THE AFRICAN COALITION IS COMING TOGETHER

President Yoweri Museveni has just been in Angola to participate in the International Conference on the Great Lakes region (ICGLR) part of whose agenda was to discuss the happenings in far-off South Sudan.

The ICLGR is a gathering of countries who beyond their close proximity have similar security and economic interests.

Just like the European Union, the organisation formalised its membership after the war in Congo at the beginning of this century, which pitted Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi on one side against DRC, Angola, Zimbabwe and Chad on the other. All the other 19 members were affected by association and were heavily involved in behind the scenes negotiations to resolve what was once dubbed, “Africa’s World War”.

Security remains top of the region’s agenda with the disfunctionality of the DRC causing nine of the members to forever keep an eye on the happenings in Kinshasa.

"At the core of the continent’s problems is its arbitrary fragmentation a century ago. This fragmentation left many countries economically unviable, gave post-colonial leaders overinflated sense of importance that has served to accentuate instead of wipe away these artificial boundaries....

But faced with the challenge of growing poverty on the continent which will soon or is already rendering the region’s arsenals impotent, this wily veterans have come around to the realisation that 

 “It’s the economy, stupid!”

The group whose membership stretches from Egypt to Botswana represents a population of at least half a billion citizens, an economic force which if leveraged properly can have a transformative effect on the continent as a whole.

It can be argued that the perennial chaos in the center of Africa is holding the continent back. It is these great lake economies that, are the least covered by economic infrastructure, account for the majority of the continent’s human misery from disease, war and general poverty and its I the region –less so lately, that was plagued with the greatest political instability.

Imagine if we had, a credible rail and road network from the Mediterranean to Cape Town, developed the region’s hydro-electric potential, which would have led to the easier exploitation of our vast natural resources for the benefit of our people and raised the quality of our human capital to be a more productive work force?

The potential is mind boggling. It is not by mistake that we have been running around like headless chicken for the last half century.

"In a previous era the continent’s big men could not be bothered in trying to facilitate economic growth – after all the US or USSR could always prop up their anaemic treasuries in exchange for loyalty. The fall of the Berlin wall meant these handouts dried out and those leaders who could not see the writing on the wall got booted for their inability to deliver services.

More than 20 years of economic growth since 1989 and

the region’s leaders are beginning to realise that total is greater than the sum of the individual parts, and greater collaboration on economic and security issues can keep the economy growing and wean them off irritating donor money....

Progress will not advance in a straight line, but as they say even if it means slowing to a crawl progress should always be seen to be taking place.

A line up of the organisation’s leaders may not provide comfort to human rights activists, but all of them are survivors and pragmatism has dictated that they transcend their mutual suspicions to make this thing happen. Eventually the rest of us mere mortals will be the beneficiaries.

THE CHALLENGE OF RAISING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY

With four in every five Ugandans deriving a living from agriculture and with a population doubling every 20 years, it does not take any economic modelling to work out that more food is going to be needed to feed our population.

"As it is now we are still a net exporter of food, a situation that may not continue considering the dwindling productivity of our farms. The incentive to boost farm productivity, essentially raise farm output per unit input, is urgent if only to ensure food security into the future...

It’s as clear as night and day. What we are failing to execute is a sustainable strategy for raising our farm productivity.

A major error of course is that the message is that it’s the farmer’s problem, but anecdotes abound that the whole value chain – production, distribution, marketing, research and finance, needs to be looked into.

My friend once had a farm with a herd of about 1000 pigs, but he was forced to shut down because it never turned a profit and for lack of official support.

At the time the demand for pork ribs was insatiable but that only accounted for a quarter of the carcass, how to dispose of the rest of the meat was always a hustle. So he got it into his head to get into processing but his herd could not provide enough volume to make a proposed plant viable.   

Inquiries at one of our university’s vet departments on how he could increase the productivity of his herd came up with nothing because he found they had hands on knowledge on animal disease but little practical knowledge on how to increase yields in our local environment.

So he did what a prudent businessman would do, he shut down the operation instead of hang on to it out of some misplaced need to say to his friends in the bar,  “I have a farm.”

The same challenges can be found in trying to increase productivity of any agricultural endeavour – crop or animal, in this country.

There have been some successful agricultural enterprises, the sugar and tea plantations leap to mind, tobacco has provided a viable model too as have the coffee cooperatives and more recently the efforts of Good African Coffee in organising farmers to supply coffee for export. There is also the work Mukwano Industries is doing with farmers in the northern Uganda. So too the breweries with the sorghum and barley farmers in eastern Uganda.

The success of these endeavours revolve around improved farming practices – from the sowing to harvesting stage, better post-harvest handling – where up to half the crop can be lost and a ready market for the produce at competitive prices – we have the dismantling of the government produce marketing boards to thank for this last one.

And while we may think we are clever ignoring agriculture because we want to be an industrial nation the story of Denmark can serve as an eye opener.

"The Nordic country’s food exports amounted to €16b (sh56b) in 2011 – or about the total GDP of Uganda,  a fourfold increase from a decade ago. But the country in which pigs out number humans by five-to-one is not a rural backwater on the roof of the European Union. In fact due to the size of its agricultural sector it has spawned agro-processing industries, ICT, finance, research and numerous other agriculture supporting companies...

The moral of the story is that increasing farm productivity is not the problem of the farmer alone. We need to look at the entire value chain, from field to table, in order to come to grips with the challenge of not only future threats to food insecurity but to sustainably tackle the challenge of low rural incomes and poverty.

POWER IS ABOUT POWER

Lately one would be forgiven for seeing the sign of the end of times following recent events in the region.

The implosion in South Sudan, which we saw coming but we did not; the rejuvenation of the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) in eastern Congo; assassinations and revelations of wiretapping  in the best tradition of the cloak and dagger novel and anticipation of famine and hunger in the wake of disturbing environmental changes.

 The politics that inform these developments, more opaque than nought have us shaking our heads in befuddlement and increases our anxiety about the future.

We could look to divine revelation to decipher the going ons, but that maybe the privilege of a few chosen ones. 

For the rest of us mere mortals, we could do well to reach for “The Dictator’s Handbook: Why bad behaviour is almost always good politics,” authored by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.

The authors start the book with the disquieting caveat,

“The picture we paint will not be pretty. It will not strengthen hope for humankind’s benevolence and altruism.”

The authors note that the line between autocratic and democratic leaders is a blurred one, they then continue to construct a cross cutting model for how power is captured, sustained and eventually lost which is convincing when viewed against the power plays we see in our everyday lives.

What is the ideal we hold leaders to that they come woefully short in meeting time and time again? In a nut shell, that they be selfless in ruling in our best interest.

The authors waste no time in shooting down that notion,

“

"First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of “We the people.”

That applies to both the democrats and autocrats.

What distinguishes the two leadership styles is the number of people they depend on to sustain them in power, with the autocrat needing fewer than the democrat. Using this as a differentiator one will be shocked to find that those we thought were democrats may actually be autocratic and the reverse can be found to be true.

This distinction is at the center of their whole analysis and dictates politicians’ behaviour.

They break up the politicians’ constituency into the interchangeables, the influentials and the essentials.

To use a democratic example, the interchangables are those with a right to vote, they are important because they can vote but politicians do not lose sleep over the loss of one voter or the other because there will always be another to take their place. The influentials actually choose the leader and are a fraction of the greater voting public, these could be party leaders who nominate the party’s candidate or members of a ruling family in a monarchy.

The essentials are the even smaller group that keep a politician in power these could range from the tribal heads, to army generals or a kitchen cabinet, basically those few high ups who if they choose to look the other way regimes come tumbling.

Managing these three groups is where the action is.

“The choice between enhancing social welfare or enriching a privileged few is not a question of how benevolent a leader is. Honourable motives might seem important, but they are overwhelmed by the need to keep supporters happy, and the means of keeping them happy depends on how many need rewarding.”

Basically the wider the base of supporters the more democratic a leader is likely to be. If the leader is accountable to a small group then he can keep himself in place by private payoffs but if the group is bigger he cannot pay them off individually so then he has to deliver public goods and services to the wider society to stay in power...

So in trying to create more a democratic society the trick is to widen the number of people the leader is accountable to, a situation the leader will resist as it flies in the face of his attempts to concentrate power – the best way to ensure longevity.

While his examples and justifications of why our worst tyrants behave the way they do can be disturbing they allow one to view politics differently from what we are used to – they warn us at the beginning of the book to suspend conventional wisdom.

And just in case you are under the illusion that the authors drew from the worst despots – Idi Amin and the Shah of Iran receive mention, in coming to their conclusions, they also pepper the book with the examples from corporate America and capitals of western democracy to illustrate autocracy.

Far from being a dark, cynical book it is written in an easy-to-read, oftentimes even humorous style that makes the journey enjoyable, were it not for the shattering of conventional wisdoms at every turn of the page.

The book is a must read for the students of power and those aspiring to assume power, if only to help them remove their rose tinted view of the world and therefore understand what they are up against.

As for the autocrats you hope they don’t lay hands on this book to crystallise and tweak their methods even more.

·        

 The book is available in all leading book stores.

COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY IS JOB #1 FOR UGANDA EMBASSIES

This week during a three-day retreat for Uganda’s representatives abroad, Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi called on them to put emphasis on commercial diplomacy in their dealing with foreign nations.

I am sure the government has impressed upon its ambassadors the importance of this new assignment before, but going by reports from the retreat the government was accused of paying lip service to this agenda by not facilitating ambassadors.

With the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall, a symbol of the ideological divide between the west and the east, international diplomacy has moved determinedly towards promoting commercial interests rather than massaging geopolitical alignments.

The UN’s relevance as the pinnacle of international diplomacy is giving way to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other economic pacts.

Even with the fall of apartheid, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the need by South African businessmen to spread their wings globally but who were hampered by the economic sanctions placed on everything South African.

The proof is in the way with the collapse of apartheid, South African companies have rationalised their operations and spread out into the world, and in the case of the South African Breweries (SAB), to becoming the second largest brewer in the world by revenues.

This reality has been on for more than 25 years and it’s heartening that Kampala is coming around to this way of thinking.

It is all very well to make political pronouncements, the question would be what this new agenda entails for the location of our embassies and the criteria for staff recruitment.

In recent years the Foreign Service standards have suffered for lack of funding, political appointments and undertraining of staff and an archaic system of advancement and deployments. This has far reaching implications for our ability not only to carry out regular diplomacy but commercial diplomacy as well.

If working in embassies abroad is seen as a cushy job, instead of as part of a real engine for economic development is it no wonder that we are failing to fulfill our full potential?

Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is an example of how with determined action small nations can punch about their weight if their commercial diplomacy is even half decent.

The country, which is 45 km or the distance from the Kampala to Entebbe, across at its widest point with a population of less than two million is a major tourist destination, a growing financial and ICT hub and center for textile manufacture.

Talking about tourism alone,  Mauritius’ 965,000 visitors in 2012 would be the equivalent of 17 million visitors to Uganda a year, if adjusted for population size.

A handful of embassies are situated in strategic nations, it employs strategic partnerships abroad and 

also employs ICT technologies to punch way above its head.

Clearly it cannot be business as usual.

There has to be a restructuring of the foreign affairs ministry as the front line agency but also all other supporting ministries. It will not do for our high commission in the UK to be talking a good game about the opportunities and partnerships available back home when the trade or finance or labour ministry cannot provide the required support.

Tourists and investors do not make travelling or investing decisions by throwing darts blindly at a map of the world. They make decisions based on the information available either through individual research or third party endorsements.

Looking from the outside Uganda is not exactly the place that will see commercial visitors beating down the door to get in.

A focus on commercial diplomacy is the only way to tap into the billions of dollars in investment and the tourism industry, but we need to put our money where our money is in facilitating our ambitions.

ECONOMIC GROWTH IS ONLY PART OF THE EQUATION

Almost 25 years ago Investment manager Jim Rogers and a friend toured the world on a pair of BMW motorcycles.

His trip took him through pre-economic-boom China, which was about a decade into its economic reforms. At the time he predicted great things for the economy based on evidence of huge infrastructure investments in their roads, railways and ports, the inherent commercial acumen of the Chinese and the huge population, whose capacity was being boosted by a drive universal education, that by the first half of this century it would be the world's largest economy.

Economists have set 2027 as the date for this rise to preeminence.

"The little known story -- or largely forgotten story, is that China's economic boom started in the rural areas with the liberalization of agricultural production...

This averted a famine and got the mandarins in Beijing thinking, reexamining their communist orthodoxy.

Last week the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that the economy would grow by 6.25 percent this year up from 5.75 percent last fiscal year.

The growth is going to be driven by public investments in infrastructure, but concerns remain that this growth is not evenly distributed with some regions lagging behind, the rural areas in general, hence a need for increases in agricultural productivity.

Clearly our planners have worked out how to grow the economy year in, year out what they need to exercise their minds on is how to facilitate the distribution of the benefits of this growth.

Given that the Ugandan economy is small at about $20b or half the size of Kenya's, it would be asking too much to expect elevated welfare standards for the general population.

To improve the general standards of living it is imperative that the economy continues to grow and for more people to benefit every shilling aimed at service delivery must count. As it stands now not only are we spending less than global standards on health, education and other public goods but we are also stealing these funds.

Corruption not only denies tens of thousands of children quality education and health services and therefore a chance of social advancement but distorts the business environment, with corrupt officials inflating real estate prices and outcompeting business rivals thanks to their "free money," further compromising the social climbing mechanism that a level economic playing field allows.

"The truth is to the extent that there are wealth and income inequalities in an economy, is the extent to which the government is not doing its job, even in liberal economies. Either the government is not facilitating economic growth or if it is, it is failing to ensure that the benefits are more equitably shared...

The free market generates wealth and the government distributes it.

Handing out cash at street corners does not constitute distribution of the national cake. The government through taxation of incomes generated by the private sector then finances public goods like security, national strategy formulation and execution, infrastructure and social services, which crease business productivity and leading to more taxes -- the virtuous cycle of development.

The Chinese clear in their resolve have shown what can be done in less than a generation, but also going by Rogers' account, sometimes when nations are in the process of development it's hard to appreciate the progress being made -- in effect failing to see the forest for the trees.

In Uganda we clearly have one part of the equation -- economic growth, of the development under control. Without killing the goose that lays the golden egg we need to spread this growth more equitably around society. 

Boosting agricultural productivity is important but putting a lid on corruption is critical.