ONGWEN, BOKO HARAM, CHARLIE AND THE VALUE OF LIFE

Last week while the world was gripped by the horror of the attack on a French media house, Nigerian rebels Boko Haram killed hundreds as it laid waste to a whole village and Uganda rebel commander Dominic Ongwen was captured in Central Africa Republic.

It was quite a week for Terror Inc.

In Paris gunmen walked into the offices of French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo and opened fire killing at least 12 people in the process. Within minutes of the attack the news and images had been zapped around the world and the outrage was instant, palpable and universal.

Over the weekend several heads of state flew to Paris to show solidarity by joining in a march that attracted hundreds of thousands on the streets of the French capital.

Days before the Charlie attack, Boko Haram started an operation in Baga village in north eastern Nigeria which lasted several days and accounted for about 2,000 people. In a recently released report by Amnesty International 3,700 structures were damaged in the most affected villages of Baga and Doron Baga. Another 16 surrounding settlements were razed to the ground displacing at least 20,000 people.

This has got to be the deadliest attack by the northern Nigerian insurgents since they began operations in 2009.

"Compared to the amount of press generated by either event the killing of a dozen people in Paris, four days after the massacres started in north eastern Nigeria, the handiwork of Boko Haram was a whisper in comparison...

And of course the perennial questions of the relative value of life and the alleged racism of the international media reared their ugly heads.

Being a member of the media I was unsurprised that the attack of Charlie Hebdo got more play than the Baga killings and not for the usual knee jerk reaction reasons.

The reason why goes back to journalism 101, what makes news? Among other qualifiers is the proximity and relevance of the events to the markets the media are targeting.

But then subsequently, what makes news go viral? This is a function of the actual event but even more importantly the network that is used to relay the information.

So for example the death of local businessman would in the outer reaches of Uganda would generate less press than a rich man’s death in Kampala.

In Kabong for instance the local radio stations may carry the news in the local language but because of the limitations of the signal’s reach and the number of people who understand the language its effect will be severely limited.

However his local equivalent in Kampala will have the length and breadth of the national papers to relay his story.

The major news media of the world with their targets being mostly Europeans and North and South Americans would see the Charlie Hebdo attack as more relevant and closer to home, never mind the higher fatalities in Nigeria.

It’s not a palatable reality but true never the less.

Overlay this analysis on the Charlie Hebdo versus Baga village killings and it becomes clear why the Paris attack had disproportionate impact on our lives given the number of people who died.

In addition to that there was the power of social media and particularly the pervasiveness of the mobile phone and devices.

It is estimated that the every seven in ten people in Paris has a mobile phone one need not be a rocket scientist to see how this can be leveraged to have the news sent out faster.

But given that rate of mobile phone uptakes is fastest in Africa than anywhere else in the world maybe there is hope for African news being bumped up the ladder. Just maybe.

Which brings us finally to our very own Dominic Ongwen, regarded by some as the third highest ranking official of the LRA. When he was going about his murderous business in northern Uganda more than a decade ago media was thin and even mobile phone penetration in northern Uganda was even thinner.

"The scale of Boko Haram’s exploits are being relayed faster and more accurately – everyone can now shoot video, than was happening at the height of LRA’s rampage through the north. One shudders to think that the LRA may have been just as murderous as the Boko Haram...

One wonders too whether Nigeria may have to face up to the hard reality that to starve Boko Haram of targets and potential  they may have to herd the northern population into Internally Displaced Camps too.

HOW THE RICH SAVE

At the end of last year the Wall Street Journal reported on a research on wealth distribution in the US by economist Edward Wolff at New York University.

The research among other things, illustrated how various strata of American society hold their wealth.

The top one percent – net worth of more than $7.8m (sh21b) have almost half their net worth invested in their business and other real estate outside their principal residence and only nine percent in their homes. 

The upper middle class, the next 19% -- those with more than $400,000 in assets had the largest percentage – 28, in their homes, 24% in their businesses and 22% in their pension accounts.

The middle class have about six in every ten dollars of their net worth invested in their homes and less than ten percent in business. They however have 16% in their pension accounts.

The proportions may differ in the detail but generally would mirror what is happening in Uganda and around the world. It’s in this breakdown too, that you can see why the rich get richer and the rest, well they eat crow.

"If there is one lesson from Capital, the runaway success of 2014 by Thomas Picketty, it’s that as long as the return of capital outstrips the rate of inflation, owners of capital will experience greater wealth increases than the workers whose wages often rise with inflation...

The survey also showed – in case one had their doubts, that the key to financial security and eventual wealth is to own a business. It’s all very nice after years of blood, sweat and tears you build a palatial mansion to which you retire but you are better off expending your energy and resources into building a business.

A successful business is useful, and desirable, because it serves as a money multiplication machine – you put in money at one end and it is returned and with interest down the other end. And if managed well these returns go on well into the future.

So the sooner one begins to build this machine the better. And secondly watch out you wish for in terms of big pay checks because it will take that much more time and energy to build a machine with comparable earning power.

Say you earn a million a month or sh12m a year, to get such a return from the 364-day treasury bill you would need at least sh84m using the effective yield from last week’s 364-day treasury be which came it at about 14.2%. Profit margins maybe considerably less in a business so you might need a business with a higher net worth than sh100m.

In theory the short cut would be to steal, beg or borrow the sh100m and start a business but it does not quite work that way.  Just because you have money will not make you a business success. 

"The most successful enterprises started small learning as they went before they burst into our collective consciousness. That took time. There is no escaping the fact that it will take time to make the mistakes, learn the right way and even close shop altogether, before you can enjoy business success...

The trick with building this machine especially for salaried employees is the extent to which one can do without a salary or at least a salary as big as we currently earn, to plough back any returns to build the company’s earning power. This may often mean having workers you pay a salary while you go without. 

It’s the way things are the business is paid before the owner.

It may not be easy but it is actually simple to build this kind of money making machine. Ask yourself what it is you currently do to earn money then build the systems around it and voila you have a business!

I simplify of course but that is what it boils down to. 

Maybe that is why we are so corrupt. Regardless of the bounty that awaits us on the other side of the rainbows, there is just too much pain we are unwilling to bear – especially now that our cost of living is too high.

But the world’s largest economy shows us there are no short cuts. It is unlikely that if we live to old age we will sustain the wages we are paid for our labour. No one can save enough to tide them through the evening of their lives.

So we need to get with it and work on our businesses!

GENERAL SEJUSA’S TRAVAILS A STAGE IN UGANDA'S EVOLUTION

It started much earlier but let us use January 26^th 1986 as a reference point to chart events and place the events surrounding our most recent headline grabbers, Amama Mbabazi and General David Sejusa’s, in a bigger context.

When the rag-tag National Resistance Army overran Kampala, the city’s state of disrepair was emblematic of the general state of the nation. Electricity supply was intermittent or non-existent for most of the capital’s residents, roads were in such a sorry state as the normal traffic rules were suspended, bread, sugar, paraffin and even bar soap were a luxury.

In a sign of how things have changed since, there was a threat of strikes in 2011 over the high cost of sugar, not that there was any shortage.

There were two immediate challenges, to restore security to the country and to resuscitate the economy, whose life blood were the unkempt coffee bushes dotted around the countryside.

Unfortunately these challenges could not be tackled sequentially, one after the other.

"The young government’s hold on power was still unsure but its enemies would not give them time to settle down. Wars cost money and war couldn’t wait, so where was the new government to get the money to finance the war?

The ratio of tax to GDP was under ten percent. The size of the economy was a paltry $2b.

In the currency conversion of 1987, government slapped a 30% tax on all cash holdings, they printed money like it was going out of fashion before finally stopping to solve fundamental questions of generating real economic activity through ceding the business to the private sector. They dismantled  produce marketing monopolies and privatised state owned parastatals.

Meanwhile rebellions in the east and north, flowed and ebbed and were prolonged partly because the army was still in guerrilla mode, in its outlook and practice – informal, reactive and erratic. Inspite of its growth in size to combat threats within and outside our borders, the army’s development as an institution was put on hold.

But as the economy grew more resources were funneled into security to the point that, it is argued, the army now is the most effective public institution, which is not saying much given our general public sector inefficiency, but it is something.

"One of the outcomes of this modernisation of the army is that the bush-time veterans are no longer in active service or at least are not in major command positions. In fact “the modernisation of the army” has been driven by a newer generation of soldiers for who the bushes of Luwero are military folklore...

General Sejusa’s latest fallout with the establishment was a thinly veiled protest against the way this process was being handled. The good General once complained about the ignominy of saluting officers fit to be his grandchildren.

And now the reform has swung around to the National Resistance Movement (NRM). 

The ejection of Amama Mbabazi as secretary general is symbolic of a break with the past informality to a more systematic organisation.

In an organised party the secretary general is not unlike the managing director of a company, who handles the day to day operations. His undivided attention on the job is critical to the smooth running and success of any party.

The appointments of the next generation– secretary general Justine Lumumba and deputised by Richard Todwong, is probably the final stage of reforms in the biggest drivers of this country’s fate – the economy, security and politics.

"The success of these movements will be tested soon enough with elections around the corner. Mababazi’s will not be the last stand by an older guard trying to stall the handover of this country’s most powerful political institution to the next generation...

In fact the strength of the NRM will be tested in coming months as it tries to simultaneously reorganise itself while competing in 2016. Of course, the sheer depth and breadth of the organisation can paper over many ills but it will be interesting to watch in coming months.

On the other hand, that the party can risk such an upheaval barely a year to the campaigns, is a sign of supreme confidence in itself or points to a lack of a credible external threat. 

The changing of the guards was inevitable, the question was always how it was going to be handled.  The final pieces are falling in place, despite push back by historical members who feel that they are being passed over.

The consequences of this transition, for better or for worse are what we are going to live with for generations to come.