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.

HEED THE LESSONS OF SOUTH SUDAN

The chaos of south Sudan is a wake up call for all pre-industrial nations, that collapse is only a heart beat away and that staving this implosion is not helped by beefing up security but by improving the general welfare of the people.

To give the government of south Sudan the benefit of doubt, it takes more than a decade to transcend the kind of ethnic divisions that trigger and perpetuate the violence we are witnessing.

Following the Rwanda genocide in 1994, observers tried to explain how such a tragedy could take place and which other countries may be vulnerable to an atrocity on such a scale as happened in the small East African nation.

The government's role in the genocide can not be underestimated, but one thing they singled out is the lack of ethnic diversity in Rwanda, which allowed for easier mobilization along ethnic lines. A more diverse society -- like Uganda say, would be unlikely to see such bloodletting because it would be difficult to cobble major alliances across ethnic lines to perpetuate it.

So if for example you wanted to pit the Banyankole against the Banyoro, it is unlikely that any other tribe will mobilize en masse in support of one group against the other. It is even more unlikely that you will get enough groups on one side or another to form a black-and-white situation that will not only fan the violence but remain coherent enough over a long enough period to execute mass genocide.

The post election violence in Kenya in 2007 was proof of this. 

The long time Luo-Kikuyu rivalry for a time tipped the scale into violence but sanity was able to prevail relatively quickly because no other tribes bought into the chaos, apart from the Kalenjin to some extent.

In the Kenyan situation -- apart from US gunboat diplomacy, commercial interests prevailed on the situation to calm things down.

That is a luxury south Sudan does not have.

In his book "The Lexus and the fig tree," Thomas Friedman noted that no two countries with a McDonald's fast food franchise have ever gone to war --former Yugoslavia was the exception. He suggested that the presence of a McDonald's chain is evidence of a large enough middle class. The middle class, because of their commercial and therefore long term interest in national stability, often resort to non-violent dispute resolution. Viable commercial interests are color blind, transcending race and tribe ensuring greater societal cohesion.

Violence once unleashed can rarely be contained, taking on a life of its own and consuming indiscriminately everything in its path. The are no winners in war, only losers.

South Sudan comes up empty handed on both counts. It has two tribes, which between them it is estimated account for 80 percent of the country's population and no middle class to speak of, the economy never having grown due to decades of civil unrest.

For us onlookers our main concern should be a rapid, private sector growth of the economy, the ideal conditions for the growth of a viable middle class, if not to forestall future civil war to at least avert the worst excesses of such an eventuality.

Singapore patriarch Lee Kuan Yew noted a significant difference in demonstrations as more and more of the population owned their own homes. He reported in his book "From third world to first, the Singapore story" how demonstrators would be seen lugging their mopeds up to their flat before taking to the street, and that with this background demonstration was less violent and chaotic.

By enabling the private sector, especially the indigenous businessman, to grow through enabling policy jobs are created, wealth is generated and a middle class of sufficient critical mass comes into being to stabilize the society and perpetuate this virtuous cycle.

Unfortunately growing the private sector is often not in the short term interests of seating governments, unless of course they have strong business interests themselves. A strong business community provides an alternative power center, a counter weight to government, which in lobbying for its own interests can make incumbents very uncomfortable.

But in the long term a society anchored by a solid middle class will ensure the protection not only of property but the lives of exiting leaders.

The point is that all the security apparatus in the world will not guarantee national stability if poverty continues to run rampant and there is no hope of social advancement.

The example of south Sudan is proof enough that the issues of national stability while they cannot be left to governments alone, these same governments have a key role in encouraging the growth of the middle class, regardless of the short term discomfort to themselves.

UGANDA COOPERATIVES NEED HELP! BUT THE RIGHT KIND OF HELP

The cooperative movement while undergoing a resurgence in recent years is staggering along for lack of proper management compromising the movement's poverty alleviation potential, a report out last week said.

The report, "The cooperative movement and the challenge of development", singled out

defunct boards, poor leadership, riddled with corruption and poor foundation as the main problems bedeviling the movement....

The cooperative movement used to be a force for good in the  1960s and early 1970s. Bringing farmers, businessmen and savers together to pool their resources and benefit from economies of scale in accessing markets and credit.

The dismantling of the produce marketing boards in the 1990s dealt a body blow to some of the cooperative societies whose inefficiencies were exposed when they came up against private sector competition.

Under the marketing boards government was the sole buyer of produce, setting prices -- often a miserable fraction of world prices, and paying farmers at leisure.

"Once this monopoly was broken and farmers were free to sell their produce to anyone, the cooperatives, to whom government inefficiencies had been transmitted, didn't have a chance....

The recent study however shows that some of the bigger more credible cooperatives continue to thrive or at least exist, despite the tribulations of the last three decades.

About 3,000 cooperatives exist according to the trade ministry.

In fact the savings cooperatives are experiencing a comeback with savings up to sh280b. They still have a way to go when compared to collections of sh2.3b in the 1960s, about sh500b in today's prices...

The Kenyan savings cooperatives, which have suffered relatively little upheavals, have at least $2b in savings.

As part of the recommendations the reports authors suggest that government should intervene in the cooperatives to set interest rates and oversee governance issues so as to prevent the coops takeover by powerful individuals.

The researchers are right and wrong.

Right that government should, must, is obligated to strengthen its regulatory function, ensuring that the cooperatives are run according to the act and therefore preventing the capture of these groups by greedy individuals.

In addition government will do well to help these cooperatives improve their capacity to manage themselves -- proper book keeping has to be top of the agenda.

The high interest rates some of the cooperatives are offering are more a function of poor business acumen than outright extortion, but the way to bring them under control is not via government control.

"Interest rates should be left to the devices of the market, governments are not sensitive to these forces and by controlling them would only serve to accentuate the inefficiencies in the movement...

For example during the recent inflationary spike for political reasons government may have kept interest rates low. This would have been disastrous because the likely reaction of the market would be to borrow more, increasing money in circulation and making an already bad inflationary situation worse. And that is only one probable negative effect of politically set interest rates.

Maybe as a way to prompt the market to lower interest rates is to find a way to encourage better managed cooperatives to set up or to expand into areas where mismanaged cooperatives exists. The competition will do the needful.

The importance of a robust cooperative movement can not be overemphasized. 

"As a mechanism for growing productivity in the rural areas a well run cooperative that will provide, inputs on credit, a ready market and the benefit of a collective bargaining power, there is little around to match it....

In addition it can provide a spring board for the greater commercialisation of agriculture, raising agriculture's share in the economic output of the country and by extension raise rural incomes.

Yes government should be involved in the cooperative movement but only as far as creating an enabling environment for the movement to thrive.

SOUTH SUDAN'S SHOOT OUT LONG IN COMING

It started out rather innocently, for South Sudan, with some sporadic gunfire over the weekend. By the time Tuesday came around there was full scale shoot out in Juba, with media reporting upto 500 killed in the fighting.

The fact that there was some confusion as to whether this was a coup attempt or just factionalized fighting between competing ethnic groups within the ruling SPLA, suggests a constant state of uncertainty in one of the world's newest states.

The SPLA leadership insists it was a coup that was put down, but fighting spread and on Thursday the SPLA announced they had lost control of Bor; former Vice President Riak Machar said he was being framed for the attempted coup and was on the run and president Salva Kiir said he was open to talks with his nemesis, Machar and his coup plotters.

"Coups even the most swiftly executed can be messy business...

What is clear to every one watching is that there is an armed contestation. The coup attempt was clearly foiled but was not put down summarily, seeing as the plotters seem to have fallen back and as a bargaining chip are threatening civil war.

As with many of these conflicts they have as their background deep seated grievances, which come to the fore when a universal danger, which pushed these tensions into the background, has been overcome.

The marginalization of the southern Sudan has a long history and triggered the second civil war that led to the split of Sudan and independence for the south in 2011. A mutiny by south Sudan army officers in 1983 triggered the civil war and with support from Ethiopia, under Haile Mengistu, the SPLA controlled large swathes of the southern Sudan except for the strategic town of Juba.

Ethiopia supported the SPLA in revenge for Khartoum's support of Eritrean rebels.

The fall of Mengistu in 1991 came with a split within the SPLA with then leader John Garang's authority being challenged by Machar and others. Khartoum took advantage of this confusion to make serious gains against the fractious rebel group winning back several crucial towns.

With much regional support the SPLA regrouped, its leaders putting aside their egos to further their cause for a secular Sudan.

But clearly these rivalries have continued to fester under the surface, popping up intermittently over the last decade or so before the full scale explosion in the last week.

It's an old and familiar script.

A rebellion erupts, various parties aggrieved by the center are cobbled together, they oust their joint enemy before turning on each other in a duel to the death.

South Sudan's case is not helped by the new country's oil reserves.

"Oil exports only resumed in April after a year's suspension of production over a dispute on pipeline fees due to Khartoum from south Sudan. This suspension may have proved the tipping point for the fragile coalition in Juba...

The oil money, which accounted for almost the entire south Sudan budget, was being used to buy time for Juba, to pay off varying members of the coalition. Many of these factions have their basis in ethnic loyalties without crosscutting support, but potent nevertheless because they controlled armed groups and at worst can prove a nuisance.

While the government borrowed to stay afloat it was inevitable that in a situation of more finite resources some political realignments were inevitable and probably much faster than Kiir and his allies may have hoped for.

Official statistics showed that at least $1.3b in oil sales were made between April and October but one can assume the political damage had been done by this time, suspicion had been sown and the coalition's cracks had widened into fissures.

The events of the last week point to the difficulty of building post conflict societies.

The shortfalls in capacity -- physical and human, governments built on coalitions of convenience rather than ideology and rampant poverty will always be a recipe of disaster whose explosion is more a matter of when rather than if.

"It is not likely that this situation will be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone any time soon, if only because there are parties outside the confusion with interests in keeping the country in a state of confusion -- not least of all Joseph Kony and those that bankroll him...

South Sudan has always been a heartbeat away from chaos. Of course we will be glad if this analysis is wrong and they sort their issues with a click of a finger. That will be the true miracle of this half of the century.

UGANDA NEEDS TO MAKE THESE TOURISM MILLIONS COUNT

This week the tourism ministry will be seeking to have a $25m (sh65b) loan approved. The loan is meant to boost the country's tourism potential through boosting hospitality training, the ministry's internal capacity and for marketing the country abroad.

"In the global tourism picture Uganda is one of the world's best kept secrets....

According to tourism evangelist Amos Wekesa we as the source of the river Nile are earning next to nothing compared to Egypt's $3b; one in three tourists last year left home in search of good weather, Uganda's location on the equator tempered by our average height above sea level means we have the ideal weather for tourism; we have five of the top ten highest peaks on the continent and a recent National Geographic survey had the Rwenzoris as one of the top 15 hikes globally and the only one in Africa.

And we haven't even started talking about the national parks with all their game, bird varieties and natural attractions.

It shouldn't come as a surprise maybe. We have invested very little in the industry probably because we are so well endowed we take it for granted.

So in terms of the pushing Uganda to its rightful place at the head of leading tourist destinations in the world, the money will come in handy.

But as with all good news in Uganda there is always is a catch. 

Of the $25m loan, $12m is earmarked for boosting the Crested Crane Tourism training school in Jinja, $3m is for boosting the ministry's capacity to do its job and $10m is for marketing Uganda abroad.

Experience dictates that all these expenditures should be gone over with a fine comb -- before, during and after they have been made, but there is reason to believe that the usual suspects are sharpening their knives to get at $10m marketing budget, school is not as specific as the other two votes.

Wekesa on his Facebook page raised the alarm last week that some private players in the industry want to appropriate all this money for their own needs, arguing that Uganda Tourist Board (UTB) the official marketing agency lacks capacity to utilize the money optimally.

First off,

these connected officials should be stopped from getting their grubby fingers on the loot by whatever means necessary....

There are competing needs for these funds but the best use of this money would be in kicking off a sustainable , self propelling marketing drive, which at the bare minimum will raise awareness about what Uganda has to offer.

Whereas we have severe limitations in infrastructure near or in our major attractions -- we have 1500 beds in our national parks compared to 7000 in a single Kenyan park, the Masai Mara, once the tourist numbers start to roll in investments by the private sector will follow.

Out reaches to media houses in the countries of major tourist origin -- including China, would be a good start. Putting our country on the radars of some of the major tour agencies that serve Africa can follow. The early adopters would soon follow, before the groundswell follows years evens decade later -- the point is we have to start somewhere and now.

One can understand the seduction of million dollar ad space on a major international media house but nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing or third party endorsement to sell the gospel abroad.

"It is amazing that we have ignored tourism all this time especially given its ripple effect through the economy, in terms of jobs created, boost to production and foreign exchange earnings, for the relatively small investment required...

And despite this our tourism numbers have continued to inch up -- we now have 70,000 tourists wheezing around on boda bodas annually.

But it's as they say, God gives meat to those who don't have teeth.