THE SHE CRANES DO IT AGAIN

Our national netball team, the She Cranes , finished their group matches at the Commonwealth Games,Wednesday on a high beating Scotland 57-37. This was a day after the She Cranes wiped the floor with the Wales team, in a match where our captain Peace Proscovia scored more goals than the entire Welsh team.

Peace accounted for 56 of Uganda’s 76 goals, while Wales managed 50 goals. The lesser heralded Rachel Nanyonga, whose scoring efficiency was better than Peace’s throughout the tournament, accounted for the remaining 20 goals.

While they tied with New Zealand and Malawi for second they failed to qualify for the semi-finals on account of New Zealand’s superior goal difference.

The She Cranes who went to the Commonwealth Games ranked 7^th in the world, will now play South Africa for fifth place. Regardless of the result they may very well become sixth in the world when the rankings are released. (Ed. The South Africa beat the She Cranes who then finished 6th in the Commonwealth Games)

It’s amazing what a few years can do.

Four years ago they qualified for the netball World Cup after making the more than a thousand mile road trip to Botswana. At that event they were so underfunded that they played matches without drinking water.

They almost did not make the world Cup as officials in the sports ministry dragged their feet in meeting pre-tournament requirements. They went anyway and gave a good account of themselves.

Last year at the African Championships they put all comers to the sword, winning the event without losing a match.

By the time the Commonwealth came around, everybody had long taken notice of our girls. They went ahead -- better kitted and facilitated this time around, to acquit themselves with distinction.

While netball maybe a peripheral sport, there are a few reasons why the She Cranes’ showing at the Gold Coast is significant.

"To start with, netball being mainly a sport played among former subjects of the British Empire, unlike other sports the commonwealth games brings together the best netballers in the world, so the She Cranes’ result is hard to fault...

Without taking away from our success in athletics, one would have to wonder what would have happened if the Ethiopians and Eritreans were running. Or in boxing where the Cubans, Americans and Europeans were not.

What this means is the She Cranes are the only sports team we have had in the history of independent Uganda to participate at the highest level of its sport. In effect they are the only world class sports people we have around.

What is even more startling is that they have done this while being treated as the orphan of Uganda’s sports portfolio. The travails the She Cranes have endured in their march to the pinnacle of their sport-- a few of which were mentioned above, are the stuff of legend.

And finally the discipline of the She Cranes on and off the court is hard to fathom, especially when we have known sportsmen of lesser achievement lord it over all of us with boorish behaviour and nauseating entitlement...

In their final match, Scotland adopted cynical tactics to keep goal scoring machine Peace off her game. While the Scots wilted under Uganda’s relentless pressure and eventually allowing Peace to drain 32 goals, what was even more remarkable was how the She Cranes kept their cool, did not respond in kind and went on to win the match handily.

There is a lesson for all of us Ugandans – netballers and non-netballers alike.

"That to achieve anything of enduring value you have to earn it. Life does no one any favours. There will be times when the odds are stacked against you, that the world seems unfair. There will be people, even trusted friends and relatives intent on keeping you from the promised land. And there is no guarantee that even after you put in the work that you will achieve your goal....

But you work anyway. Keep your head down, nose to the grinding stone and hope. And when you make it you remain humble because you know there is yet another mountain to scale.

Thank you She Cranes for showing yet again what it takes and means to be a true hero!

THE ECONOMY: THE CHICKEN ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST

By the time the NRM took over government the economy was on its knees and a shell of its glory days two decades prior.

The economy had been so gutted that most of it had reverted to subsistence and in our desperation to collect revenue, we were taxing coffee exports, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of export receipts and revenues to the treasury.

Faced with this reality NRM had very little room for manoeuvre.

More than half a century prior, Europe was also coming out of the Second World War. Their productive capacity was either all geared towards production for the military or was destroyed totally.

In both instances there was little alternative than to go pan handling abroad to find the resources to jump start their respective economies.

And there the parallels diverge.

"While in Europe the aid was used to rehabilitate a previously strong industrial base, in Uganda the aid money was used mostly to rehabilitate infrastructure and revive social services under poverty eradication programs...

It can be argued that the needs in Uganda were so dire that the alleviation of social distress was critical but the same can be said for Europe.

While in Europe some resources were channelled to jump start social services, more resources were targeted at reigniting the continent’s industrial capacity. The resultant economic activity was then taxed to finance improved social services and the welfare state

What if Uganda had gone the same route, what would have happened?

For starters we kicked off at a decided disadvantage. Our entrepreneurial class, the Asians had been expelled 14 years prior, so there was no real capitalist class aside from the trading locals, who specialised in importing and speculation.

While capital is important in helping businesses grow, what is even more important even beyond the entrepreneurial spirit, is the ability to run and grow business.

If an entrepreneur can’t grow his business, the enterprise would be a black hole in which pumping more and more money would be an exercise in futility.

But we see it all around us. How many local businessmen have benefited from state largesse and where are they now?

Secondly our aid was channelled through do gooders, who even at the end of the last century determined that our debt levels were unsustainable and wiped out a sizeable portion of our obligation.

These same aid agencies found it easier to mobilise resources for poor Uganda to build classrooms, kit health centers and provide tap water, than to support local entrepreneurs develop capacity.

"The net effect of the coincidence of these two factors is an economy whose productive sectors – agriculture and industry are still crawling or dominated by foreign concerns...

The first is a challenge because we are running out of rope in our bid to nail a tax on anything that moves and the second, because there is an annual haemorrhage of resources which if they had remained here and reinvested would help move the development needle much.

Some people have come up with the solution that government needs to get back into business. They have derived this conclusion from the faulty analysis that its only government that has the resources to support major concerns of the types we need to create jobs, generate revenue and trigger a ripple effect of economic activity.

Faulty because they think that the major challenge of Ugandan business is a lack of capital.

So what to do?

We first need to vastly improve the business environment by lowering the cost of doing business and follow a national strategy that goes beyond the knee jerk reaction of throwing money at the problem or taxing existing players to death.

That strategy should include a robust, nationwide program of training our entrepreneurs to understand and do business; deepening the financial industry, because as it is there are no products tailored to support start-ups, small & medium enterprises and government support in the way of supporting research and development.

In the meantime we can help the existing players – foreign and local with incentives to produce for export rather than import substitution. This is important because export led industries will produce the much needed jobs we need in the economy.

And as a quick win, government need to lean more heavily on our biggest companies to list on the exchange, in a way that ensures the local middle class get first bite at the cherry. This important because not only would it help develop a shareholding class – important for local resource mobilisation, but also we can help retain some of those repatriated profits.

"Foreign controlled companies left to their own devices will not list. For one their capital requirements can be met easily by their head offices and secondly, opening up the company to new shareholders could adversely affect their growth plans as they may not be able to retain as much profit as they need to grow organically...

There are no shortcuts.

To move this economy to the next level we need to focus on growing an indigenous capital class, but not through cronyism, and then manage the fine balance between incentivising the productive sectors and ensuring they leave more crumbs on the table.

BOOK REVIEW: INSPIRED BY BITATURE

BOOK: INSPIRED BY BITATURE

AUTHOR: ROBERT BAKE TUMUHAISE

PRICE: sh60,000

Available in major bookshops around Kampala

Patrick Bitature is a local businessman who has been involved in everything from nightclubs to retail trade to telecommunications to power generation to hotels and real estate. With the breadth of his experience, a book about him should be a good read.

“Inspired by Bitature” is a first stub at chronicling Bitature’s life and times. It is not a biography in the traditional sense, more and exploration of the man’s thoughts through the adoring eyes of his mentee the author Robert Bake Tumuhaise.

Speeches given by Bitature throughout the years are interspersed with Tumuhaise’s narration of his experience with Bitature and commentary of what he has learned at the feet of the master.

The speeches alone, which date back a decade are worth more than the value of the book. Made to audiences ranging from young entrepreneurs to graduation classes, here and abroad, they help distil the essence of the man.

"Born into relative wealth, his childhood was cut short when his father, Paul Bitature, was murdered during the Idi Amin era. His epiphany came soon after when his mother, still grieving from the loss, around the dining table declared they would have to get used to tea without sugar....

The young Bitature without consultation jumped on a bus to Nairobi, Kenya, and came back with 15kg of sugar, sold some to the neighbours and made a profit many times over what he had paid for the schoolboy suitcase full of sugar.

He has been involved in looking after his family ever since.

Through the speeches you discern a sincere desire to distill the lessons he has learnt, a veritable “What they do not teach you in business school” handbook, for other people going into business. It is a constant theme through his speeches that our society is training too many employees and no job creators. His hope is that prospective entrepreneurs can learn from his triumphs and failures and hopefully travel a much smoother journey.

 He says he determined from a young age that he would make $100,000, otherwise he wold not get married but he sees no reason why any able bodied Uganda does not aim at a million dollars. Bitature says a goal like that would give purpose to our lives and set the mind thinking.

He counsels that success cannot be faked, with a side jab to some of our fake tycoons, and he says real success can only come with determination and persistence.

The conventional wisdom is that rich men’s top priority is money, the making, keeping and growing of, but he says that money comes a distant fifth as a priority in his life behind his family, business, God and friends, urging the reader to “Desire to have money but don’t be ruled by money.”

He has some timely thoughts on how to raise capital in our economy, explores why businesses fail, ruminates on the habits that create achievers and puts serious thought to how to change the world.

As earlier said the real value of the book is in the display of Bitature’s thought processes. It is evident very quickly that he does not think like your everyday man. His outlook on family, achievement and even politics is shaped by his business experience.

This is important because for the rest of us mere mortals we don’t realise that from the intangible – thoughts, values and beliefs come the tangible – money, property and even fame. A reorientation of our thinking is where we need to start in trying to climb to a new level.

"The book is also important because through Bitature, born and bred here, we can see the possibilities.  Many of the accounts of successful people around are of foreign businessmen, operating in a different context from ourselves...

Which brings us to an important point. Many of our successful people have died before thy have made an account of their lives. Most because they underestimate the value of their example to future generations. As a result we have lost invaluable resource with the passing of the titans of our society.

I know it is said that if you want to hide things from the black man put in a book. But while that may true for today’s black man these stories will be recorded for posterity and for a different kind of black man.

The author needs to be commended for recognising the value of Bitature’s journey to a wider audience and bringing it to life. But one cannot help feeling that Bitature owes another book.

*The book is being launched on April14th at The Protea Hotel, Kololo. Entrance fee sh100,000

#STAYINYOURLANE A TEST OF PEOPLE POWER

My cheeky friend James while fuming in traffic lurched upon an interesting way to shame rogue road users. He would take photographs off his phone of those drivers who think they are more in a hurry than the rest of us and choose to create extra lanes, and post onto Twitter.

The hash tag StayInYourLane has caught on and more and more people are clicking away and exposing these nefarious types all day, but mostly in the mornings and evenings.

The idea, rather a genius one, is that the offending drivers, can be shamed into good behaviour – notice that #StayInYOurLane doesn’t waste time with taxi drivers, will be chastised by their bosses – the feed has been dominated by police, army and ministerial vehicles and the impossible can happen, we will have orderly traffic in this city – James is already reporting nothing short of miraculous improvements on the Namugongo-Kyaliwajjala road.

It maybe too soon to pass pull out the champagne but the campaign and its initial results suggest that there is hope for this country.

The argument can be made that the law is made for the middle class. For the lowly classes, survival trumps the rules as a moderator of behaviour. For the upper classes, they get away with so much crime by virtue of their position, impunity sets in and to hell with the law.

The middle class is scared of being shamed. Being made to look bad in society. They are conscious about their appearance, what people will say about them, which is kind of weak because, when no one is watching the middle class –church going or otherwise, get up to some really nasty stuff – see all the billions pilfered out of the government coffers annually. You shine a light on them and they straighten out.

So #StayInYourLane is helping show that our middle class is not beyond redemption, if they can be shamed into good behaviour.

Imagine the uses it can be applied to, in the fight against corruption for instance.

What if we started a hash tag #HowDidYouGetIt or #ShowMeTheWay or #DoesYourMumKnowAboutThis every time we saw someone flaunting inexplicable wealth that we know for sure they could not have amassed given their public servant salary?

It would be priceless to be that fly on the wall when the corrupt official sees his house splashed all over social media or he is captured ordering Black Labels by the bottle on a Tuesday night or flying out first class on Emirates – wife, children and maids in tow to blast away in the Pacific. #DoesYourMumKnowAboutThis.

In the immortal words of the wandering Jew, “Let he who is without sin hurl the first stone”.

We are not blameless. But if we can nip such antisocial behaviour in the bud we can have fewer people falling out of the middle class, hopefully fewer still climbing into the ”impunity” class and we can live happily ever after. Or at least with less aggro on our roads.

There is a reason why society sets out laws, a code of conduct or rules of engagement. This is to ensure there are pre-set, agreed upon and objectively arrived ways of doing things that allow us to live together, work effectively and efficiently.

Often they are time tested under numerous circumstances and have been shown to work. There are a small minority who are more intelligent than the average and the people who cannot #StayInYourLane are definitely not among them...

As #StayInYourLane is showing good behaviour is not impossible.

A few years ago I discovered the “four way crossing”. It was marvel to behold.

While being driven around South Africa more than a decade ago I kept noticing that my host would stop unbidden when they came to a four-way crossing in the road, even when it seemed there was just enough space to squeeze through.

I asked what that was about. The explanation was that when one stops at four way crossing, you have to let everyone else who was there before you pass before you attempt to do so yourself. So if you get to the crossing and there are three, four or whatever number of cars on any of three intersections, you cannot cross before each has done so. And this happens in the order in which they happened on the crossing.

If you are a Ugandan driver you would have to see it to believe it.

Happy Easter to you all.

ARE YOU A FAKE TYCOON? THIS IS HOW TO TELL

Uganda possibly has the highest per capita of fake tycoons in the region. They turn up out of the blue, with no visible source of income, drive flashy cars, are resident in posh area codes and spend money as if it is going out of fashion.

"In recent weeks we have got an inkling of how this money is made, get rich schemes such as sorcery, extortion and fiddling the books have played on the headlines of our newspapers. There are also the perennial suspects – long serving public servants and bank workers...

But those are only the ones who have been caught. How many get away with it? Who knows.

Then there is the rest of us who have convinced ourselves that we are tycoons too. A bank loan or unexpected windfall (not entirely legal) falls in our laps and we run out to fulfil our fantasies. Living large is not a sign of wealth, its just living large.

So here is my fast and ready guide on how to tell whether you, or the playboy, next door is not a tycoon, in no particular order of importance.

1.       Most of your income comes from a job

I don’t care who you are or how much you earn. If more than half your income comes from your job, you are not rich, just highly paid or have no investment income to your name. A job is not transferable to your spouse or kids. And if you fall sick, after your employer has done the decent thing and paid you for a while, will dispense with his obligation to you.

No enduring wealth is built on earned income. To be truly wealthy you have to develop passive income, which comes from money working for you. And this takes time years, decades even generations.  Real tycoons do not pop out of the woodwork one day with a cooked up story about inheriting money from a dead geriatric they used to take care of in the UK.

2.       You think money is for eating

There are only two ways to spend money, either you consume it or you invest it. The more of the latter that you do than the former, the more likely you are to accumulate a handsome pile of wealth in your life time.

Judge your expenditures against that black and white criteria. If you consume more than you invest you are a fake tycoon.

One real tycoon said “Money is not for eating but for making more money”.

3.       You own an expensive car

What is an expensive car? This is how to tell you are driving an expensive car. Take the value of all that you owe, your liabilities and subtract that from the value of all that you own, your assets to get your net worth as a person. If the value of your car is more than a tenth of your net worth you are a fake tycoon.

In the seminal book the “Millionaire Next Door” author Thomas J. Stanley reported that the average millionaire in the US drives a car that is worth seven percent of his net worth.

So when you see a real tycoon buying his car from the showroom know it is but a small fraction of his total wealth or income.

4.       You need to show it

You cannot understand why if you have money people should not know? So you have vanity plates on your car, splash (literally) your money at night clubs and are keen to let your social media followers know when you are sipping on a nojito in town or wearing Jimmy Choos.

You are loud in word, deed and dress.

Your ostentatious consumption betrays deep seated insecurities from your poverty stricken background. When you were a kid and did not know better, you promised yourself that when you made your first million you would sponsor an open bar at Guvnor. Somehow you didn’t outgrow the juvenile fantasy.

A real tycoon knows that to maintain his wealth, he has to keep what he has close and always be on the lookout for more opportunities to grow what wealth he has. He is driven by insecurities too, but his are his fear of ever going back to his humble beginnings.

5.       Your wealth needs you to stay one step ahead of the law

Often times this kind of wealth cannot be replicated without taking unimaginable risk. And the thing with risk is that the more often you risk, the more likely your number is going to come up.

"They say, A thief has 40 days. Replace thief with kidnapper, corrupt official, taxi drive … take your pick...

The real tycoon has a system of creating wealth in which he puts in labour, capital and land through one end and money comes out the other. It is often a time tested system that can even be passed on to his offspring. If you don’t have such a system you are a fake tycoon.

Fake tycoons are bad for the economy. They do not champion hard work, thrift and integrity. They provide a wrong example for future fake tycoons. They distort markets, paying above value for cars, land, houses and businesses dooming genuine business to failure.

If you are not a fake tycoon you need not read on.

If you are fake a tycoon, have seen the error of your ways and want to turn a leaf, read everything above and then do the exact opposite.

AFRICA’S FREE TRADE AREA SIGNALS INTENT, NOW FOR THE HEAVY LIFTING

On Thursday 44 African countries put pen to paper to create a continental free trade area aimed at increasing trade within the continent.

As it is now trade within the continent stands at about 13 percent of total exports. It means that our countries trade more with the Europe, Asia and the Americas than we trade with ourselves.

It is a ridiculous logic that is a throwback to the colonial era when we were meant to provide raw materials to and serve as token markets to western industry. In addition the political permutations of Western Europe in the first half of the last century explain why in Uganda’s case for instance, we trade more with and through Kenya than the Democratic Republic of Congo...

More trade within the region is important, even critical. Trade within Africa is the least of regional groups in the world and explains a lot why we keep lagging behind everyone else.

It has been estimated that intra-Africa share of trade will more than double in relation to exports to wider world within a decade if we can take maximum advantage of the free trade area.

In East Africa we have been first hand witnesses to such progress. Trade within the Community has jumped to $5.5b last year compared to $1.5b in 2005.

This has far reaching benefits.

"With a consolidated market the dream of industrialisation will grow new legs. For starters it will sharpen comparative advantages around the continent, if the best producers of bananas are in Uganda why should everyone else bother? They will be better served going to another industry safe in the knowledge their source of matooke is unimpeded.

It is not an alien concept. The best matooke comes from southern Uganda, but bananas can be grown anywhere in Uganda. Because of lack of barriers between regions in Uganda, other areas of Uganda need not grow matooke as they can buy it from southern Uganda, they then can concentrate on the things they can do best.

So imagine an Africa with no punitive borders and the efficiencies that can be promoted?

Trade encourages specialisation and therefore increased productivity. It can be particularly helpful towards rural transformation as regional value chains in agro-business are established connecting farmers, traders and processors across the continent.

Evidence of this has already come to light in our back yard.

Last week it was announced that Ugandan farmers were selling 6 million bags of maize to their eastern neighbours. Ugandan farmers can produce maize much cheaper that their Kenyan counterparts for comparable quantities and quality so they are likely to dominate the market in coming years. The Kenyan farmers may have to start planting other crops if they are to survive. But one can expect they will lobby their leaders to maintain the status quo, which will only benefit them and not their own consumers.

But the signing in Kigali while a good step is only a statement of intent, there is a lot of hard work ahead, a lot of it effecting mind change away from the protection of parochial interests by the continent’s leaders and interest groups.

This mind shift is critical if we are to muster the collective resolve to do what it takes to first bring the free trade area in to being and secondly to maximise its potential and benefits to African citizens.

For starters the continent needs about $100b a year over the medium term to bring its infrastructure up to speed. To make this possible there has to be a lot of cross border investments in road, rail and water transport infrastructure.

Work also has to be done to remove non-tariff barriers, to synchronise regulations and create unified standards across a host of goods and services.

In addition respective governments need to commit to trade facilitation by improving connectivity, eliminating red tape and accelerating turnaround times in all processes.

"And last but not least there will be an urgent need to beef our institutional capacities to not only collect revenues but also ensure these are distributed equitably among respective societies...

As is already happening in the EAC there will be some major winners – mainly countries with extensive manufacturing bases and losers who will suffer some fiscal losses and death of some industries.

The signing in Kigali was a great event but we should be slow to bring out the champagne too soon, but rather roll up our sleeves and gird our loins  for the work ahead.

SAFARICOM: THE HOUSE THAT JOSEPH BUILT AND WHAT IT TEACHES US

They say there are four reasons to build a company -- to support a lifestyle, to live something for your children, to sell it and for philosophical reasons.

Each reason creates a different kind of company and may very well determine its longevity.

Last week former Kenya telecom company boss Michael Joseph was in town to talk about building a legacy.

While Safaricom, for which his name will be forever linked, is barely 18 years old, the impact it has had on the Kenyan economy and society, is such that it is not too soon to talk about legacy.

Safaricom, with a market capitalisation of about $12b as of the close of the NSE on Thursday, is currently the most valuable company on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), in Kenya and in the region.

It has a network of almost 30 million subscribers and its M-Pesa, mobile money platform also boasts a 25 million subscriber base. In addition Safaricom is a near monopoly in the region’s biggest economy commanding a 80 percent of the voice market.

So if Joseph, the founding boss of Safaricom, has something to say about legacy he is hard to ignore.

They say you can only make sense of your life events, join the dots, looking backward. Joseph's life and career are testament to this....

A trained engineer, Joseph was born in South Africa, worked in the US and Europe, and at what would have been the evening of his career at 55, Joseph was shooed off to set up Safaricom in faraway Kenya.

With only $20m – the price of two mobile switching stations, he set about building Safaricom in 2000.

He thought London, home office of Vodafone which had gone into partnership with the Kenya government to start Safaricom, gave him less than a 50-50 chance of success. A situation, which may have been discouraging but which played nicely to his advantage, allowing him to push through innovations without much interference.

He found existing players were pandering to the elite but he quickly made the decision that he wanted to build a business that catered to the matatu commuter. In that line Safaricom introduced per second billing, lower scratch card denominations and 24/7 customer care service centers.

The numbers jumped rapidly, breaking the million subscriber mark within three years. Caught by surprise by the speed of growth and the bureaucracy of getting money for expansion from the shareholders, Safaricom quickly developed a reputation for less than ideal service.

They soon got over that debacle and went from strength to strength.

But what has set them apart and made Safaricom a world leader, is the introduction of mobile money, under their M-Pesa brand. As Joseph tells it, the software that kicked it off was a quick and ready solution that had been developed in Cambridge, with funding from the UK government under a program to increase financial inclusion.

No one else wanted to try it out. But having lived in Kenya for almost decade, Joseph had an inkling how such a product would work in a mostly informal economy like Kenya.

In explaining why, while the product has been widely successful in Kenya and has fallen flat in South Africa, Joseph said that for innovation to take hold it helps if it is championed by the top leadership in the company.

They spent $10m on promoting M-Pesa in the first year and if it had fallen flat, he wouldn’t have been in Kampala to share his story last week.

And the rest is history. Last year total transactions off the Mpesa platform came in at Kshs 6.87 trillion or about the size of Kenya’s $70b economy...

The company has gone on to launch a host of services – data, micro loans and insurance, its growth seemingly not about to run out of steam.

Joseph who by his own admission is a hard task master, eventually stepped down from the helm of Safaricom in 2010. His thinking was that as the company had grown and become more bureaucratic, it needed a more consensual management style.

While there is no fear of losing his shirt, his legacy is now being severely tested as the chairman of the ailing Kenya Airways. But it is a challenge he says he could not resist when it came up.

Joseph says he did not start Safaricom to create a legacy. But he thinks we were not put in this world to be consumers, but to make a lasting difference and that forms the basis on which legacies are built.

The story of Joseph and the Safaricom he built points to another truth. That the business success as measured by the financials are a by-product of a genuine desire and drive to provide a good or service to the customer’s satisfaction.

That if you focus on the end-game, customer satisfaction through improving service the bottom line will take care of itself.