EU ALLEVIATING POVERTY THROUGH SKILLING

Laurence Kayeswa has turned his life around from a common thief to a productive member of his society.

“When I used to grab people’s phones, I was always under tension. I was truly living by God’s grace,” Kayeswa, a resident of Bwaise, a Kampala suburb said recently. Income was unsteady, life was cheap -- it was not unusual for thieves to be killed by angry mobs for stealing less than a phone and understandably he had a phobia of the police.

“Because of my trade I could not face the police because you never knew whether they were coming for you or not.”

Thanks to an EU funded project run by Action for Fundamental Change and Development (AFFCAD) Kayeswa has been able to turn his life around. AFFCAD is a youth focused nonprofit organization seeking to transform the living conditions in Kampala’s poorest slum by empowering the youth and women using education, health and economic programs.

In search of a more sustainable livelihood Kayeswa enrolled with AFFCAD for a six-month course in tailoring. On completion he bought himself a sewing machine to which AFFCAD added another.

Kayeswa now runs a small team that sews everything from clothes to bags and his work has found a market.

“People are shocked that I can make these things and are eager to buy them. I now not only support myself and my family I now no longer get scared when I see a policeman coming down the road.”

AFFCAD has linked up with the government’s directorate of industrial training and these courses are now certified.

“As it is about 65 percent of graduates start small businesses and become more useful members of their societies,” said co-founder and social enterprise director Jaffar Tarzan Nyombi.

While charity is welcome in marginalized communities for it to have maximum impact it has to be targeted properly.

“Our experience is that it is essential to leverage private sector investment, in that way create more jobs and more growth,” said Caroline Adriaensen, head of the cooperation of Eu delegation in Uganda.

Such progams are part of the 11^th European Development Fund (EDF) to Uganda that run from 2014 to 2021. The fund which saw €578m (sh2.2trillion) disbursed during the period has supported 120 projects around Uganda in the areas of transport, governance, food security and agriculture.

Interventions like the above where people are taught how to fish rather than giving them the fish, have enduring transformations not only on the individuals but on whole communities.

Sometimes lifting people out of poverty is more an issue of showing them improved ways of doing what they already do than introducing them to a new income.

Through the Market Access Upgrade Program (MARKUP) EU support has been instrumental in helping small holder farmers around the country improve their production methods, access markets and improve their incomes in the process.

Julius Mkaboona inherited his cocoa farm from his father. The Bundibugyo area, bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has been known for producing cocoa but farmers stopped seeing the benefit of the crop leaving their fields to the elements or cutting down the trees altogether.

“But thanks to the training of MARKUP we have improved our production methods, our post-harvest handling, improving the quality of our produce and as a result get better prices for our produce,” said Mkaboona, standing in his lush green garden outside Bundibugyo town.

Across the country in eastern Uganda on the slopes of Mount Elgon MARKUP has helped farmers there increase production, improve the quality of their crop, do some value addition and brand their output.

‘We have moved from simply producing coffee to value addition and producing a high-quality coffee that some are shocked can come from Uganda,” said Noah Welihe, operation manager at Mt Elgon Coffee & Honey Cooperative.

The cooperative has a membership of 700 small holder farmers that not only produce the aromatic Arabica coffee but also honey for export.

These are but a few stories of the EU’s interventions around Uganda in helping families raise incomes and improve their livelihoods.

The formula of going to these communities and assessing what the best interventions are possible using the existing infrastructure is a winning one whose benefits are sustainable and replicable anywhere in the country.

 

 

LEADERSHIP AND CLIMBING OUT OF POVERTY

President Yoweri Museveni is reported to have been shocked at the poverty in the Mayuge region last weekend on his way to commemorate Bishop Hannington Memorial Day.

Museveni is reported to have refused to return to the area unless things improved markedly. He took particular issue with their lack of a tarmac road.

Which begs the question, how do communities climb out of poverty?

"Thankfully most of us are a generation or two away from our peasant ancestry, so examples abound of how to climb out of poverty....

I know one particular gentleman who was a toddler when his father returned from the second world war. His father was offered a bursary for one son to study.  This man whose brothers were much older, some married already, benefitted from the bursary instead of his siblings.

Years later there was marked difference between the family of the last-born son who went to school and that of his siblings.

So, lesson number one, education is a prerequisite for climbing out of poverty.

Part of the reason is that this man, call him Jack, was able to move away from the village, whose main activity was subsistence farming, to the big city where there was a lot of high value economic activity and plenty of opportunity for a person with an education.

Economic activity is concentrated in urban areas because the infrastructure -- energy, transport and communication, are concentrated there and make it easy for business to set up. But also just as important, if not more important, is the concentration of quality human resource.

Lesson number two, is that you have a better chance of climbing out of poverty in the urban areas than in the rural, that is dependent of course if you are educated or skilled to take advantage of urban opportunities.

Urban areas are also critical as markets for rural production. The concentration of populations means it more convenient to supply them than populations spread across huge areas. However, to satisfy those markets, production has to be scaled up beyond subsistence. The farmer who makes the most money from supplying urban areas is that one who can scale up his production or/and organize other producers to supply that market. Also the farmer who can do this and is closer to the urban area can earn more of the final shelf price.

The recent “Uganda National Household Survey, 2019/20” offers some clues as to why Mayuge and the general Busoga area may be lagging behind, despite its proximity to major urban areas and good agricultural lands.

The Busoga region is second only to the Buganda region in population size.  That may not be a problem, but for the region’s dependency ratio, which is only behind Karamoja areas at 108 per 100 working people. The dependency ratio describes how many people depend on the working people of the area and is often an indication of the average age of the population. The younger the population the higher the dependency.

Kampala, which has the lowest figure has 53 dependents per 100 workers. Its commonsense, more dependency less economic activity.

Interestingly, the Busoga area has a higher primary school enrollment 83.7 percent than the national average of 80 percent. The same for secondary school enrollment, which is 28 percent, higher than the national average of 27. Percent. While adult literacy falls off to 61.4 percent compared to the national average of 72.4 percent, the people of the region can not be accused of being illiterate.

As a further indicator of human productivity, the people of the area are not necessarily more prone to illness than the national average and 83.8 percent are within three kilometers of a health facility higher than the national average of 76.7 percent.

A look down the numbers also shows that the proportion of houses with iron sheet roofs, cement floors and built of bricks are all higher than the national average.

Given these figures its safe to say that the people of the region are just as likely as any region in the country to have lower poverty numbers.

However, 55.2 percent of the families are involved in the subsistence economy as compared to the national average of 39.2 percent. In Kampala this figure is 3.3 percent...

But maybe they can not be blamed, because to grow beyond subsistence agriculture one has to have access to the market to which you can sell the surplus. In terms of paved road network, the Busoga area is painfully down the pecking order with 254 km. The Buganda region has 1,594 km.

Access to the electricity grid is 13.3 percent compared to the national average of 18.9 percent.

It seems to me that the people of the Busoga region, while their dependency rates are off the charts are just as educated or literate, healthy as the rest of the nation. What seems to be lacking is the access to opportunity as reflected in their relatively poor road coverage and access to electricity.

These are public goods which are often a function of the leadership in the area’s ability to lobby than anything else, given that the area has voted consistently for the ruling NRM.

And this is important because a major ingredient of lifting communities out of poverty is leadership at every level. The leadership to mobilise people, aggregate and deploy resources. The extent to which an area is poor, especially when the area lies in the lap of abundance is a reflection on that area’s leadership....

Leadership is required to identify the most pressing issues of the day and provide direction on how to resolve them.

The story is told that after the end of the Korean war in 1953 the leadership decided that the most sustainable way to develop the country would be to export. But they had nothing to export. Or so they thought. The leadership identified a market in wigs and mobilized the people to cut off their hair for export. Today South Korea is a leader in high technology exports.

Left to their own devices the people can not move but with good leadership anything is possible.

 

RUTO IS RIGHT ON UGANDA MILK, OBVIOUSLY

Last week Kenyan President William Ruto called for an elimination of all barriers to importation of Ugandan milk.

Ugandan milk production companies have been unfairly targeted in recent years understandably because thy posed a potent threat to market leader Brookside Dairy Ltd. The company is partly owned by the Kenyatta family.

Ruto’s argument was simple one. Ugandans produce milk cheaper, Kenyan dairy industry should focus on adding value to their own milk and export it and consume the Ugandan milk locally.

"Kenya’s president recognizes that Uganda has a competitive advantage in milk production, noting that the cost of production in Uganda is a fraction of that in Kenya, and instead of resisting the inevitable should cede ground and look for other markets...

The naysayers of course will argue that without a local foothold, in Kenya, expanding into foreign markets will not be easy.

This column has argued now for more than a decade, that one of the best things to come out of the common market is that competitive advantages will be sharpened. So for example Uganda can easily produce food for the region that should be recognized and should be reflected in our development policies and actions. Kenyans have their own competitive advantages that they can exploit and so do other members of he community.

Trying to duplicate ourselves is inefficient, raises unnecessary confrontation and is unsustainable in the long run.

The challenge of course is that many times interest groups ossify around these inefficiencies and fight tooth and nail not to give them up. At great cost to the population and economy, because ethe energies expended to perpetuate the fallacy would be better employed in developing industries where we have a better chance of success...

Imagine for example if the farmers of western Uganda got it into their heads that they are going to go int o sim sim production and compete with the farmers from northern Uganda. Or the farmers of northern Uganda decided they are going into matooke production to compete with the farmers of central and western Uganda.

They would soon realise they could not compete. Then they would come together and ban the importation of matooke by the north and sim sim by the west to support their farmers. A real waste of time.

This does not happen because of the free movement of goods through the country. The people of the west don’t bother with sim sim because if they want it they can buy and the people of the north don’t bother with matooke because if they want it they can order for it.

As result the sim sim and matooke production expand in their respective areas to cater for the expanded market. Economies of scale come into play and specialization means the quality of the respective crop improve.

That is what will happen with the actualization of the East African free market.

As mentioned above it will be fought by entrenched interest groups, looking to safeguard their interest at the expense of the consumer and national interest.

For the above reasons I always cringe when I hear people talking about import substitution, it only serves to build up a small group of connected people while making us endure substandard products.

"The success of the south eastern Asia economies comes mainly from refusing to be seduced by this import substitution argument. They recognized early on that to lift their people out of poverty and develop their economies they needed to aim for bigger external markets...

Following this thinking the governments biased resources towards businessmen with export ambitions over those with import substitution as the main driver of their business. Of course, in an effort to target foreign markets the local market is used as a stepping stone but that is all it is, a stepping stone. They also did not try to do it themselves through state enterprises. The rest is history.

Of course, for Ruto now he has to seat down with the existing dairy industry and see how his government can support them increase their production capacity – they are welcome to use Ugandan milk if they want, improve quality standards and help them break into foreign markets.

Uganda too has export ambitions for its milk and they will do well to see how the Kenyans do it, before they launch their own effort.

 

 

 

THE REASONS BEHIND THE INDIAN RISE

Earlier this week history was made when Rishi Sunak became prime minister of the United Kingdom. History was made because Sunak is of Indian origin.

Kenyans have claimed bragging rights, as Sunak’s father was born in Kenya. His mother is from Tanzania. It will not be a stretch if Uganda claimed a few of his uncles.

But Sunak is only the most recent of high performing individuals who claim Indian origins.

Understandbly, it’s in the private sector, which is more of a meritocracy that the Indians (writing of Indian origin is painful) have excelled.

"A list has gone around of Indians who have led more than 20 globally renown companies in the last decade or so. Google, Microsoft, IBM, CitiGroup, Pepsico, Nokia and Motorola are included among that number. No mickey mouse organisations. And these are the ones we see in the news, there easily hundreds other flying just under the radar in companies, academia and every other occupation you can think about.

This is no mean feat. Not only because these are among the biggest companies in the world, but because they have achieved all this as immigrants. While most of them have adopted the citizenship of whichever country they work, they are still considered outsiders.

Sunak’s achievement is therefore even more remarkable, never mind that he ascended to the highest office in the UK government through a party vote. It would be interesting to see whether he could lead the Conservative Party to victory in a general election.

Given the numbers of Indian super performers around the world, we can agree that this is no fluke.

To begin with is the population of India, about one billion and the that of their diaspora, more than 30 million by some accounts. Success is a numbers game. For every Sunak there are probably thousands of others who would have been PM, had they not taken a wrong turn at school or in their career or in their marriage. The trick therefore is to put out so many, increasing the probability that at least a few will come through.

This has been true from the reproductive process. Millions of sperm have to be expended to produce one child.

It goes without saying that all these high performers are well educated, but even more importantly they have all gone to the best universities be it in the US or the UK. This is important, even critical, because to climb up the corporate ladder takes a lot of “know who”. In western economies this often boils down to which university you went to and who was there when you were there. Getting a western education is more about where you go to school than just going to school there. The same is true everywhere you look.

The power of the network is what we ignore or are ignorant about. Its what makes the difference between climbing up the ladder or not. You can bet Sunak with his first-class degree from Oxford or all these CEOs were not necessarily the brightest of their respective cohorts. But they plugged into powerful networks that recognized their worth and usefulness to the collective.

"There is value in good people, talking good things about you when you are not there....

The biggest network the Indians find themselves in is that they are English speakers. English is the international language of commerce and trade, spoken by billions of people, whose numbers are growing every day. The more people you can communicate with the more influential you can potentially be.

There is something to be said about the phenomenon of the tiger mum, used mostly to describe immigrant mothers from south east Asia – China, Japan, South Korea, but could as well apply to Indian immigrant mothers. The way it is told, these mothers instill an iron clad discipline in their children and not only push their children to excel in academics, but even chart their academic path. Their children do no indulge in whatever catches their fancy but are pushed from an early age to excel in English, math and science.

The Indians have been immigrants for decades and have only just hacked the system. Given the above we can expect that hundreds of more Indians are going to make the transition, now emboldened by the example of their predecessors and within a generation it will not be unusual for Indians to run Fortune 500 companies or lead the major nations of the world.

Is it systematic? Not as far as I can see. They are not like the Chinese who we here send hundreds of youth to study abroad, return them and insert them in their own systems.

At the bottom of it maybe is that India places no restriction on its citizens movement in and out of the country, and dare we say, they may be even relieved if some go away and never come back...

I think it’s the purest form survival of the fittest. Their vast numbers and emphasis on education means it was always going to be a matter of time before Indians

This will one day make for an interesting study if its not already being studied.

VIPERS SC; A CASE STUDY FOR SPORTS TEAM OWNERS

I have never watched a Vipers SC football match, ever.

A function of me not making the habit of watching live soccer matches – I have only watched one half of a live match. This was between the Uganda U-23 and Zimbabwe, maybe 20 years ago.

Vipers SC is enjoying major success. Last weekend in the southern DRC city of Lubumbashi, in the CAF Champions League, they wrestled favourites TP Mazembe to a goalless draw. In the ensuing shootout they overcome major nerves to beat TP Mazembe – who are five times Champions of Africa, in front of their home crowd. The final score, 4-2.

The victory meant that for the first time in Vipers SC history, they will play in the group stages of the tournament. While the local press were excited by the guaranteed sh2.1b they are set to earn, I marveled at the work it has taken to get that to that point.

I have had my eye on them for a while now. And not for their on-field prowess.

This is the story of Vipers SC, as I know it.

In 2001 teacher and entrepreneur Lawrence Mulindwa opened St Mary’s Boarding Secondary School - Kitende off Entebbe Road. The school first made a name for itself by churning out high scoring candidates at O- and A-level, upsetting the dominance of the traditional schools.

But it also started to dominate in soccer, emerging the best soccer secondary school in Uganda ten times and in east Africa 13 times, including 11 times in a row between 2004 and 2014...

Mulindwa did not stop there. He took over straggling Bunamwaya FC changing it to Vipers SC. This served as a useful up taker of his school’s talent. The team has won the premier league five times since 2010.

The success of his team makes for good reading on the sports pages, but the real untold story is the behind-the-scenes work needed to bring on this success.

Starting with a school to source and nurture talent was an inspired move. Owning a team to funnel that talent was the logical next step.

And in case Mulindwa had not made believers of us yet, he went and built a 25,000 capacity stadium to house Vipers SC, the biggest built in the country in almost three decades – Mandela Stadium was opened in 1997. And it is the only privately owned one that meets CAF’s standards to host its matches.

And suddenly Mulindwa, if it wasn’t clear before, was no ordinary soccer team owner.

Mulindwa’ stated ambition is to make Vipers SC the best team in Africa. If that is so the work has only just begun.

His actions suggest he understands what it takes to build a soccer team from the ground up. He has understood correctly that for success to happen the team has to be driven by an “impossible” vision, have a pipeline of talent and has to be able to sustain itself beyond his own means.

And this last part, building a self-sustaining organization to support the team, is what will give Vipers SC the best chance of attaining the dream, and ensuring that it joins the continental dynasties of the game.

There are richer teams on the continent than Vipers Sc that have not attained the heights they have. More than money will be the way the team improves its institutional capacity, its corporate governance. It’s a cliché these days but one that cannot be ignored.

At the most basic level it means the club will formalize how it earns and spends its money and how it plans for long term viability. The team will become an asset on the books like the stadium. The organization will supersede the team and must supersede its owner.

This is true because I suspect the team has gone as far as it can go on the will power of one man. But I am sure Mulindwa knows this and is working towards this end, otherwise he will not realise his dream.

As an indicator the most successful team in African football is Egyptian team Al Ahly. Al Ahly was started in 1907 and is thought to be the most valuable team on the continent, valued at $28m(Sh104b). In 2021 they had a budget of $129m(sh477b) and a transfer budget of $12.7m (sh47b).

It has a seven-man board, management and branches dotted around Egypt. It is no wonder that they are among the most successful teams in the world by trophy count –115 and have endured for so long. Long after their founders and their children were dead and buried.

Al Ahyl boosted by its tens of thousands of paying members and corporate sponsors is gone beyond being a soccer team with teams in the national basketball, handball, tennis and gymnastics leagues.

To be the best on the continent Al Ahyl are the ones to watch.

 

 

BANKS IN FOR A ROUGH RIDE AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE

Last week the Bank of Uganda announced the fourth increase of the Central Bank Rate(CBR) in as many months to 10% in a bid to beat back inflation, which rose in September into the double-digit range for the first time in more than a decade.

In July 2012 inflation stood at 14.3% working its way down from a high of 30% in October of the previous year.

Inflation or a general rise in prices, is caused by too much money chasing few goods. This may arise because there are general shortages of goods or because there is more money in circulation than necessary.

The most recent inflation has been driven by external shortages, a hangover from the covid-19 lockdown and accelerated by the war between Russia and Ukraine. Another major driver was the increases in global oil prices earlier in the year.

The short-term way to fight inflation is to decrease money supply, which is what the Bank of Uganda is attempting to do by increasing the CBR. In determining lending rates banks take a cue from the CBR, when it goes up they raise rates when it goes down they follow suit. A raising of rates tends to lead to a slow down in borrowing but even more worringly an increase in loan defaults..

Predictably we have seen increases in lending rates to keep up with the Bank of Uganda’s recent actions. This has the effect of dampening the demand for credit.

"Whereas the borrowing public may grit their teeth at the banks’ speed to respond, which they have little choice as the cost of their money is pegged to the CBR, banks are bracing themselves for hard times ahead....

According to a Uganda Bankers’ Association (UBA) report released earlier this year, in 2021 lending to the private sector grew by eight percent but this growth was down from 12% the previous year. This was on account of low economic activity through the worst of the Covid-19 lockdown last year.

An increase in lending rates, apart from the bad press, invariably leads to a rise in bad loans. Bad loans not only affect banks’ profitability but also their appetite to lend.

The full effect of the higher lending rates will be felt in 2023 as the BOU’s anti-inflationary actions have come in the second half of the year. We can reasonably expect that rate of growth in lending will slow down or fall off altogether.

Other instruments at the central banks disposal to check the growth rate of money supply are treasury bills and bonds.

In 2021 bank investments in these and other tradable securities grew by 10%, much higher than the rate of increase of lending to the public.

That maybe where the danger is for the borrowing public, this more than the higher lending rates. That given a choice between lending to government and lending to the riskier private sector and individuals that banks will shift their attention more towards government paper.

Sadly, this has been a trend in the making with the ratio of how much of customer deposits do they lend out falling to 61% last year from 71% in 2015.

In case anyone needed any convincing, the overall health of the banking sector is key to whether growth continues at acceptable levels or not in this economy. A stressed banking will hamper its ability to support the private sector. While the investing in government paper is critical to stabilizing the macroeconomy, that is not supposed to be the core activity of the sector.

The truth of the matter is that while the central bank has the sole right to print money, it’s the banking sector that actually determines money in circulation through its lending practices. The ability to execute this function depends on the health of the sector.

The knee jerk reaction would be to blame the banks. This would be wrong.

The central bank’s major mandate is to ensure there are no dramatic increases or decreases in prices, they do this with the limited tools at their disposal, designed to reduce money in circulation. The more sustainable thing in the inflation equation is to increase production to balance the money in circulation. The nature of this jump in prices is a function of things happening outside out borders and therefore the central bank cannot control.

“Unfortunately, restoring inflation to low and stable levels involves taking medicine with some temporary side effects. The fight against inflation is not a painless battle,” wrote deputy bank of Uganda governor Michael Atingi-Ego in the press last week...

The hope is that the banking industry comes out the other side intact as it will be needed to reignite the economy.

UGANDA ECONOMY 1962-2022: WHAT A RIDE

The story goes that an official Ministry of International Trade & Industry (MITI), responsible for the rehabilitation of the Japanese economy after the second world war, was asked what he thought were the effects of the French revolution on world history.

He thought for a bit and then answered, “Its too soon to tell”. The French revolution happened around 1789.

The anecdote may or may not have happened, but was used to show how farsighted Japanese planning is.

Yesterday we commemorated 60 years of Uganda’s independence from colonial rule. While 60 years is not as good a psychological divide as 50, it’s a good time to take stock of progress or lack of thereof.

According to World Bank figures the Uganda economy has grown to a GDP of $40.43 billion at the end of 2021 from $450m in 1962. This is an average annual growth rate of just under eight percent....

If you break it down into 20-year segments the fastest economic growth recorded was between 2002 and 2022 at 9.84%. The next fastest growth period was between 1962 and 1982 – 8.21% and finally the 1982-2002 period which grew by 5.34%.

Drilling a bit more under the surface makes for interesting observations, conclusions.

The first two decades of independence had as its major economic events, the declaration of independence, which saw the expansion of services and unleashed the suppressed initiative of Ugandans. Obote’s attempts to “move to the left” – embrace socialism, did not gain traction partly because they were not thought through, but also because he run out of time with the 1971 coup which brought Idi Amin to power.

The descent into chaos under Amin seemed not to have dented the post-independence growth momentum, with GDP per capita peaking at $258 in 1977 before collapsing to $100 in 1980. This suggests that the economic foundations set up by the colonial administration and the first Obote administration, were robust enough to hold for about five years before terminal decline set in. The reality on the ground of course was economic hardship was already being felt well be before 1977.

The expelling of the Asians, the major commercial class and the descent into widespread insecurity, meant businesses were operating below their full capacity or shutting down all together. This is important because it’s the private sector that grows wealth and not the government. If you hobble the private sector, even the government fails to play its distributive role of using taxes to uplift the living standards of its people through provision of law & order, social services and infrastructure.

Saddled with an economy that had regressed into subsistence and the breakout of the bush war in 1981, the 1982 – 2022 period started off on a false note. The last contractions of the economy happened in 1984 and 1985.

The return of stability in central and western Uganda after 1986 allowed the pullout from the decline of the previous 15 years to begin in earnest...

During this period major economic shifts came with the currency reform, the liberalisation of the exchange rate, the liberalization of commodities trade, brining inflation under control, the opening up of the telecommunications sector to introduce mobile phones and the sale of Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB). This among other initiatives unleashed individual initiative and attracted foreign direct investment.

The breakup of the state monopolies and the subsequent liberalization of the economy, underpinned by increased stability led to sustained growth of the economy. During this period too there was a coffee boom in 1994, with the failure of the Brazilian crop, which did a lot to boost coffee production and exports. In one year, the 1998 season Uganda exported more coffee than it produced, with the coffee from DRC making up the difference.

A period of dramatic rethink of our economy nevertheless only managed to bring us past the 1977 GDP per capita $248 level in 2004...

The next 20 years after 2002 as has been mentioned the economy raced to its fastest average growth rate as the liberalization policies begun to kick in, but probably, more importantly the northern Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency came to a close, allowing the northern region’s economy to reintegrate into the national economy.

Despite the war on terror, global financial crisis and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic the economy has continued to grow, with GDP per capita at $858 at the end of 2021 and poised to cross into the middle-income nation status. It helps that GDP was rebased twice during the period 2014 and 2019.

Growth is a given in this economy, as there remains a lot of untapped or unrecorded potential.

The challenge for the next 60 years is to ensure that this growth is more equitable. A situation of high growth and high inequality like Uganda, is an indictment on the government. The business community builds the wealth and the government distributes it. Distribution is not by some brainless mathematical allocation of cash but by using taxes to spread the opportunities around.

Improvements in and spreading of education and health services raise the earning capacity of the population; infrastructure development opens up opportunities to more people and law & order ensures that what we work, for we can keep. In as far as government is failing or unable to provide this, is the extent to which income and wealth inequalities persist in an economy....

One last thing, assuming we can maintain our growth momentum on GDP per capita from the last 20 years – 6.44% by 2082 our GDP per capita will increase to over $36,000.