UGANDA'S EDUCATION SYSTEM SHORTCHANGING OUR KIDS

This week the Primary Leaving Exams were released to the usual fanfare we have come to expect over the last decade or so.

Events followed a familiar script with newspapers splashing the top students on their covers, parents trooping to media houses children in tow and the feted scholars telling us how  they want to be doctors, lawyers and engineers but, thankfully not politicians.

We have stopped marveling at the proliferation of perfect scores – four points in the four tested subjects. Candidates are getting four-in-four with disturbing regularity. In an earlier generation getting an eight-in-four, which probably meant all distinctions, was enough to swell the average kid’s little head, now such a candidate slinks off into the corner in dejection.

The question has to be asked, is it that our kids are getting brighter and brighter? The theory of evolution which suggests that we continue to evolve and that offspring will continue to exceed the achievements of their forefathers would make this a feasible assumption.

Or is it on the other hand that our kids are now being specifically honed to achieve four-in-fours like at no other time in our history? The proliferation of private schools whose main marketing tool is the perceived success of its students, has a lot to do with this.

The answer of course can be found in both questions.

In the last two decades with sustained economic growth the access to better schools has improved, so too has the relative health of the population. The kids therefore generally have access to better schooling and with better diet, their brains develop properly and hence their capacity to retain information, which they dutifully download during exam time.

And that is the crux of the matter.

As the private sector has stepped in to fill the gaps in the education sector, exam results have become the end rather than the growing of well-rounded human beings who can operate effectively in the real world.

This means cramming our kids with information within the strict confines of the curriculum while ignoring other aspect of their personal development like character building for instance.

As a result we are churning out brigades of automatons who have good retentive memory but little else.

This situation is not unusual to Uganda. In the late eighties a study in Japan showed that the rate of broken bones by children was growing at an alarming rate. An investigation showed that the children’s bones were weaker than usual and it did not take much to break a bone. At the root of the problem was the enormous pressure society was placing on its youth to excel at academics, which would lead to a job for life in one of the country’s mega corporations. Children were spending more than fourteen hours a day in the classroom, in cram school (coaching) and doing homework leaving no time for sports.

The world has changed since.  The world now demands more independent thinking, communication and entrepreneurship skills and Japanese kids find they have been trained for a working environment that has shriveled.

Broken bones are now the least of the worries that Japanese families face.

There is a growing phenomenon of Japanese kids – suffocated by academic pressure and eventual failure to operate in a new world, shutting themselves away in their rooms for up to 15 years playing video games, surfing the net and watching TV.

Our education system was designed by a colonial system that needed subservient, paper pushes to man the administration, which would guarantee you a job for the rest of your working life and a pension for the rest of your life.

In my time I competed with Ugandans. The current generation is competing with East Africans, by the time my four year old son makes it to the work place the competition will be global.

He will need to not only be proficient in several international languages, he will also have to shed the inferiorities of his forefathers to allow him to work anywhere in the world and if all else fails he will go into business for himself.

Good grades still count, but when they become an end in themselves rather than a means to the greater goal of creating well rounded individuals equipped top take on the future you know the system has passed its sale-by date.

JAMES MULWANA: LESSONS FROM A LIFE WELL LIVED

Industrialist and entrepreneur James Mulwana died earlier this week and was put to rest on Wednesday. As a country we should be thankful for the gift of the man and that he was with us long enough to leave an indelible mark on our history.

For a man who lived to the ripe old age of 77 and filled those years with a life of achievement it is futile to try and capture the essence of the man in one article.

He was an intensely private man who never courted the media, but from the words of friends and colleagues one can glean a few life lessons from the godfather of Ugandan business.

·         Work like you will live forever

The breadth and depth of Mulwana’s business and community involvement would put the majority of us to shame. His businesses are household names and his service to his community and country, while not as visible, have touched thousands upon thousands.  Mulwana counseled patience to those who would listen. This advice was all the more surprising coming from a man who had lived through some of this country’s darkest   times, where expediency and bare faced opportunism took the place of integrity and diligence. People’s experience of the man was that he was never after the fast buck, and the portfolio of businesses he put together was testament to that philosophy. Mulwana knew intuitively and from experience that no enduring legacy can be built in a hurry.

·         A man has got to do what a man has got to do

Mulwana went into business at a time when the environment was rigged against the African entrepreneur. He then lived through a time when it was prudent to keep your head down. In the last two decades the foundation he had painstakingly laid down bore fruit and earned him immense wealth. He was known for an unbending will but to have survived – no, thrived under the circumstances, he must have coupled this with rubber-like adaptability. Clearly he was driven by a sense of responsibility for which whining, complaining and failure was not an option.

 ·         Follow your own star

As a budding businessman he might have gone into the traditional retail businesses at one time or another but in later years he was never afraid to step out into the unknown. A local pioneer in the manufacture of car batteries, plastics, flower farming and agro-processing, Mulwana must have known the pain of breaking ground but he remained confident in his ability to preserve through the steep early learning curves to win first mover advantage in a lot of his business enterprises. Say anything else about the man but no one will accuse him of being a copycat.

·         Impressing those who don’t care, humility

By all accounts he was humble man, a humility that was probably forged in years of battling insurmountable odds and living with the ever present fear of failure. But probably also because having dealt with businessmen from far and wide he knew in his heart, his achievements were  modest compared to what he saw in his travels and interactions. He was a reluctant big fish in a small pond, who knew there was still work to be done.

·         Leave a record

It is interesting how those who are not hell bent on leaving a legacy are the ones who invariably do. By taking care of business year after year, decade after decade Mulwana cemented his place in Ugandan history. His life’s major omission maybe that he never wrote his book. A life well lived like Mulwana’s deserves not only be documented but also told in his own voice, to narrate how he handled the spirit crushing set backs, how he overcame self doubt but also how he came about his own philosophy of life. Isaac Newton said that the reason he made so many discoveries is because he stood on the shoulders of giants, men who had gone before him and provided the foundation from which to launch his work.

We are a third world country mired in poverty and disease, it is the doers like Mulwana not the flossers and smash-and-grab artists who dominate our headlines, that will change that fundamentally.

As a trailblazer and leader of men, his life should serve as inspiration for all other aspiring empire builders.

SOMALIA: CASE OF THE GLASS BEING HALF FULL

 

Lieutenant General Katumba Wamala was last week in Somalia in one of his frequent visits to war torn Somalia.

Uganda contributes almost 20,000 troops to the Africa Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the five-year regional peacekeeping effort to support the transition of the continent’s eastern most country.

During the duration of the mission a semblance of stability has returned to a country, which imploded after the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991, torn apart by feuding clans jostling for supremacy.

The war against terror and recent threats to the safety of the maritime routes off the horn of Africa has made the continued existence of Somalia as a failed state untenable.

Enter Uganda and Burundi who provided the initial forces for the mission. The mission’s   objective among other things is to support the transitional government, implement a national security plan, to assist in creating a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Somalia is far from attaining a sustainable peace, but the green shoots of peace can be discerned.

"A sustainable peace will come when a critical mass of the society have individual and collective interest in acting within the law. That is when they have something to lose and breaking the law would risk igniting a downward spiral into anarchy and hopelessness...

Arguably the easy part of pacifying part of the country has been done the tricky part is to generate economic growth and then distribute this growth to create the bedrock of future stability.

Lt Gen Wamala is making the right noises. He suggested last week that a Marshall Plan for Somalia is necessary for it to resuscitate itself.

The Marshall Plan was a US sponsored financial plan to get Europe back on its feet in order to fend off communism.

Over the last two decades Somalia has literally bombed itself back into the stone age. The infrastructure and human resource have been so severely damaged and their development stunted by years of fighting that they are unable to marshall the resources internally to get themselves going again.

They have one big trump card, I think. The Somali diaspora is not only strewn all over the world, but has maintained close ties and developed into entrepreneurs of some repute wherever they are.

Entrepreneurs and not governments are what grow wealth. And if they are local entrepreneurs they are much more willing to take risks that foreign capital would not, creating confidence in the economy for the time when others will join the party.

Sluggish progress is being made towards building the foundations of government. Governments facilitate business development by providing public goods like security, social services and an overall enabling policy environment. This is important because without these a Marshall Plan for Somalia will not have the desired effect, will in fact be like throwing money down a black hole.

Just as AMISOM has shown that regional initiatives can provide solutions to regional problems, it’s probably time to show too that regional capital can play an instrumental role in lifting the economy of Somalia.

Nineteenth century financier Baron Rothschild once said, “The best time to buy is when there is blood in the streets” Investing in Somalia in the next five to ten years – assuming the current trajectory towards stability is maintained, will be like getting in on the ground floor.

By the time of the second world war the US had already taken its place at the high table of the world economy. Its pivotal role as the arsenal of the free world and the ensuing economic benefits that came with being at the center of reconstructing Europe is what cemented its place as the dominant economy of the second half of the last century.

"And just because the continent is helping Somalia stabilize does not mean we shall have first pickings of the opportunities available....

With Europe’s economy in the doldrums and the US recovery still making hesitant progress, capital is looking to Africa for investment returns.

The high risk situation that is Somalia is not a first choice investment destination but look out for western nations to jump in to provide the concessionary money that will build the communications and energy infrastructure, revive social services and bankroll the creation of the government bureaucracy as a fore runner to the entrance of private money.

Africa has the institutional set up to jump into the fray, what maybe in doubt is whether we have the political vision to see the benefits of such an investment.

East Africa will be the biggest beneficiary of a stable, economically vibrant Somalia. Not only will it cease to be a security threat to the region but will add at least another ten million people to the region’s market.

Africa has invested blood and sweat in Somlia but it need not stop there.

UGANDA DOES NOT LEARN FROM HISTORY

Five years ago Kenya was reeling from violence following the 2007 general elections.

President Mwai Kibaki had been sworn in for second consecutive term. According to official results his challenger Raila Odinga had come in a close second, a situation some of his supporters found hard to swallow, triggering an orgy of violence Kenya had never witnessed in its more than 40 years of independence.

It got so bad that the Mombasa route, through which four in every five shillings of Uganda’s trade outside the region transits, was shut down. We were soon experiencing shortages of fuel and other imports on this side of the border.

In the few days that the route was effectively closed by rioting Kenyans we found out what we already knew, that our over reliance on the Kenyan route was unhealthy for our economy.

The last time we had suffered such a disruption on trade on the route was at the end of 1987 when shooting between Kenyan and Ugandan security agencies erupted at the border.

The Kenyan elections will be held again in March. Kibaki steps down from the presidency and the main contenders are jostling for position. A repeat of the violence of the last election has not been ruled out.

In the meantime

"we have made no effort to wean ourselves off the Mombasa route setting ourselves up for a repeat of events from five years ago...

The alternative route for cargo is the Mutukula-Dar es Salaam route. Tanzania have rehabilitated the route over the last five years but Ugandan businessmen do not see it as a viable alternative because of the additional 600 km compared to the Mombasa route.

The railway line via Mwanza, whose use would have led to major cost savings, has fallen into disrepair and Tanzania is looking of the tens of millions of dollars required to rehabilitate it.

Meanwhile Kenyan authorities in an attempt to protect their roads have implemented an axle-load policy that transporters argue is impractical.

The dispute between transporters and Kenyan authorities caused a sit down strike by Kenyan Transporters in December that again caused supply shortages for traders and manufacturers here.

Apart from an overhaul of the infrastructure on the Tanzanian route, traders have proposed some tax relief to be worked out for cargo on that route to encourage usage of that route.

In addition they propose that air freight can be encouraged by not taxing the freight component of the cost making it more viable to import by air.

The government reeling under recent aid cuts, is scrambling for every shilling of revenue it can collect and is unlikely to cede any taxes now. It does not help that the economy is not firing on all cylinders too.

So little has changed from five years ago and were our Kenyan neighbours to descend into another bloodletting orgy – God forbid, disrupting trade, it will be déjà vu all over again. We will have only ourselves to blame.

The challenge for Uganda is that, while we claim that we want to encourage a private sector led economy, we display little sense of urgency in resolving private sector bottle necks...

But that should come as no surprise. There is little incentive for our political elite and bureaucrats to promote the productive sectors of the economies, finding it easier to extort bribes and indulge in rent seeking to sustain themselves.

If for example our elite were involved in major transport or manufacturing concerns, issues like keeping routes to the sea open or ensuring dependable, inexpensive power or ensuring a productive workforce would be a major concern.

Pandering to commercial interest groups has its problems. Policy can be hijacked by these groups to the detriment of the general public, but that is why we have representatives in government, to look out for our interests and keep everybody in check.

On the other hand if the interests of business include,  proper and functioning infrastructure to allow ready access to markets, dependable power and communications;  credible law enforcement to guarantee contracts and ensure safety of person and property; effective social services to ensure they have an educated and healthy workforce we all benefit.

A productive economy would ensure we are more self-reliant.

But maybe

we are so wed to donor money – finding it easier to negotiate loans than engineer and nurture a self-sustaining economy, that the status quo works just fine for us...

Our actions or lack of thereof suggest as much, but we must know that this is an unsustainable course and the chicken will soon come home to roost.

IS 2013 THE YEAR TO MAKE OR BREAK FOR UGANDA'S RULING NRM?

The Golden Jubilee year was a good time for reflection.

I think the consensus would be that after fifty years of independence we as a nation have fallen short of the aspirations of that generation that saw the union jack come down and the new Ugandan flag rise in October 1963.

At the top of the pile people like Milton Obote and Kabaka Mutesa most likely appreciated the enormity of the task ahead. The general public was probably swept along with euphoria of the occasion and were content to believe that now that their own sons were in power things would improve exponentially.

Unfortunately the British, on the brink of bankruptcy after the second world war couldn’t leave fast enough and in the process left a lot of unresolved issues. Issues which quickly returned to bite us and trigger a downward spiral into political instability and economic chaos...

So lately we have been picking up the pieces. Trying to mend this entity called Uganda, which in all fairness, was formed under dubious circumstances to begin with.

In 1986 when the NRM came to power it inherited a country whose economy was on its knees and which had become ungovernable, in no small measure due to the “bush war” but also because of government infighting. In addition you had a largely incapable, diseased population that was lurching from one day to the next without hope or purpose.

And as fate would have it one challenge would not wait for another to be resolved before it raised its head, putting added pressure on the NRM, which not only had to run the affairs of state but also work at widening its legitimacy as a political force.

Fast forward to the present.

As the first tentative steps are made into the New Year, one would be forgiven for being pessimistic about the country’s prospects.

Economic growth is expected to slow down as donors suspend aid over revelations of corruption in the Office of the Prime Minister and in the public service ministry. We have adequate power but not for long as demand rises quickly to suck up Bujagali’s extra 250 MW. The delayed construction of the 700MW Karuma dam meanwhile is tied up in the courts.

"Politically, the ruling NRM continues to look like a house divided, as internal snipers hold the government ransom at every turn. A good thing in the sense that government has to watch its step, as its overwhelming majority in parliament does not guarantee that its every whim will be supported. On the other hand for reasons rather than ideological differences or patriotism – one suspects, this rear guard action is proving a stumbling block rather than an enabler to the smooth running of government.

Whether a country develops or not is determined by its politics. Political boundaries make a difference.

Uganda, like many countries on the continent has been set a tough political paper.

We are expected to develop, raise the living standards of our populations, while operating as full democracies. It has never been done before.

The process of development while empowering is also a disruptive process.

Unpopular decisions have to be taken, from the minor things like forcing people to use pit latrines to the contracting of major infrastructure projects like communication, transport and energy networks to the decisions to wage war or even put a man on the moon.

These endevours require a singleness of purpose.

As the dominant political party and given the huge decisions the country has to make in the coming years, something has to give.

"The NRM is the only political organization with a credible nationwide presence, which is its greatest strength. But it shows weakness and a lack of organisation when it struggles to take advantage of its numerical strength in the house or fails to rein its errant troops...

In the absence of credible opposition the internal heckling serves to show up the NRM as a liberal organization that tolerates dissent, but this playing to the gallery has its limits and has debatable long term value.

A line has to be drawn in the sand.

The NRM has been entrusted with the mandate to lead this country to a better place, its internal bickering is compromising this mission, the sooner they realize this, the better for all.

Is 2013 the year of reckoning?