BOOK REVIEW: BLOODSHED FOR POWER: THE ASSASINATION OF MOHAMED HASSAN AND THE DARK ERA OF IDI AMIN

Bloodshed for Power by Mohsin Hassan provides a poignant, intensely researched accounting of political murder, state terror and the human cost of unchecked ambition. Unfolding through personal tragedy, the narrative confronts one of the darkest chapters of East African political history, offering both a meticulous investigation into the murder of the author’s father—Mohamed Hassan, Uganda’s former Head of CID—and a broader reflection on institutionalised violence during the tragic collapse of a nation.

The Shadow of Idi Amin

To grasp the gravity of Hassan’s account, one must understand the backdrop of the dictator who destroyed much of Uganda’s post-independence promise.

General Idi Amin Dada seized control of the country in a 1971 military coup while President Milton Obote was attending a Commonwealth conference in Singapore. What initially began with populist promises of swift stability quickly deteriorated into an infamous reign of terror. Amin dismantled democratic institutions, subverted the judiciary and turned state security organs into instruments for eliminating people regarded as threats—or who held inconvenient truths—about his regime.

Over the course of eight chaotic years, hundreds of thousands of Ugandans are estimated to have lost their lives through extrajudicial killings, targeted eliminations and ethnic and political persecution.

Mohamed Hassan became a target for Amin precisely because of his commitment to his work as a police investigator. As Head of CID, Hassan led high-profile murder investigations in which evidence implicated Amin prior to his presidency—most notably the January 1970 assassination of Brigadier Pierino Okoya and his wife.

Brigadier Okoya had openly challenged Amin, even mocking him as a coward for panicking and going AWOL following an earlier attempted assassination of President Milton Obote.

When Okoya and his wife were subsequently gunned down at their home, Hassan’s investigation uncovered evidence pointing towards Amin’s involvement. Hassan’s account argues that, once Amin seized power, those who knew too much about such investigations became obvious targets as the new regime sought to neutralise potential witnesses and erase inconvenient evidence.

Amin’s brutal dictatorship destabilised Uganda and the wider region until he was finally ousted by Tanzanian forces and Ugandan exiles in 1979. He lived out his remaining years in exile, dying in Saudi Arabia in 2003 without ever facing legal accountability for the atrocities associated with his regime.

Memory Against Revisionism

It is against this historical canvas that Mohsin Hassan’s work becomes so important.

One of the greatest strengths of the book is its preservation of historical memory. It is a useful addition to the literature on an era that is fast fading from living memory, creating space for revisionists to make increasingly sanitised claims about what happened.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest values of personal accounts such as Hassan’s.

These accounts are, by their very nature, woefully inadequate in capturing the full horror of the Amin era. No single family tragedy, however devastating, can communicate the suffering experienced across an entire country. For every Mohamed Hassan whose story has been reconstructed, there were countless others whose deaths were never properly investigated, whose bodies were never recovered, whose families never received answers and whose stories may never be written down.

Yet that does not diminish the importance of these individual accounts. If anything, it makes them more urgent.

History written only in statistics can become abstract. We hear of hundreds of thousands dead and, paradoxically, struggle to comprehend the scale. But when that history is reduced to one father, one family, one disappearance, one investigation and one trail of unanswered questions, the horror becomes human again.

Hassan's story therefore serves as more than a biography of one victim. It reminds us that behind every statistic from that period stood a person with a name, a family, ambitions and people waiting for them to come home.

As key witnesses age, documentation disappears and memories fade, books like Bloodshed for Power become important bulwarks against historical amnesia. By painstakingly documenting the circumstances surrounding one political killing, Hassan helps ensure that at least part of the record survives rather than being surrendered to nostalgia, revisionism or political convenience.

Gripping Yet Devastating Narrative

While heartbreaking, the book makes for scintillating reading.

Hassan manages to balance the deep emotional weight of personal tragedy with the fast-paced momentum of an investigative thriller. The emotional core of the story lies in the grief and unanswered questions left in the wake of an assassination, yet the author maintains a gripping, highly readable narrative rhythm that keeps the reader engaged through every step of the investigation.

That is no easy achievement. Books dealing with atrocity can sometimes become overwhelmed by their subject matter. Hassan instead lets the investigation carry the narrative, allowing the reader to discover the story almost alongside him.

Methodological Elegance

In this respect, Bloodshed for Power falls into the same broad tradition as The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget in the way personal history is reconstructed through the testimony of others.

Rather than relying solely on family memory, Hassan pieces together police records, eyewitness statements, archival evidence and local accounts to reconstruct the events leading to his father's demise.

This investigative rigour elevates a personal quest for closure into something approaching historical documentation. More than that, Bloodshed for Power is, at its heart, a work of investigative journalism. Hassan follows leads, tests recollections against other accounts, assembles fragments of evidence and reconstructs events from sources scattered across time and geography. He does not merely tell us what he believes happened to his father; he sets out to establish how and why it happened.

There is something particularly poignant about that.

Mohamed Hassan spent his professional life as an investigator, following evidence wherever it led, including when that evidence touched powerful men. Decades later, his son has effectively undertaken an investigation of his own—this time into the fate of the investigator himself.

One imagines that there could be few more fitting tributes.

The patience, persistence and respect for evidence evident in this book may very well have made his father proud.

The mosaic of third-party perspectives also does more than validate the author's conclusions. It gives us glimpses into the atmosphere of fear, silence and complicity within which political violence operated. People knew things but could not necessarily say them. Institutions existed but had been hollowed out. Officials understood the dangers around them but often had few places to turn.

That is how terror ultimately works: not simply by killing people, but by teaching everybody else to remain silent.

The Imperative of Facing the Past

The core philosophical argument running through Bloodshed for Power is therefore the necessity of truth-telling.

It would undoubtedly be easier to sweep this dark era under the rug. Nations, like families, sometimes prefer uncomfortable silence to painful confrontation with their past.

But there is value in airing our dirty linen if only so that we can resolve: never again.

The temptation to "move on" without truth, reconciliation or accountability can be powerful, particularly in societies desperate for political stability. But buried trauma does not necessarily disappear. Unresolved history can continue shaping institutions, political culture and collective memory decades after the events themselves.

Airing these painful truths is therefore not an act of malice or revenge. It is part of understanding how institutions failed, how power became unaccountable and how ordinary people became victims of political struggles over which they had little control.

Only by understanding those failures can subsequent generations hope not to reproduce them.

Final Reflection

Ultimately, Hassan’s work is a sobering reminder of human fallibility and political repetition.

As the saying goes, the thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.

Bloodshed for Power challenges that cynical conclusion by insisting on memory.

Personal histories such as Hassan's will never fully capture the scale of what Uganda endured during those years. They are fragments of a much larger tragedy. But perhaps it is precisely through accumulating these fragments—one murdered official, one disappeared student, one grieving widow, one frightened witness, one family searching for answers—that a country begins to reconstruct the true dimensions of its past.

The great danger comes when those stories stop being told.

Because once the witnesses are gone and the personal accounts disappear, statistics become easier to dispute, atrocities easier to minimise and dictatorships easier to romanticise.

That is why books such as Bloodshed for Power matter.

They remind us that history did not happen to numbers.

It happened to people.

And in Mohsin Hassan’s case, there is one final symmetry that is difficult to miss: the son has used the tools of investigation, evidence and persistence to finish a story that violence tried to leave unfinished.

For a man who devoted his own career to uncovering the truth, Mohamed Hassan may very well have regarded that as the finest tribute of all.

BOOK REVIEW: BEFORE GOVT BLAMES THE MARKET, UNTIE ITS SHOE LACES

Book: The Heart of a Cheetah: How We Have Been Lied to about African Poverty, and What That Means for Human Flourishing

Author: Magatte Wade

Imagine entering Usain Bolt in a 100-metre race, tying his shoelaces together, putting a sack of cement on his back and then, when he finishes last, announcing triumphantly that sprinting does not work.

That, in many ways, is what African governments have done to the private sector.

Which is why Magatte Wade’s TheHeart of a Cheetah resonated so strongly with me.

Wade, a Senegalese entrepreneur, is a woman after my own heart. Her central argument is simple: Africa’s best chance of escaping poverty lies not in more aid, more government enterprises or another round of grand development plans, but in unleashing entrepreneurs...

I agree.

Africa is not short of ambitious people. Neither are we short of resources. We have minerals, agricultural land, energy, young populations and increasingly large markets.

What we have consistently lacked is an environment that allows Africans to turn all these advantages into wealth.

And this is where Wade makes one of her most important observations.

Across the continent, governments are creeping back into business, often on the argument that the free market has failed.

But what free market?

Take Uganda.

In the World Bank’s final Doing Business rankings in 2020, Uganda ranked 116th out of 190 economies overall. We were 169th for starting a business and 168th for getting electricity.

Then we turn around and say the private sector has failed.

Failed under what conditions?

"Entrepreneurs operate with expensive electricity, inadequate infrastructure, costly credit, bureaucracy, licences, taxes, unpredictable regulation and delays moving goods.

Then government looks at the resulting weak private sector and declares: “You see? Markets do not work. Government must intervene.”

You cannot tie Usain Bolt’s shoelaces together and then conclude that sprinting does not work.

That argument should make us nervous because we have seen this movie before.

After independence, much of Africa embraced socialism and state capitalism. Governments owned banks, hotels, factories, farms, transport companies and trading enterprises.

The reasoning sounded noble.

The private sector was weak. Local capital was scarce. Government therefore had to step in and lead development.

What followed in many countries was predictable.

State enterprises became centres of inefficiency and patronage. Losses were covered by taxpayers. Jobs became political rewards. Procurement enriched connected insiders.

"Socialism did not abolish elites.

It simply created a different route into the elite...

Instead of creating wealth by satisfying customers, the quickest route to wealth became proximity to government.

And that is what worries about the renewed enthusiasm for government getting directly back into business.

Already, some interventions dressed up as industrial policy look suspiciously like mechanisms for appropriating public money for the benefit of a connected few...

Government announces a project.

Taxpayer money is allocated.

There is a commissioning ceremony, flags, speeches, television cameras and photographs of important people cutting ribbons.

Then come the questions that really matter.

Where are the sales?

Where are the profits?

Where are the exports?

Where is the return on taxpayers’ capital?

Silence.

A private businessman does not have that luxury. If nobody buys his product, he eventually closes shop.

Government can return to Parliament and ask for another appropriation.

This is why Wade believe the free market remains Africa’s best chance of prosperity.

Not because markets are perfect. They are not.

Not because businessmen are saints. They are not either.

But markets impose a discipline that government enterprises rarely face. You must produce something people want, at a price they are prepared to pay. If you do that well, you grow. If you do it badly, someone else takes your customers.

That constant pressure to improve is where productivity, innovation and ultimately wealth come from.

Government has a critical role in this process, but it is a different role.

"Government should protect property rights, enforce contracts, maintain security, educate people, build infrastructure, ensure reliable electricity and maintain macroeconomic stability.

In other words, government should make it ridiculously easy to do business...

Then a virtuous cycle begins.

Businesses grow and employ people. Workers earn incomes and consume more. Companies make profits and reinvest. Government collects more tax from a larger economy without necessarily increasing tax rates.

Those revenues finance better infrastructure and public services, which lower the cost of doing business further.

More investment follows.

The economy expands again.

That is the cycle we should be chasing.

Instead, too often we do the reverse. We tax a small formal private sector more heavily, regulate it more aggressively and then use some of those taxes to finance government businesses that compete against it.

Then we complain that enterprise is weak.

And dare I say it, we should remember where this road can end.

Many African economies travelled it in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Governments accumulated loss-making parastatals. Budget deficits widened. Debt mounted. Foreign exchange became scarce. Economies stagnated.

Eventually we went back, cap in hand, to the World Bank and IMF and were prescribed the dreaded Structural Adjustment Programmes...

Privatise.

Liberalise.

Cut subsidies.

Reduce government spending.

Allow markets to work.

SAPs remain a dirty word in much of Africa, and understandably so. The adjustment was painful and, in some cases, brutally implemented.

"But we should remember what brought us to the hospital.

If we rebuild the same bloated state enterprises, finance politically connected projects indefinitely and crowd out private capital, we should not be surprised if we eventually require the same unpleasant medicine...

There is an irony here worth appreciating.

We may spend the next decade claiming the free market failed, only to eventually invite the World Bank and IMF back to tell us to embrace the free market again.

Better not to make the journey.

The Heart of a Cheetah is ultimately an optimistic book because Wade refuses to accept that Africa is condemned to poverty.

Africa does not need governments trying to outrun the cheetahs.

It needs governments to build the roads, provide the electricity, enforce the rules, protect property and then get out of the way.

Untie the entrepreneurs’ shoelaces.

Clear the track.

Let the cheetahs run.

Because the road back to Structural Adjustment Programmes may well be paved with loss-making government enterprises.

MUSK, MARKETS AND THE EXPORT TEST

I have just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk and came away with mixed emotions — awe at what one man has achieved in a lifetime and some horror at the person he appears to have had to become to achieve it.

 Musk is only a few months older than me. That makes the reading uncomfortable.

 Isaacson portrays a man of extraordinary imagination, risk tolerance and focus, but also one who can be abrasive, insensitive and brutally demanding. Employees, friends and even family can become collateral damage to the mission.

 No candidate for beatification here.

 Isaacson, who also wrote the excellent biography of Steve Jobs, has a rare ability to get behind the caricature served up by the media and ferret out what drives his subjects. Yet despite the book running to hundreds of pages, I finished it feeling he had only scratched the surface of Musk’s complicated personality and even more audacious vision.

 Tesla was the announcement

 SpaceX can only be described in superlatives. Reusable rockets have changed the economics of going into space.

 But for me Tesla is what announced Musk to the world as a bona fide genius.

 Starting a new automobile company is close to madness. Cars require huge amounts of capital, complicated supply chains, technology, distribution networks and consumer trust.

 Tesla did not merely survive.

 It made electric cars desirable and forced virtually every major car manufacturer to rethink its future. Then it pushed into batteries, software and autonomous driving. I cannot wait to own a genuinely self-driving car — Tesla or otherwise.

 And then came the ultimate capitalist validation: the market.

 Investors valued Tesla above several of the world’s largest traditional car manufacturers combined.

 You can argue they are wrong. You can argue Tesla is overvalued.

 But they are putting their own money behind that judgement.

 For us free-market adherents, that is the holy grail.

 Yes, government helped

 Tesla’s rise was not a pure free-market fairy tale.

 It benefited from government support, including a $465 million US government loan, which it repaid early. America also protects its industries; Chinese EVs face punitive tariffs in the US market.

 So yes, protectionism and state support are part of the story.

 But there is an important distinction.

 At its best, state support helps a company become strong enough to compete globally. It does not permanently shield it from competition...

 You can provide finance, infrastructure, research support and even temporary protection.

 But eventually the company must leave the nursery and fight.

 The export market is brutal.

 That brutality is useful.

 Then came BYD

 Some will say it is unfair to compare Uganda’s Kiira Motors with Tesla.

 I think the opposite.

 Who exactly are we supposed to compare it with?

 When Kiira sells a bus in Nairobi, Lagos, Dar es Salaam or Johannesburg, the buyer will not lower his expectations because Uganda is a developing country.

 He will compare price, reliability, range, financing, technology and after-sales service against every available alternative.

 And increasingly that means China.

 In fact Tesla may now be the kinder comparison. BYD sold more fully electric vehicles than Tesla in 2025 and is also a major global electric-bus manufacturer.

 That is the market Kiira Motors is entering.

 Like it or not, Tesla and BYD are the competition.

 The import-substitution trap

 This is also why I have always been suspicious of import substitution.

 There is nothing wrong with producing at home what we currently import. The problem starts when import substitution becomes a policy for protecting companies from competition rather than preparing them for it...

 Then the incentives turn upside down.

 Instead of becoming more efficient, the company learns to lobby government. Instead of improving its product, it seeks tariffs, tax breaks, procurement preferences and protection from foreign competitors.

 That is how cronies are created.

 And once protected firms are guaranteed a market, innovation suffers. Why improve quality or lower prices when the customer has nowhere else to go?

 The taxpayer becomes a double loser.

First, billions of shillings can disappear into enterprises that never become commercially viable.

Then the same taxpayer, now acting as a consumer, pays again through higher prices, poorer quality or inferior services because competition has been suppressed...

Export-led growth imposes a much healthier discipline.

The Kenyan, Nigerian or South African buyer does not care who your minister is. He does not care how patriotic your industrial policy sounds.

He wants value.

 

Politicians love inputs

This brings us back to Kiira Motors.

Politicians love inputs.

We allocated billions. We built a factory. We installed a production line. We trained engineers. We made a bus.

Cut ribbon. Take photographs. Mission accomplished.

Except business does not work like that.

The private sector is judged by outputs and outcomes because the market is an unforgiving auditor.

How many buses did you make? How many did you sell? At what margin? Did customers return? Can you export? Can you finance the next production cycle from revenues rather than another government appropriation?

The issue is not whether Ugandans can build buses.

 Obviously we can.

 The issue is whether we can build buses that strangers will buy with their own money.

 That is a completely different test.

 If Kiira can sell hundreds and eventually thousands of buses across Africa against BYD and other manufacturers, government should back it enthusiastically.

 But if after hundreds of billions of shillings we are still mainly celebrating factories, prototypes and government procurement, we should ask whether that capital might produce higher returns elsewhere.

 Musk’s story reinforced something very simple.

 Capitalism does not care about good intentions.

 Eventually somebody who does not have to buy your product must reach into his pocket and pay for it.

Tesla passed that test.

BYD has passed it on an even larger scale.

Kiira Motors must too.

ITS NOT THE ECONOMY, ITS LACK OF HOSPITALITY

BOOK REVIEW: UNREASONABLE HOSPITALITY: THE REMARKABLE POWER OF GIVING PEOPLE MORE THAN THEY EXPECT

Author: Will Guidara                    

                

Years ago, I walked into a restaurant and ordered a meal.

The waitress took my order and disappeared. Twenty minutes later, there was no food. Another waiter assured me it was coming. Fifteen minutes later, the original waitress returned and explained, without irony, that the person responsible for making my dish had gone somewhere.

Apparently, in a restaurant full of waiters, cooks and supervisors, only one human being had been authorised by the gods to make a grilled chicken breast.

I left without eating.

The owner probably went home and complained that business was slow because the economy was bad.

This is one of our favourite explanations for poor business performance. Customers have no money. Taxes are too high. Government is not helping. Interest rates are punishing.

All may be true. But sometimes it is not the economy that is wanting. It is your customer service.

This is the central lesson I took from Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality

. Guidara built his career in New York’s restaurant industry, but this is not really a book about restaurants. It is about business, leadership and making people feel seen...

You may run a bank, clinic, garage, supermarket, law firm, school or government office. The product may change, but the question remains: how do people feel after dealing with you?

Guidara’s restaurant sought greatness not simply by serving good food, but by creating a culture of connection, graciousness and belonging. The aim was to make employees and customers feel valued.

When products are similar and prices easily compared, customer experience becomes a competitive advantage. Customers may forget the interest rate you quoted or the flavour of the sauce. They will remember how your organisation made them feel...

Ugandan businesses frequently invest heavily in appearances and poorly in experience.

We import furniture, install shiny tiles and dress staff in smart uniforms. Then the receptionist scrolls through her phone while a customer waits. Calls go unanswered. Complaints are treated as acts of aggression.

Guidara distinguishes between luxury and hospitality. Luxury means giving people more. Hospitality means being more thoughtful.

A roadside restaurant can therefore offer better hospitality than an expensive hotel. It may remember your name and prepare your food the way you like it. The hotel may have chandeliers and a receptionist trained to avoid eye contact.

It is answering the phone, keeping a promise and explaining a delay before the customer asks. It is noticing that an elderly client should not stand in a queue. It is empowering an employee to solve a small problem without seeking permission from seven supervisors.

One of the book’s most useful ideas is Guidara’s test for organisational rules: does the rule bring the business closer to connecting with people, or take it further away?

Many rules are designed for the institution’s convenience, not the customer’s.

The customer must photocopy a document already in the company’s system. The client travels across town to sign a form that could have been emailed. The cashier cannot correct a mistake because the supervisor is at lunch.

Every employee may have followed procedure. The customer has still been lost.

Guidara does not argue that hospitality should replace commercial discipline. He insists on understanding the business, setting standards and holding people accountable.

His formula is memorable: manage 95 percent of the business carefully, then use the remaining five percent to do something memorable.

That five percent is not permission to waste money. It creates room for initiative—to surprise a customer, solve a problem or turn an ordinary transaction into a story the customer will repeat.

A delighted customer brings friends.

The book also contains a lesson many businesses resist: the customer’s perception is the organisation’s reality...

When customers complain, our instinct is to defend ourselves. We explain that the system was down, the supplier delayed or the manager was unavailable.

These explanations may be accurate. They do not change the customer’s experience.

Guidara observes that people often want to be heard more than agreed with. Saying sorry is not necessarily an admission of fault. It acknowledges a poor experience.

Unreasonable Hospitality is not perfect. Many examples come from elite New York restaurants, far removed from the average Ugandan business. Some gestures are difficult to reproduce.

But the principles travel well.

Pay attention. Train your people. Listen. Keep your promises. Sweat the small details. Give employees authority to solve problems.

The Ugandan economy will never be perfect. Taxes will remain a complaint. Customers will want lower prices. Competition will intensify.

But even in a difficult economy, money continues to change hands.

The question is whether it will change hands in your business.

WEALTH BEGINS WITH HUMAN LIFE VALUE

Garrett Gunderson’s Killing Sacred Cows 2.0 is a provocative book that challenges the financial orthodoxies most people grow up believing. The “sacred cows” of the title are the assumptions that dominate conventional personal finance: that debt is always bad, that saving automatically creates wealth, and that traditional retirement planning is the safest path to prosperity.

Gunderson’s central argument is that much of the advice people receive about money is not designed primarily for their benefit. Instead, it often serves the interests of financial intermediaries — asset managers, insurance companies and advisors whose incentives are tied to fees, commissions and products.

In dismantling these ideas, the book performs a useful service. Gunderson highlights how inflation, taxes and management fees quietly erode wealth over time. He also challenges the idea that “playing it safe” is truly safe, arguing that many conventional strategies are simply inefficient ways of building long-term prosperity.

This critique of the financial advice industry is one of the book’s strongest contributions. It encourages readers to question received wisdom and to interrogate the structures behind financial products.

However, the book sometimes replaces one orthodoxy with another. Many of Gunderson’s solutions revolve around complex financial structures, particularly insurance-based strategies. While these may have merit in certain contexts, they can feel unnecessarily complicated and are heavily dependent on the institutional environment of developed markets such as the United States.

For readers in emerging economies, where the more immediate challenge is participation in financial markets, the path to wealth is often far simpler: accumulate productive assets, reinvest income and allow compounding to work over time.

Yet focusing only on the technical financial advice in Killing Sacred Cows 2.0 risks missing the book’s most powerful idea.

The most important insight Gunderson offers is his concept of Human Life Value (HLV).

Human Life Value refers to the economic value a person is capable of producing over their lifetime through their knowledge, skills, relationships, creativity and productivity. In other words, the real source of wealth is not money itself but the ability of a person to create value for others.

This insight shifts the entire frame through which we think about wealth.

Most personal finance discussions begin with money — how to earn it, save it, invest it. Gunderson reverses that logic. Money is not the starting point of wealth creation. It is the result.

Wealth begins with human capability.

A person who increases their knowledge, develops valuable skills, builds trust, cultivates networks and solves problems for others automatically increases their Human Life Value. And as that value rises, income tends to follow.

This idea also clarifies one of the most common clichés in discussions about wealth: the notion that people “make money from nothing.”

At first glance, the phrase sounds almost magical. How can wealth come from nothing?

The concept of Human Life Value provides the answer.

Money is created when someone introduces new value into the world — whether through an idea, a service, a system or a better way of doing something. Before that intervention, the value did not exist in the marketplace. Once human ingenuity organizes resources into something useful, new wealth is created.

It may appear that money has been made “from nothing.” In reality, it has been created from human ingenuity.

This is why the most valuable asset in any economy is not financial capital but human capital. Societies that invest in skills, innovation and entrepreneurship expand their Human Life Value and, in turn, their prosperity.

Gunderson’s insight is powerful because it redirects attention away from financial products and toward the deeper drivers of wealth.

The real question is not: Where should I invest my money?

The real question is: How can I increase my Human Life Value?

This could mean acquiring new knowledge, developing expertise, building strong relationships, improving productivity or cultivating discipline.

In that sense, wealth creation is not primarily a financial process. It is a human one.

Money simply follows.

Killing Sacred Cows 2.0 therefore works best not as a manual of financial tactics but as a philosophical reframing of how wealth works. It reminds readers that prosperity does not come from obsessing about money itself. Instead, it emerges from continually increasing the value one is capable of creating for others.

That is the sacred cow truly worth killing: the belief that wealth begins with money.

In reality, it begins with people.

BOOK REVIEW: WANT WEALTH? UNLEARN POVERTY

Buy HERE for on sh20,000

Paul Busharizi’s Want Wealth? Unlearn Poverty is a rare finance book that resists the temptation to shout. It doesn’t promise shortcuts, secret strategies, or dramatic transformations. Instead, it whispers—persistently—until uncomfortable truths about money finally land. The result is a thoughtful, disarming, and ultimately empowering work that speaks directly to the millions of people who are busy, disciplined, informed…and still financially stuck.

The book follows a simple narrative device: a series of conversations between Unco Money, a calm and incisive mentor, and Jack, a young professional doing “everything right” yet making little progress. Jack is not exaggerated or naïve. He works hard, consumes financial content, and postpones indulgence when necessary. His problem is not behaviour in the narrow sense, but belief. Like many readers, he is guided by ideas about money that sound sensible but quietly sabotage progress...

Busharizi structures the book around five myths: that wealth should wait until income improves; that knowledge must precede action; that hard work naturally leads to prosperity; that financial discipline requires pain; and that one big break will eventually fix everything. Each myth is dismantled patiently, not with charts or formulas, but through reflection and lived logic. The power of the book lies in its sequencing: the reader recognises themselves in Jack before being gently forced to question assumptions they have never consciously chosen.

What distinguishes this book from typical personal finance titles is its focus on psychology and systems rather than tactics. Busharizi is not interested in telling readers what to buy or where to invest. He is interested in how people think about money when no one is watching. Wealth, in this framing, is not an outcome but a direction—a consequence of structure, consistency, and identity rather than income size or intellectual sophistication.

The prose is clean, conversational, and deliberately unflashy. Unco Money’s voice is firm but never preachy, offering lines that linger long after reading. Concepts like “action creates clarity,” “assets outlive effort,” and “boring consistency” recur not as slogans but as hard-earned insights. The absence of dramatic success stories is refreshing; instead, readers are shown the slow, quiet emergence of stability—and why that is the form of wealth most people actually need first.

The epilogue, set five years later, is particularly effective. Jack is not rich in a cinematic sense, but he is calm, resilient, and in control. His anxiety has been replaced by margin. His future is no longer a rescue fantasy but a continuation. It is a powerful reminder that financial success often looks unimpressive from the outside—and that this is precisely why it works.

Want Wealth? Unlearn Poverty will resonate most with readers who are tired of motivational noise and ready for intellectual honesty. It is a book less about getting ahead than about stopping self-sabotage. In doing so, it makes a quiet but persuasive case: before money can grow, the ideas governing it must be unlearned.

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.