one. A functioning, if imperfect, economy imploded with shocking speed once extraction became the organising principle of governance.

When ruling cliques turn countries into resource pits, sovereignty hollows out from within. Consent drains away. Power becomes brittle. And brittle power invites outside pressure. Venezuela’s exposure to what critics deride as an American “cowboy adventure” is not an accident of geography or conspiracy; it is a domestic product of years spent alienating the very population that grants legitimacy.

This is not a Venezuelan anomaly. In North Africa, similar dynamics played out. 

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak learned that decades of patronage and security-state dominance could not survive the withdrawal of street consent. In the Maghreb, extraction politics and gerontocratic entitlement hollowed regimes until public patience snapped, an arc associated regionally with figures like Tunisia's Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose fall underscored how quickly legitimacy can evaporate once rulers appear to exist only for themselves.

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi mistook oil rents and bravado for immunity. Mobutu Sese Seko ran a country like a personal vault. Robert Mugabe hollowed out production while elevating loyalty over competence. Each believed wealth, coercion, and rhetoric would outlast consent. Each was wrong. When extraction severs the bond between ruler and ruled, the end is rarely dignified.

Venezuela also punctures the romance of “alternative” patrons. China, Russia, and shadowy intermediaries did not rebuild; they extracted. Anti-Western language proved no substitute for maintenance, investment, and competence. Extraction without reinvestment is looting with better branding, and Venezuelans felt the outcome in empty shelves and darkened hospitals.

This brings us to the uncomfortable present. 

Any renewed involvement by the United States will not be a silver bullet. Washington’s record elsewhere gives no credible reason to expect tidy outcomes or benevolent miracles. Interventions carry costs, contradictions, and unintended consequences. Yet there is a deeper, sadder indictment here: when a local population would rather gamble on foreign intrusion than endure domestic rule, the failure lies squarely with the ruling elite. It is an extraordinary moral collapse when citizens welcome outside pressure because it feels like the least bad option left.

For people who have lived through institutional collapse, pragmatism displaces purity. If refineries are rebuilt, infrastructure repaired, imports reopened, and people allowed to work and earn with dignity, hope returns—not because the arrangement is perfect, but because something finally functions. Functionality, after years of trauma, is not a slogan; it is survival.

The lesson reverberates far beyond Caracas. States are not mines. Nations are not ATMs. When leaders gorge themselves at the trough of public resources, they alienate the people and hollow out sovereignty. And when the brown stuff hits the fan, no offshore billions, foreign friends, or security cordons can compensate for lost consent. Power without legitimacy holds—until it doesn’t.

UGANDA’S ECONOMY KEEPS TIME, POLITICS MUST CATCH UP

Uganda enters a new political season with one stubborn, reassuring fact ticking away in the background: the economy keeps growing, almost like clockwork. Not spectacularly. Not noisily. But steadily enough to matter.

 "In a world where growth has become erratic, fragile, and often policy-dependent, that consistency is one of Uganda’s quiet advantages. It buys us time. It absorbs shocks. It creates room—if we use it well to fix what still holds us back.

But elections change the weather. They sharpen incentives, redistribute attention, and tempt governments to confuse visibility with impact. Business as usual is not an option, not least because the numbers are no longer polite.

More than half a million young people are entering the job market every year. Infrastructure deficits—from feeder roads to power transmission to urban services are no longer abstract planning concerns; they are binding constraints. And if growth is to remain clockwork rather than luck, the business environment must improve faster than population pressure.

The 2025 story, seen through Shillings & Cents lens, was one of resilience with unresolved tensions. Inflation behaved. Growth held. Exports—especially coffee did the heavy lifting yet again, quietly underwriting foreign exchange stability. Regionally, progress continued in small, unglamorous ways: smoother borders here, shorter transit times there, another logistics bottleneck eased. These are not headline moments, but they matter because investors do not invest in flags or anthems; they invest in access to markets.

This is why Uganda’s liberal economic architecture remains one of its strongest assets. The decision—made decades ago to let markets allocate capital, allow private enterprise to take risks, and keep the economy broadly open has paid dividends. Even today, despite periodic nostalgia for state control, the fundamentals remain intact. And where there have been attempts to drift back toward command-economy instincts, the results have been as expected: inefficiency, rent-seeking, and slow-moving bureaucracy dressed up as strategic intervention.

One understands the temptation. Governments everywhere want to “get back into business.” Ownership makes patronage easier to spread. Jobs can be announced. Assets can be pointed to. Losses can be rationalised. Soon enough, the argument follows that state enterprises need not make money as long as they employ people and deliver some socially useful service. It sounds compassionate. It even sounds pragmatic.

It is neither.

This logic creates a vicious cycle. Loss-making public enterprises weaken the broader business environment, crowd out private investment, and distort prices. As efficiency declines, the same government is forced to pour more billions into plugging gaps—arguing, correctly but incompletely, that collapse would be worse. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost quietly grows. Every shilling poured into a public enterprise black hole is a shilling not spent fixing roads, paying contractors on time, or improving service delivery where the state actually has no substitute.

Domestic arrears sit squarely in this story. By 2025 they had become a chronic drag on enterprise. Contractors waiting years to be paid borrow to survive, pass costs on to prices, or exit altogether. Banks reprice risk. Investment decisions are delayed. What looks like a government accounting issue quickly becomes a private-sector liquidity crisis. An economy can survive high interest rates, external shocks, even elections. It struggles when its own largest client stops paying on time.

And yet, growth kept ticking. That is the paradox and the opportunity. Uganda grows because demand is real, demography is strong, and regional markets are increasingly accessible. Trucks still move. Coffee still ships. Mobile money still hums. This baseline momentum is not an accident; it is the dividend of openness. But momentum alone will not carry us through the next decade.

So what should 2026 be about?

First, corruption must be confronted not as a moral footnote but as an economic emergency. Corruption lengthens project cycles, inflates costs, and erodes trust. It is why roads take longer than planned, why budgets leak, and why investors price Uganda with a caution premium. Tackling it is not about virtue signalling; it is about lowering the cost of doing business.

Second, domestic arrears must be brought under control. Clearing verified arrears, enforcing commitment discipline, and aligning spending with realistic cash flows would release immediate oxygen into the economy. Few reforms would do more, faster, to restore confidence.

Third, project cycles must shorten. Uganda does not suffer from a lack of plans; it suffers from slow execution. Delays are expensive, corrosive, and often unnecessary. Faster delivery raises returns on public spending and sends a powerful signal that the system works.

Above all, 2026 should be about protecting and deepening the business environment. Investors will come because markets are accessible, contracts are honoured, and rules are predictable—not because they like you, sympathise with you, or owe you political favours. Beware of those who invest out of sympathy. Worse still are those who come bearing friendship instead of fundamentals. They are almost always fly-by-night companions.

Uganda’s clockwork growth is a gift. The question before the new political season is simple: will we use it to fix the plumbing, or will we gamble that the clock will keep ticking forever?

GUEST BOOK REVIEW: RICH DAD POOR DAD

By Andrew Muhimbise, Monday 5th January 2026

The book’s teachable lesson is that, simply convert your earned income into assets so you transition from working for money to having money work for you. The comprehension of what an asset is, meaning something that puts money in your pocket, is the core message in the book with the antagonist view that that house you own and live in is not an asset simply because it doesn’t put money in your pocket. It pumps you up by destroying all of pre-conceived notions on money by laying bare to you to wealth generation thought patterns and doable actions from wherever you are at dismantling all or any excuses.

Kiyosaki premises his book on six lessons starting with the provocation to unnerve the reader with lesson one of the rich don’t work for money, he then starts off by showing how that happens with lesson two on why teach financial literacy with clarity on how financial intelligence and not money solves problem including money problems, the author follows up with a call to action in a jolting lesson three mind your business with a dissuasion on wanting to look rich and ending up in debt with a message of becoming wealthy by converting earned income into passive or portfolio income as quickly as possible over time in patience.

Lesson four on the history of taxes and the power of corporations is a call to make the best of your financial intelligence by leveraging the advantages of limited liability with lessons on accounting, investing, understanding markets and the laws of the land. 

In lesson five Kiyosaki attempts to unlock and rewire the reader’s imagination is a call to ACTION demonstrating how the rich invent money and lastly in lesson six the authors emphasizes the important but not urgent need to have a long view to life! Work to learn – don’t work for money.

The books reverts back to chapter format, chapters seven to nine with functional measures of how to overcome obstacles and getting started in real time, peeling away excuses real or perceived for action to take root. 

I read this book 15 or so years ago and I was awestruck by the concepts I picked up then and have implemented over the years without a recollection of the source of such ideas. 

The first being that an investment is not seen by the eyes but processed in the mind, a pure function of bypassing the optics and analyzing.     

The second is about Fear of failure, the doggedness of not fearing to fail a recognition of fear and embracing it knowing that failure is not fatal, not trying out of fear is.

The third one being that profit on an investment is made when you buy, not when you sell. Basically you don’t project an unknown return.

Lastly the one on risk and knowledge correlation, where the more knowledge on the subject matter lessens risk. Knowledge eliminates risk a Warren Buffet thinking.

Lesson One: The Rich Don’t Work for Money.

The poor and middle class work for money; the rich have money work for them.

You don’t need permission to make money; great creativity, original thought, and initiative are more than sufficient.

Most people only talk and dream of getting rich.

Learn by engaging, being in the thing.

Patience is non-negotiable.

Life doesn’t talk, it pushes you around, you got to take responsibility and curate your destiny. Rich Dad being called cheapskate was to buffer his future wealth.

People spend all their lives working for money not caring what it is they are working for.

If you think something else is the problem, you have to change it.                               If you realize you’re the problem, then you change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves.

Learn how money works, so you could make it work for you.

True learning takes energy, passion, and a burning desire. Anger is salient as Passion is anger and love combined.

Most people, given more money, only get into more debt/trouble.

Trap of needing more, greed can also be desire, insatiable desire!

The avoidance of money is just as psychotic as being attached to money. 

Living in denial: Many people say they are not interested in money yet work 8 hours a day at a job.

Emotions is energy in motion.

Master the power of money instead of being afraid of it. They don’t teach this is school and if you don’t learn, you become a slave to money.

If you have no income you look for opportunity and grow your skills, arouse a need to want to grow.

Lesson Two: Why Teach Financial Literacy?

It is not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.

Intelligence solves problems and produces money.

Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.

If you want to be rich you need to be financially literate, lends credence to the Abdallah Amiri Financial I.Q initiative building a coalition of the willing for member personal wealth gains supported within an ecosystem.

Rich people acquire assets, the poor and middleclass acquire liabilities that they think are assets.

The difference:

 Assets - puts money in my pocket.

Liability – takes money out of my pocket.

An intelligent adult often feels it demeaning to pay attention to simplistic definitions. KISS - keep it simple, stupid!

To be rich simply, know what an asset is, acquire them and you will be rich.

What defines an asset or liability are not words, it is what it does in or out of pocket!

Cash flow tells the story of how a person handles their money. Money only accentuates the cash flow pattern running in your head.

How to make money and how to manage money are DIFFERENT.

More money seldom solves someone’s problems, intelligence solves problems.

By not fully understanding money, the vast majority of people allow it awesome power to control them.

An intelligent person hires people who more intelligent than he is, otherwise what’s the point!

When it comes to money, high emotions tend to lower financial intelligence (on home being a liability).

Real tragedy is that the lack of early financial education is what creates the risk faced by average middleclass people.

Wealth measures how much your money is making, therefore financial survivability.

Wealth is a measure of cash flow from the asset column compared with the expense column.

The rich buy assets, the poor only have expenses.

The middleclass buy liabilities they think are assets.

Lesson Three: Mind Your Own Business.

The rich focus on their asset column while everyone else focuses on their income statement.

Mind your business- Me I am a freedom fighter, fighting for personal freedom.

Your business revolves around your asset column, not your income column.

Financial struggle is often the result of people working all their lives for someone else.

So many people have put themselves in deep financial trouble when they run short of income.

Keep expenses low, reduce liabilities, and diligently build a base of solid assets.

Start minding your own business, keep the daytime job but start buying real assets, not liabilities.

An important distinction is that rich people buy luxuries last, while poor and middleclass tend to buy luxuries first. Reason is that they want to look rich but end up deep in debt on credit.

The long term rich build their asset column first, then use income generated from the asset column to indulge in luxury.

Buying luxury on credit often causes a person to eventually resent that luxury because the debt becomes a financial burden.

Lesson Four: The History of Taxes and the power of Corporations.

An employee with a safe, secure job, without financial aptitude has no escape.

Corporation is the King of Tax. Allowable expenses et al

If you work for money, you give the power to your employer. If money works for you, you keep the power and control it.

To get out of the Rat race you need strong financial knowledge (financial I.Q).

Financial I.Q is made up of knowledge from the four arears:

1.     Accounting

2.     Investing

3.     Understanding markets

4.     The Law

Financial I.Q is a synergy of many skills and talents, notably the above four (4).

Lesson Five: The Rich Invent Money.

Often in the real world it is not the smart people who get ahead, but the bold. Fortune favours the bold!

People know the answer, but lack the courage to act on the answer.

Your financial genius requires both technical knowledge as well as courage to execute. If fear is too strong the genius is suppressed.

Information is wealth, the new wealth cannot be contained by boundaries and borders as lad and factories were.

The anger or reluctance at doing the numbers, the income statement and balance sheet come from the embarrassment about not understanding them (visible at cash games hosted by Rats).

Increase your financial intelligence so you be the kind of person who creates your own luck, you take whatever happens and make it better. Few people realize that luck is created, just as money is.

The poor and middleclass work for money, the rich make money and have it work.

Money is not real, the more real you think money is, the harder you will work for it.

The single most powerful asset we have is our mind. If trained well it can create enormous wealth.

Financial intelligence is made up of these four main technical skills;

1.     Accounting

Accounting is financial literacy, or the ability to read numbers. This is a vital skill if you want to build businesses or investments.

2.     Investing

Investing is the science of money making money.

3.     Understanding Markets

Understanding markets is the science of supply and demand.

4.     The Law

The law refers to the awareness of accounting corporate, state, and federal regulations. It is recommended to play by the rules.

The problem with SECURE investments is that they are often sanitized, that is, made so safe that the gains are less.

 Good investment is seen not with the eyes; it is processed by the brain.

It is your intelligence that can spot a bad deal, or make a bad deal good.

The statement: You cannot do that here is usually for the one saying: I don’t know how to do that here – yet.

Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your mind.

Most people never win because they are more afraid of losing.

In school we learn that mistakes are bad and we are punished for making them YET humans learn by mistakes, we learn to walk by falling down.

People are terrified of losing, main reason why not many people are rich.

Winners are not afraid of losing; failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

Two types of investors: Off-shelf and Deal stream creator who assembles deals;

           Skills for Investor who creates opportunities:

1.     Find opportunities that everyone missed

2.     Raise money, in learned skilled of raising money It is what you know, more than what you buy. Investing is not buying, it is more a case of knowing.

3.     Organize smart people, intelligent people are those who work with or hire a person who is more intelligent than they are.

It is what you know that is your greatest wealth. It is what you do not know that is your greatest risk.

Lesson Six: Work to Learn – Don’t work for money.

Job security meant everything to my educated Dad, learning meant everything to my rich Dad.

When it comes to money, the only skill most people know is to work hard.

You want to know a little about a lot. Inch deep - mile wide.

The hardest part of running a company is managing people.

It’s best to go broke before 30, you still have time to recover.

School doesn’t think financial intelligence is an intelligence.

A horrible management theory: ‘Workers work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that workers won’t quit’.

Seek work for what you will learn, more than what you will earn.

Take a long view of life.

The fear of failure and rejection is why most people are unsuccessful.

Education is more valuable than money in the long run.

Business systems, the McDonald hamburger story

The world is filled with Talented poor people.

Management skills needed for success:

1.     Management of Cash flow

2.     Management of Systems

3.     Management of People 

The most important specialized skills are sales and marketing. The ability to sell – to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse or child – is the base skill of personal success.

Communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to a life of success.

The better you are at: communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.

Give and you shall receive in contrast to receive and then you give. Do it first otherwise no one will.

 

Chapter Seven: Overcoming Obstacles.

The primary difference between a rich person and a poor person is how they manage fear.

Why financially literate people fail to develop abundant asset columns is because of five (5) reasons;

Fear              Cynicism                 Laziness                  Bad Habits           Arrogance

 

1.    Overcoming Fear

I have never met a rich person who has never lost money. But I have met a lot of poor people who have never lost a dime – investing that is.

The fear of losing money is real, everyone has it, even the rich. Fear is not the problem, how you handle fear is.

If you hate risk and worry, start early.

People are so afraid of losing that they lose, greatest reason for lack of financial freedom was because people played it safe.

Winning means being unafraid to lose.

Winning usually follows losing.

Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die, most people dream of being rich, but are terrified of losing money.

Failure inspires winners, failure defeats losers.

They play not to lose; they don’t play to win.

Safe, diversification BALANCE, you must be focused, not balanced, Go all in. Don’t put a few eggs in many baskets.

 

2.    Overcoming Cynicism

The sky is falling.

What makes you think you can do that? Don’t need permission from anyone.

Words of doubt that curtail action:

If it’s such a good idea, how comes someone else hasn’t done it.

That will never work. You don’t know what you are talking about.

A savvy investor knows that the seemingly worst of times is actually the best of times to make money.

Buyer’s remorse.

Doubt is expensive, listen to only those actually doing the thing you want to do.

Unchecked doubt and fear creates a cynic.

Cynics criticize and winner analyze, cynicism blinds while analysis opens the eyes.

Investing to win is better than investing not to lose.

Don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on what you want e.g. can say rental property investing carries stress of dealing with tenants, hate fixing toilets focus on rate of return if superior you can outsource the headaches to another and earn your return.

3.    Overcoming Laziness

Busy people are often the laziest. Too busy to take care of their wealth and health. They don’t mind their business, laziness by staying busy.

Cure for laziness is a little greed, desire for self, yearning to have something nice, new, exciting.

To keep emotion of desire under control it is suppressed with guilt, guilt tripping desire.

The words ‘I can’t afford it” shut down your brain. ‘How Can I afford it’ opens up possibilities, excitement and dreams.

The human spirit can do anything (subconscious mind). Be careful what you wish for, you will get it.

How can I afford it creates a stronger mind and a dynamic spirit.

Not about the goal, but the process of the attaining the goal (pedals over podium, journey over destination).

To exit the Rat race a simple question of ‘How can I afford to never work again?’ then the mind figures it out.

Always ask, what is in it for me (Why am I doing this?) to cure laziness.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you will be criticized anyway. You will be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

4.    Overcoming Bad Habits

Pay yourself first as a habit, pressure to pay others / bills motivates.

5.    Overcoming Arrogance

What I know makes me money, what I don’t know loses me money.

Watch out for hubris.

We use arrogance to hide our ignorance.

They are not lying, but they are not telling the truth either.

When you know your ignorant in a subject, start educating yourself.

Chapter Eight: Getting Started.

There is gold everywhere. Most people are not trained to see it.

Our culture (religious) has educated us into believing that the love of money is the root of all evil. It has encouraged us to learn a profession so we work for money, but failed to teach us how to have money work for us.

10 Steps to awaken your financial genius

1.    Find a reason greater than reality: The power of Spirit

A reason or purpose is a combination of ‘wants’ and ‘don’t wants’ e.g. don’t want to work all my life, wants to be free to travel, freedom of thought, freedom from bad health. Deep seated emotional reasons must be strong to propel you into ACTION.

2.    Make daily choices: The power of Choice

Choice is the main reason people want to live in a free country, we want the power to choose.

With every shilling (dollar) we get in our hands, we hold the power to choose our future; to be rich, poor, or middleclass.

Our spending habits reflect who we are, Poor people have poor spending habits disguised as good or noble.

For most people being rich is too much of a hassle, so they invent things like: am not interested in money, I will never be rich, I don’t have to worry I am still young, my salary is little; SUCH words rob you time, learning, and agency.

Having no money should not be an excuse to not learn.

The mind is the only real asset; most powerful tool we have dominion over or total control.

Most people buy investments rather than first investing in learning about investing.

A truly intelligent person welcomes new ideas, for new ideas can add to the synergy of others, thereby accumulating knowledge.

Listening is more important than talking: we have 2 ears and one mouth!

3.    Choose friends carefully: The power of association

People with money talk about money, they don’t do it to brag, they are simply interested in the subject.

People is dire straits do not like talking about money, savings, and investing, they think it rude or unintellectual.

From those who struggle learn what not to do.

Do not listen to poor or frightened people.

In the market the crowd shows up late and it is slaughtered.

If a great deal is on the front page, it’s too late in most instances.

Smart investors don’t time markets.

Profits are made when you buy, not when you sell.

Reason you want to have rich friends is because that is where money is made, in their ecosystems. It is made on information.

4.    Master a formula and then learn a new one the power of learning quickly

You become what you study. In order to make bread every baker follows a recipe, even if it’s only held in their heads. The same is true for making money.

5.    Pay yourself first: The power of self-discipline

If you cannot exercise control over yourself, do not try to get rich. It makes no sense to invest, make money, and blow it. Self-discipline is vital.

Three most important management skills to start your own business are management of: Cash flow, people, and personal time.

Self-discipline is internal fortitude.

To pay yourself first, keep in mind that: 

I don’t get into large debt, I build up assets first and when pressure comes let it inspire your financial genius.

If you’re not tough on the inside, the world will always push you around anyway.