WEALTH BY THE POWER OF SMALL THINGS

BOOK REVIEW:The Wealth Code: Small Habits to Prosperity    

AUTHOR: Ray Brehm

This handy little book – 85 pages, offers a fresh perspective on wealth-building, challenging traditional ideas about money and success.  It is a compilation of articles by people – including our very own Monica Rubombora, talking about their main take on money -- its making, keeping and growing.

While it has more of the same financial literacy lessons we have had over and over again, three of the 13 chapters stood out for me. Not to denigrate the other ten.

It starts interestingly with the chapter “The wrong balance sheet” which author Brehm argues, rather than focusing solely on financial gains, adopt a more holistic view of prosperity—one that includes relationships, health, and personal fulfillment alongside financial success.

In The Wealth Code: Small Habits to Prosperity, Ray Brehm throws out the traditional approach to wealth-building and replaces it with a smarter, more balanced way to achieve lasting success. One of the first things he challenges is how we measure wealth. Most of us look at our bank accounts, investments, and what we owe to determine how well we're doing financially. But Brehm says that’s a pretty limited view. “The way you have been taught to measure Net Worth is flawed,” he writes.

If this has you rolling your eyes, you are not alone. Easy to say for a person who has attained financial freedom.

Nevertheless, the well worn cliché that true wealth is about a lot more than just money should be ignored at your own peril. Think about it as looking at the bigger picture—your relationships, personal growth, and overall well-being. If you're only focused on your financial assets, you're missing the other important parts of life that really make you feel rich. For

 the rest of us in the rat race it is all about money, but the author argues you don’t get money by looking for money, but by adopting the habits that will bring you the money, one of which – surprise, surprise is staying healthy.

“If you don’t have your health, wealth becomes irrelevant,” says Lisa McNair Palmer, the chapter’s author. Straightforward but powerful point. If you’re not healthy, making more money doesn’t really help you enjoy life or even use your wealth effectively. And what is the money for after all, than for its benefits to be enjoyed by you and your loved ones?

Palmer stresses the importance of investing in your physical and mental health just as much as you would in stocks or real estate. If you’re constantly worn out or dealing with health issues, it’ll be hard to build any kind of wealth. So, it’s important to put as much effort into taking care of your body and mind as you do into making money. Exercise, eat well, get enough rest—it’s all part of building a strong foundation for long-term prosperity.

Experts agree that exercise need not be much more than logging a few thousand steps a day.

Many people overcomplicate wealth-building by diving into risky investments or trying to follow complex financial strategies. But Josette Mandela believes the key to success is simple math: save more, spend less, and invest wisely.

“Small habits compound into great wealth over time,” she writes. The trick isn’t to find one big financial win—it’s about making small, consistent decisions every day that eventually add up to significant gains. It’s about being patient and letting time do the work for you. Instead of stressing out over trying to hit it big, Mandela encourages us to stick with simple habits that will help us grow our wealth steadily over time.

What makes The Wealth Code

so impactful is that it shifts the focus away from just chasing money. Instead, it’s about building a balanced life where health, mindset, and wealth all work together. When you stop measuring success by the size of your bank account alone and start considering your overall well-being, you set yourself up for a more fulfilling, lasting prosperity. By investing in small, consistent habits—whether it's taking care of your health or sticking to simple financial practices—you can build true wealth that goes beyond just the dollars in your pocket...

Think of an athlete who wants to run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds to qualify for the Olympics. He doesn’t just go out and try and run under 10 seconds every day. He practices his reaction to the starting gun, his sprinting technique, he lifts weights to get stronger, he charts a competition schedule that will allow him peak just before Olympics, these and many small things he does with the aim of running a sub-10.

It the same with wealth, you do not go out to focus on being a millionaire, but this book through the various perspectives of the authors counsels, that you focus on the small things you do everyday, not all directly connected to money that will allow you eventually become wealthy become wealthy hopefully, but probably more important enjoy the journey while you are at it.

Very enjoyable read. Other chapters on tithing, leveraging expertise and  recognized authority provide much food for thought. This book may very well add new perspectives to your quest for and ease your journey towards wealth.

 

UGANDA: THE UNREALISED PROMISE

A decision taken at the beginning of the last century to keep Uganda as a small holder farm economy as opposed to a settler economy, has reverberated down the years ensuring food sufficiency on one hand while at the same time stifling private capital development.

Commissioner of Uganda between 1901 and 1907, Sir James Hayes Sadler, decided that unlike neighbouring Kenya, Uganda was not suited to European settlement. The hot humid climate that came with malaria infestation and the Tse Tse fly, which spreads sleeping sickness, he thought should be best left to the Africans.

This one decision was a blessing and a curse, because unlike in Kenya, Zimbabwe or South Africa, European possession of the land and eviction of the locals was minimized, but also means that the country’s land tenure system is convoluted and difficult to maneuver discouraging large scale investments.

But to get Ugandans to produce the cash crops – cotton, coffee, tea and tobacco to feed British industry, the colonial administration instituted a number of taxes aimed at encouraging production. The hut and poll taxes, were levied on every hut and adult man to raise revenues to administer the colonial project and to incentivize the local population to grow crops for export.

To the current day in central and southern Uganda families have a few trees of coffee on their small holdings, as an income earner, while the rest of the holding is dedicated to food crops for subsistence. The average land holding in Uganda is about five acres

These small holder farmers made Uganda a major exporter of coffee, cotton and tea. Not to thumb their nose at the small holder farmer, it is reported that favourable commodity prices in the first half of the last century financed the building of the Owen Falls dam (now the Kiira dam) and the Kilembe copper mines, with some left over to help the UK fund the war effort during the Second World War.

The Indian community, many of whom were descended from the railway workers who built the Ugandan railway, inserted themselves as middlemen – because of their access to capital, bulking the produce from the smaller farmers, often employing cooperative unions, for export to the UK.

The railway reached Kampala in 1931 and was extended on to Kasese by 1956. It was funded by British government grants and loans, some of which came from the locally generated revenues.

This separation of roles caused tension, as the Asians had lobbied the colonial government to shut Africans out of key economic activities like cotton ginning and became the spark for pro-independence agitators in many parts of the country.

This animosity played into post-colonial governments, offering the opportunity for first President Milton Obote to put in motion efforts to nationalize foreign businesses, which President Idi Amin followed through by expelling the Asians in 1972, in a desperate effort to shore up his already floundering popularity.

By gutting Uganda’s commercial class, Amin set the stage for at least two decades of economic decline. It has been reported that the Madvhani family alone by 1972 controlled about a third of the economy through their investments in the sugar industry and supporting industries.

The expulsion of Asians also denied local entrepreneurs much needed mentorship, which their Kenyan cousins benefitted from to build a more robust indigenous capital base. The cronies and local entrepreneurs who took over the Asian assets have nothing to show for the free-lunch they got, with many of the businesses collapsed or failed to transcend the generation of the original beneficiaries.

Amin’s reign of terror also triggered a brain drain, forcing the middle class to flee the country. A few hundred thousand Ugandans disappeared or lost their lives during his rule from 1971 to 1979.

It was also during his reign that the East African Community (EAC) a promising project of economic integration that would lead to political federation, was scuttled.

Obote’s return to power in 1980 while setting in motion plans to resuscitate the economy, the recovery was hobbled by insecurity driven by local insurgencies, the major one being the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebellion, centered just north of the capital, Kampala.

When the current administration led by Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986, inheriting an economy that had regressed into subsistence, had shrunk to less than half its 1970 size in real terms, was short of cash and had major deficiencies in infrastructure and human capital.

Buoyed by the good will that came with restoring a semblance of peace and security in most of the country, Museveni’s government initiated a spate of donor sponsored reforms that liberalized the economy – freeing the exchange rate, privatizing state enterprises and disbanding commodity marketing monopolies, triggering the longest stretch of economic growth in the country’s history.

The reforms caused some trauma as thousands of civil servants lost their jobs with rationalization of the civil service and privatization of state enterprises, fiscal discipline cutoff the freeloaders and increased competition led to the closure of many businesses that had previously benefitted by the huge margins they enjoyed in the situation of scarcity that had prevailed for years.

On the flip side the reforms has attracted billions of dollars in foreign direct investment, unlocked indigenous business initiative, all which have resulted in a quantum leap in revenue collections. The government collected about sh400b in revenues in 1985/86 but is set to collect sh31trillion in this financial year.

This increased revenues has helped government increase literacy rates, longevity of the population and expand service provision. While gaps still remain in everything from security to infrastructure and human capacity, that progress has been made is undeniable.

The reforms also facilitated the return of the Asians, who have once again recovered their place as the pre-eminent commercial class in the country with interests in retail. Real estate, manufacturing and other services. A few years ago it was reported that their businesses account for more than half the revenues collected annually by the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA).

Every so often calls for a nationalization of the economy are mooted, with the main champions arguing that the economy has been hijacked by foreigners, who repatriate their profits abroad rather than reinvest in the country.  It is feared that these calls can gain currency as the Museveni regime reaches the evening of its run and their inability to narrow local inequalities can conveniently be blamed on foreign capital.  A more sinister motive is that a group of connected elite want to appropriate these assets using the state before the Museveni era comes to a close.

Over the last four decades of Museveni rule the reforms have shown dividends as the economy has diversified away from agriculture – coffee accounted for nearly all export receipts and revenue collections in 1986. Services, construction and manufacturing now account for two thirds of economic output today.

It helped too that in 2000 the EAC was revived and has done a lot to promote regional trade by providing demand for industry in the EAC. The EAC has now expanded to seven nations beyond the initial three. Progress is being made, it is now a customs union with the free movement of goods and services across the borders but not without teething problems. Progress towards the more demanding monetary union, whose main feature will be the adoption of a single currency, has been a bit labored and slow in coming.

 However, endemic corruption and a growing debt service burden means Kampala finds itself unable to, more equitably spread the economic gains of the last four decades, improve service delivery and bridge major infrastructure deficits that would help vault the country to its next level of development.

The country waits with bated breath for the first oil from the fields in western Uganda to alleviate current economic challenges that include a cash squeeze, resulting from a holding back of donor financing over displeasure at a recently passed Anti-Homosexuality law and growing official corruption. Commercial viability of Uganda’s oil reserves – booked at 2.5 billion barrels, was established in 2006 and development of the fields begun in 2022, following the passing of enabling laws for its exploitation and the arriving at final investment decision, that would unlock the funds needed.

The recent census showed that seventy percent of the population is under 30 years old, or were not born when Museveni came to power. An aging leadership – Museveni will be 80 in September, finds itself scrambling to keep up with a youthful population’s demands for better and widespread social services, jobs and hope, complicating an eminent power transition.

At independence the hope that Uganda, with its huge natural endowments – it has at least half the arable land in the region and growing educated class, was a guaranteed economic success, was squandered by tribalism and factionalism, whose after effects continue to hobble the small east African nation’s progress.  

 

MAKE SETTLING DOMESTIC ARREARS A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

Last week it was reported that government has allocated an extra sh1.4trillion to settle domestic arrears, monies it owes to the private sector.

This is a very welcome move considering that domestic arrears are about sh14trillion and in the last few years government has been earmarking about sh200b towards the budget line.

However, we will be forgiven for asking for more. Because, assuming by some miracle arrears are held steady at sh14tr it would still take at least a decade to clear the current stock, assuming the current rate of redemption. Totally unsatisfactory...

But let us take this out of the realm of the abstract. Let us have a businessman, call him Jack, who wins a tender to supply goods, say cement to government. Let us assume the deal is to supply 10,000 bags of cement to a unit of government over three months.  Jack chases the paper work gets the contract and the accompanying documents to start servicing the deal, which among other things stipulate that he will be paid within 90 working days of delivery or about five months.

But he does not have the money on hand to procure the cement, a few hundreds of millions, so he goes to his bank with the paperwork in hand and gets a loan. He gets the money, buys and supplies the cement to government.

Then suddenly he cannot be paid. Stories galore. His five months turns to a year or two or three. He services the interest with whatever other cashflow he has, but this proves unsustainable and soon the bank auctions his home and other property, he had put up as collateral. All the while there is no evidence the government will make good on their commitment to him soon. Tomorrow never comes.

This is the fate of thousands of suppliers to government.

The pages of our newspapers are filled daily, with the adverts of auctioneers taking this or that businessman to the cleaners. A big part of the reason is the government...

Finance minister after finance minister has admonished his officials not to contract new supplies if there is no money. The bureaucrats on their part blame the shifting priorities of government on the state of affairs – budgeting for one thing but changing its mind when monies are due for payment. The mushrooming arrears have been a perennial lament for the last four decades.

"It has become so bad, that banks are no longer willing to discount government invoices. There is a general lack of confidence in government. Which is a problem since government remains the single largest consumer of goods and services in the economy...

So while the economy continues to grow (do they record arrears as government expenditure when computing GDP?) there is gritting of teeth in the hills of Kampala. It all seems a fiction.

Whichever way you look at it this is not a sustainable situation. It threatens the economic gains of the last four decades – when businesses continue folding, tax revenues dwindle and government continues to accumulate arrears, it will not be long before the economy collapses.

The challenge of course is that our government and its bureaucrats have entered (or have been for some time) in a dangerous phase where it is everybody for himself, God for us all and the devil take the hindmost....

They don’t care. The above is really text book economics, so it would not be a revelation to them. They don’t care.

It is self-destructive. Its shooting ourselves in the foot. What would it benefit a man to accumulate the whole world while his neighbours are scrambling for crumbs? He will soon be fair game.

So thank you very much finance ministry but the sh1.4tr is not half enough. We need to up that number, but more importantly tighten our procurement procedures so these recurring theme is brought to a halt. I will not hold my breath for it.

But I know what would move the needle on this issue. Somebody needs to make it a campaign issue and government will move. Like they did with universal primary education, the abolition of graduated tax and the scrapping of property rates on residential houses. Let someone include the wiping out of domestic arrears in their campaign manifesto and you will see.

 

BIDCO: A DEVELOPMENT DILEMMA

One year after the inception of a $150m (sh278.2b) palm oil development on Kalangala island, project sponsors BIDCO are soldiering on, despite incessant attacks from environmentalists and sniping from entrenched local industry interests.

One year after the inception of a $150m (sh278.2b) palm oil development on Kalangala island, project sponsors BIDCO are soldiering on, despite incessant attacks from environmentalists and sniping from entrenched local industry interests.

But despite being the most vocal opposition to the project, the environmentalists admit they are hard pressed to put a monetary value to preserving the island’s ecosystem that would outweigh the anticipated value BIDCO is bringing to the island.

They argue that by slashing forest cover to make way for the plantation, the islands will lose out on their unique species of vegetation, alter the climate of the area and suffer massive soil erosion.

In 2004, the Government gave BIDCO a go-ahead to establish an oil palm project. Under the terms of the project, BIDCO was to establish a 26,500-hectare oil palm growing operation and set up a plant to process the palm oil from the plantations.

BIDCO would provide the expertise and the funds to get the project off the ground, while for its part, the Government would make the land available allow a 25-year Corporate Tax holiday and 12-year Value Added Tax (VAT) deferral for the plantation project.

Currently, about 3,500 hectares have been put under palm trees out of the 5,500 hectares provided by the Government so far most of which has been on land reclaimed from the forest.

"First of all, we are not burning the forests. We just cut down the trees and leave them in the fields to rot. The bio diversity is not being lost. It is just migrating to the forests we are not touching," Kalangala plantation manager Lim Choon Meng said on a recent tour of rows and rows of plantation.

"Secondly, the impression is that most of the island is covered in forest. That is not true. So far, we have planted about 1,500 hectares of grassland with the palm trees," he said.

Meng also pointed out that they are adhering to an agreement to maintain a 200-metre strip of trees between the plantation and the lake shore and growing cover crops between the palm trees as preventative measures against erosion.

He said he plans to plant an additional 1,000 hectares before the end of the year, but he was desperate for more land on which to plant seedlings.

"I have about 500,000 seedlings waiting for transfer to the fields, some of which are more than a year old and need to be transferred now or I will have to lose them but the land is not forthcoming," Meng said.

According to the managing director of the Uganda project, Kodey Rao, under the agreement, the Government was supposed to have provided the whole 26,500 hectares within a year of signing the agreement, which has not happened.

"We have about 5,500 hectares available, but need the whole component as soon as possible to ease planning," he said.

Partly as a result of BIDCO’s activities, the island is experiencing an economic boom.

"Land prices are rising, Kalangala town is growing and immigrant labour is swelling the island’s numbers.

"The wage bill for our workers is higher than the wage bill for Kalangala district administration and we have not even begun commercial production," Rao said.

BIDCO employs about 1,500 workers whom it pays twice a month, which invariably leads to higher sales for shops in the nearby trading centres.

"The improvements around here since BIDCO touched down are amazing," the district agricultural officer, David Balilonda, said.

While agreeing that the workers’ salaries have brought increased liquidity into the Island’s economy, he sees more fundamental benefits.

"The project has opened up roads where there were none. Communication and trade across the island has been greatly improved," Balilonda said.

A new ship, the 108-passenger MV Kalangala, was commissioned in February and sets sail from Entebbe compared to the old one which docked in Masaka. That has improved access to the mainland.

"We are seeing more tourists especially Ugandan tourists since the new ship started," former MP Mulindwa Birimaso, who owns the 30-room Palm Beach Hotel Resort said.

"Everything has an impact on the environment, even your breathing. The question is: what is being done to mitigate this impact?" Rao asked.

"We think we have put together an environmentally-friendly package while at the same time putting together a project that will have a transformative impact on the island’s economy, ".

Rao estimates that the $150m injected into the project will have a six-fold multiplier effect on the economy through saved foreign exchange, job creation and support services.

On the project’s outgrowers scheme, the company projects that on a hectare of land (about 2.5 acres), a farmer will be able to get $1,000 (sh1.85m) per month.

Environmentalists are having a hard time countering these benefits with evidence of their own that shows that the islands trees will have as great an economic impact.

"Building a case for non-monetary benefits is difficult," National Forestry Authority’s spokesman Gastor Kiyingi said.

"But the calamities that come with such environmental degradation do not take long to show themselves," he said refering to the ill- advised move to build a dam parallel to the old Kiira power dam, a situation that has caused a larger than usual outflow and is partly responsible for the reduced water levels on Lake Victoria.

Today, people are looking for political advice but neglecting professional advice, Kiyingi said.

That maybe but for the time being, the locals remain unconvinced.

PS This was published in teh New Vision 20 years ago.... an update long overdue

UMEME EXIT AND THE END OF AN ERA

As of writing this column Umeme’s 20 year concession will come to a close today Monday, 31^st March.

Last week the Auditor General submitted his final report putting what the government owes to Umeme as a final pay out at $118m, below any previous estimates. According to Umeme the government owes them $234m, previously the Auditor General had estimated the payout at $201m, while Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) the overseer of the concession had put their figure at $127m.

The payout is compensation for assets not fully paid for through the tariff.

It was curious how the discrepancies between all the players were so wide and I guess this will be resolved in the fullness of time.

It has been an interesting journey and a test case for the management of such Private Public Partnerships (PPP), as we will probably need to do more of in the future.

At the tail end of the privatization process, at the end of 1990s, the big infrastructure companies like Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) and Uganda Posts & Telecommunications Corporation (UPTC) came up for sale.

Unlike previous privatisations for which it was enough to liquidate, sell their assets or sell them as is, these companies demanded different treatment.

In the case of UEB a total overhaul of the electricity sector was required to attract funding into the sector.

"For starters the tariff had to be raised, as the prevailing tariff, around US4cents a unit at the time,  did not allow for the sector to be run sustainably, leave alone promise a return for intending investors...

Critical too to the reforms was the breakup of UEB into its constituent parts – generation, transmission and distribution. This was done because it was easier to get investment for parts of the company rather than the whole. As has proved true.

Billions of dollars in investment have been sourced by government and private players in the generation and distribution sector. Government has had to follow suit with comparable investment in the transmission part to keep up with new interest up and down stream.

Umeme came in at a time when we were suffering day long power cuts and as if that was not enough, around that time the water levels on Lake Victoria fell dramatically, affecting power generation at the Kiira-Nalubale power station.

Government opted for expensive thermal power, which raised tariffs even higher and saddled government with trillions of shillings in subsidies to the sector to keep the power tariff manageable for the paying public.

It is only when Bujagali came on line 2012, with the sector seeing surplus generation capacity for the first time in decades, eliminating loadshedding, did Umeme really take off. It should be noted that Bujagali’s commissioning was delayed almost 10 years as politicians and environmentalists threw roadblocks at every turn of its development.

With increased generation Umeme had to ramp up the last mile distribution grid, accelerating account numbers to around two million currently from the 300,000 they inherited.

Of course once it is done everybody jumps up and says it was not that difficult after all, anyone could have done it.

But there certain key things that allowed Umeme to do what UEB could not do.

For starters the managers of Umeme were only dealing with one part of the electricity chain, albeit the crucial one, because if Umeme was not paid transmission and generation would not have been paid. It should be noted that the installation of yaka in 2011, which Umeme were initially reluctant to undertake, because of the huge initial capital outlay, has with a single stroke increased billing to almost 100 percent.

In addition the higher tariff  Umeme has enjoyed has allowed them to not only maintain the grid but expand it almost five fold during the concession to 70,000 km from the 16,000 km they inherited.

Secondly, Umeme has been able to invest almost $800m over the last 20 years, because on the strength of the balance sheet, go to the market to source funding, and not rely on treasury for funding. This was critical for speed of execution of many of its programs...

It helped too that with increased digitization greater efficiencies have been enjoyed that UEB could only dream about. Though on the other hand the profit motive can be a strong incentive to push innovation and early adoption of new technologies.

Unfortunately the concession seems to have come to an acrimonious end. But the management of Umeme can leave l knowing they have set bar against which its successors will be measured. Umeme may have benefitted from being measured against the low bar of UEB, the same will not be the case for its successor.

 

HOW TO SUPPORT LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS

Everywhere you turn it seems like government is trying to give a leg up to this businessman or the other. The general theme seems to be for promotion of indigenous capital.

A cursory look down the list of the biggest companies and even tax payers, will show that easily nine in every ten are enterprises owned or controlled by foreigners.

It will not be splitting hairs to point out though, that companies that operate in Uganda are registered Ugandan entities and therefore local corporate citizens. A distinction that is often ignored or forgotten by the “champions” of indigenous capital.

If you are a fairly successful business in Uganda, for every sh1000 you make, you pay out half of it to local labour, utilities and other costs of doing business, of the sh500 remaining as gross profit you  pay the tax man another sh150 leaving about sh350 in after tax profit. Depending on the maturity of the company the owners can keep up to 70 percent of this for themselves, with the rest retained to keep the company going.

From this example alone the suggestion is that almost sh70 percent of the company’s topline revenues stay here.

Often “foreign” companies have been accused of keeping more money from themselves by any number of dodges but we leave that for another day.

So the champions of indigenous capital’s main argument is to keep more money (100%?) in the country we, the government and the people (not always the same thing), need to take more control of the commanding heights of the economy.

That has a nice ring to it and can be sold to gullible citizens, who do not have the benefit of the knowledge of the aforementioned breakdown of where a company’s monies go.

How the government then has tried to go about it over the last 40 years, but with seemingly more urgency in recent years, is to take back companies that were once private e.g. Umeme or dish out money to some businessmen who have the ear of the higher ups in government.

In the first case, the deprivatisation of companies, these companies are often lucrative going concerns and some geniuses in government think that they will continue like that under government management. It does not take a business guru to predict that this will not be the case.

To explain, you have to go back to the reason many of these companies were privatized. Due to political interference – cronyism, nepotism and general corruption, these companies were mismanaged and became a drain on the public purse. Their lack of money came from mismanagement and not the other way around.    

We can expect that a few connected individuals, who have failed to compete in the market, will be the major beneficiaries of these deprivatisations – getting jobs, winning contracts and supplying air, and these companies will suffer for it and the general public as well.

I wish I would be wrong but it is hard to see how this will turn out any other way.

The second way by which government is trying to giving local businessmen a leg up is by giving them cash, in many instances billions of shillings. Billions whose outcome if measured by the conventional metrics of measuring business success, have nothing to show for the billions they have swallowed.

A caveat would be in order here. In some instances where established businessmen have been coopted at least we can find expanded services and even increased revenue collections, but one wonders what government gets for its equity stake in the venture.

Given government’s dismal record in supporting businessmen, where failure is recorded as lack of improved service or return on investment, one would wonder how best to do it.

We need not reinvent the wheel. Businessmen are being supported by governments the world over with better degrees of success.

First of all government needs to create an enabling environment for all business to thrive --  guaranteed security, improved infrastructure, objectively applied rule of law and social services.

To be supportive of the indigenous capital government needs to ensure practical education, good health services and a robust safety net for all citizens.

Then government needs to support businessmen through capacity building for them to be better businessmen.  This maybe effectively done by incentivizing the private sector to invest in these kind of education.

In order to make credit accessible to businessmen and at affordable rates too, they should encourage savings mobilization. The challenge of lack of accessibility and high lending rates is one, mainly of inadequate savings in the economy.

With more savings more players like venture capitalists and private equity players  -- major gaps in our financial sector, can be attracted into the economy.

All the above can be assisted by government having a well thought out national strategy, not one drawn up only by bureaucrats, with no business acumen, but with inputs from businessmen at home and abroad.

It would not be a stretch to say government’s inability to nurture a formidable indigenous capital base, is for lack of a robust national strategy that would have saved us from running around like headless chicken for the last four decades.

It is not rocket science.

WHY WOMEN EMPOWERMENT MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE

In 1991 government allowed women 1.5 points towards their entrance into public universities. At the time male students feeling a bit hard done by the initiative, but not wanting to show it, turned it on its head as more evidence of why women are the lesser of the specie.

They soon got tired of the teasing, as the men on campus were not really the aggrieved parties. They had made it to campus anyway.

Recent graduation ceremonies at Makerere university suggest that the ladies are having the last laugh. For the last five years or so, more ladies have graduated with first degrees than men, despite the fact that more men are enrolled to the university in each of those years.

To dismiss this as just numbers –“What have the female graduates done for their fellow women?” is to miss the point or worse to totally ignore the power of example that these ladies in their various endevours provide for younger females looking up to them.

Since independence we have seen that education has been the best tool for social climbing. Most of us reading these pages are probably second generation educated, meaning our parents went to school, immediately after independence you could count them on one hand, those families with parents who were literate and they were most concentrated in central Uganda.

This may have worked against them in the 1970s when the elite were spat upon and worse. In the last 40 years we have accelerated literacy levels and therefore the competition for the few formal jobs the economy can generate a year.

In patriarchal society where women find themselves always coming from the back, you can imagine what would have happened if there was no active effort to get them advanced education. Of course, the drop out rates in lower levels for girls is still atrocious, speaking to a need from a more holistic solution for girl’s education, but that can be a subject for another day.

With increased university enrollment women over the last 30 years have been given a better chance to compete in the market place than they would otherwise have. Credit to them they have embraced the opportunity and run with it. You can take a horse to the well but its another thing altogether to get it to drink.

Beyond expanding the ranks of the educated women on a macro level it makes so much sense to empower women, in any society, but especially for underdeveloped countries like Uganda.

For starters to pull us out of our underdeveloped state we need all hands on deck. It does not make sense to disenfranchise more than half your population due to some outdated male chauvinist hangover. The reality should not allow it.

 As the economy becomes more formalized and global, the skills needed, especially the ability to learn, have their roots in formal education.

And as women have got more empowered, especially by being more knowledgeable but also through accumulation of property, their relationships have changed. Because women now have a better sense of self. This is inevitable and both sides of the gender divide will have to acknowledge this and deal with it-

While the work of balancing the genders will never be done, the next frontier of achievement for women will have to be property accumulation and business ownership.

Initiatives to make credit more easily available to women is a step in the right direction, though I believe like all other businessmen, improving financial literacy and business management would show a better return on investment than cheaper credit.

But also Uganda’s businesswoman does not have very high standards to aspire to, as their forerunners – the men, have been content to keep their businesses only as big for their own subsistence.

The other day I was listening to a podcast about Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote and you have to marvel at the vision of the man. His refinery, which can handle 600,000  barrels of oil a day – more than the consumption of NIgeria, has been in production barely a year.

Dangote is clear that his efforts in oil – cement and wheat flour before, are not about serving Nigeria only but about uplifting the whole continent. So with a man like Dangote at the head of the Nigerian community, one shudders to think what dreams Nigerian businesswomen are habouring.