THE FUTURE IS HERE. ONLY JUST.

Last week two of the region’s biggest telecos released their annual results. In the case of MTN it was the release of their annual report.

Kenya’s Safaricom continues to post jaw dropping numbers. The company, the biggest in the region, posted revenues of kshs311b (sh8.5trillion), net profit of Ksh62b (sh1.7trillion), this on the back of capital expenditures of Ksh96b(sh2.6trillion) most of this Ksh55b directed to setting up their new operation in Ethiopia.

But my favourite Safaricom numbers are those of their mobile money platform, M-Pesa. 

First off, every second 856 transactions are done over M-Pesa, these include transfers, withdrawals, business payments, remittances from abroad and lending. The network has a capacity to do 2600 transactions a second.

Think about the efficiency this brings to the Kenyan business environment. That’s why everybody from the lowly vendor on the street to businesses carry out transactions with M-Pesa. According to Safaricom 32 million Kenyans have an Mpesa account and three million businesses are signed up as merchants.

With that kind of network, it should probably come as no surprise that Kshs36trillion (one quadrillion Uganda shillings) flowed through it last year. To give some perspective this figure is about ten times the amount transacted on the MTN mobile money platform last year or just over half the GDP of Uganda.

And because Kenyans are so plugged into M-Pesa, withdrawals from the system is the only service not growing in double digits. Why withdraw when you can pay for everything off the phone?

Also interesting is that $20m in remittances from abroad came on the M-Pesa network and going by last year’s growth, this figure is set to double every five years, probably faster as the service gains traction.

MTN, the only network whose full results are publicly available, are beginning to follow the trend. In 2021 was the first time in the company’s history that revenues from voice slid below 50 percent of total revenues. A trend that continued last year but in addition revenues from voice came in less than in 2021, the first-time voice revenues have fallen year-on-year.

Meanwhile revenues from both data and fintech grew by 24 percent and 25 percent respectively, going by this, revenues will be doubling every three years, which further means revenues from data and fintech will each surpass voice revenues by 2026...

Unlike in the story books, in real life revolutions take time to happen.

This column has argued for a long time that one of the major challenges of our economy is that we do not aggregate our resources, be they land, labour or capital, into meaningful wholes that can then benefit the greater society.

For the longest time we have been gritting our teeth on how to get more Ugandans into the formal financial sector. This is important because all that money that is lying idle in our wallets and under our mattresses, if banked can be used to finance people who need the money.

And it is quite significant by some estimates more than half the money in circulation is lying around doing nothing.

With the introduction of agency banking the banks have managed to extend their reach, more than they have since independence. But now imagine that the 25 million or so mobile phones can extend this reach even further.

In the 14 years since mobile money was introduced to this country between them MTN and Airtel reported about two trillion shillings in deposits, at the end of last year. In MTN’s case assuming they maintain 25 percent growth in deposits they will reach Stanbic Bank’s current six trillion shillings by 2030...

Like in Kenya where twice the GDP of the country was transacted over M-Pesa last year, mobile money will soon be major component of our GDP.

By first mopping up our small monies and then reducing the friction that comes with using cash, the growth of mobile money is set to bring greater efficiencies to the economy.

I remember in the 1990s reading an article about a town in the UK that was going cashless. The story was that the town would issue cards to everybody, essentially debit cards and these would be accepted by all traders.  At the time we had only one Atm in the country, at Barclays Bank, Kampala Road and it would take stretch of imagination to imagine cashless society here.

It is still early days, but the people at MTN Momo are grappling with the challenge increasing transactions using their platform, they estimated less than a million of 11 million subscribers actually transact over the phone. But a 90 percent growth in transactions was reported last year, helped by the tripling of merchants to 173,000 last year from 53,000 in 2021.

In addition, they are looking to revamp their overdraft offering to go alongside their small loan product.

These two initiatives will not only digitize money but also provide a treasure trove of data can be mined to determine what works and what doesn’t in issues such as poverty eradication programs.

Now we do not have to go all the way to the UK – visa hustles and all, to see how a truly cashless society will look like.

A few years ago while in Mombasa I had to get an uber in the morning, when it was time to pay for my fare, the driver had no change.

Annoyed I asked him how he can start the day without change, “And you how can you not be on M-Pesa?” was his swift reply.

 

 

 

 

OF KING CHARLES III CORONATION ECONOMICS AND POOR US

By the time you read this the pageantry surrounding the coronation of King Charles III will be done and the UK will be enjoying a public holiday to extend the festivities or to work off their hangovers.

At the time of writing, it was estimated that the coronation would cost the British tax payer $125m (sh465b). But that was small fry compared to the estimated one billion pounds (sh4.6trillion) in inflows that will ensue as a direct result of the event. Observers have it that London hotels were enjoying 96 percent occupancy in the lead up to the event and tourism in general and the pubs in particular expected a £337 million (sh1.6trillion)....

I like to think that these are conservative estimates. In the heat of all the euphoria I suspect budgets – personal and public will be thrown out the window and the British economy may very well – for a few weeks, pull itself from under the dark cloud that has economy for the last two or so years characterized by the growing cost of living fueled by historically high inflation.

The party poopers – never far behind, also point out that the extra public holiday today, May 8^th will cost the economy 0.2 percent of GDP.

Just like in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned the UK is in need of optimism. Seventy years ago, the UK was still a bombed-out shell following the Second World War, as result was rolling back its empire and the coronation, which was filmed in scratchy black and white, brought some cheer back to the British Isles.

This coronation was beamed to the four corners of the world in real time, high definition colour. More significant changes have happened to Britain in between the two coronations, not least of all how the British economy has changed beyond all recognition.

In 1953 manufacturing accounted for a third of the British GDP but today that figure is less than 10 percent with services being the major driver of the economy. At last count services – retail, finance, tourism, hospitality, social services, accounted for 79 percent of the economy.

The shift away from manufacturing to services seems the logical progression in development. The UK attained parity in the share between manufacturing and services at the end of the 19^th century.

"The just witnessed coronation ceremony is more than symbolic of the trend, where economic activity is now dominated by the intangible and ephemeral. The western economies have mustered the art of taking events and turning them in to money spinners....

Meanwhile they have shifted most of the low value manufacturing abroad or abandoned it all together for higher tech processes.

The shift can not happen by mistake but is a function of a more educated population and government sensitive to the shifting trends and looking to enable innovation.

The English Premier league is one of the biggest export of the British Isles. Though accounting for only £8b (sh38trillion) of the £3trillion economy, shows how big the services sector is.

 For countries like ours which are pre-industrial the coronation should focus to take a look at how to maximise the potential of events, not just see them as items to tick box.

I am particularly excited about the Rwenzori Run, the second edition of which is set for September this year. The Rwenzori mou3ntains has been with us forever, but we are only just creating an even to leverage its history and mysticism now in the 21^st century.

What will happen when someone looks through similar lenses at Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, our various Kingdoms and numerous natural endowments. And that is only just sports/adventure tourism.

What would happen if the trick to improving our education and health services, would be to get it into somebody’s head the billions of dollars we can earn in foreign exchange from people coming to study here or health services?

What would happen if made Uganda regional or even continental filming hub? Our natural endowments would look absolutely stunning in HD.

The trick is to first create a narrative, that projects the country in the best possible light or not.

"When King Charles forefathers were running around the world empire building, far from the romanticized version of summer holidays in Kashmir or the idyllic lifestyle of the white settlers in Kenya’s rift valley, the empire was forged with steel, blood and a liberal doze of racism....

But with having to cede control of the empire in the last century, the brutality of colonialism was washed over and a more romantic narrative has emerged, no, generated. At the center of it is the royal family and the reality show that they are.

The house of Windsor is not only powerful in keeping their citizens the hard questions about their relevance in the modern world but are useful too for keeping our eyes on the UK.

I don’t know him personally, but I am willing to bet if King Charles could do away with all this fanfare he would. But he has been brought up to recognize, his role in the larger scheme of things, among which is to put appositive spin on Great Britain.

It is simple but not easy. We need to seat down and generate our own narrative (mindset change would help) on a strategic level and be more opportunistic in taking advantage of our natural endowments.

MOST OF THE ERRORS IN OUR BUSINESS ARE EMOTIONAL

Every so often in our lives something happens to us that makes us pose, do a double take, reevaluate everything we know. Strangely it may affect only you out of the many people around you, who have had the same experience. It may be that they have experienced it before, got the lesson and are applying it in their lives or they don’t get it at this time. Their time will come.

That you get it now, or previously, not yet or never does not make you superior or lesser than the next man.

I had one of those moments, last week.

A twitter handle I follow, @BusinessMind posted last week “Most of the errors in our business are errors of emotion”....

It doesn’t seem like much but think about the profoundness of that statement.

A business is supposed to solve a particular problem in society and in the process make the business’ owner some money. If it doesn’t do that, then society will reject it or if it doesn’t do it in a cost-effective way will soon shut down.

The promoter of the business among other things, needs to sensitive to the society’s changing tastes and ensure his good or service remain in step with these changes or be slightly ahead of them. The way to do that is to be in constant touch with the market. Easier said than done.

Assuming the business’ management have taken this to heart, the next thing is to ensure this understanding is not only known but appreciated at a deeper level up and down the organisation.

Whenever a businessman complains that the economy is not doing well, it is at the tip of my tongue to ask whether his customer service is a up to scratch. You will be amazed how much business is turned away by lapses in customer service.

The saddest thing – for businesses, is that the majority of customers who don’t like your service and do not complain, outweigh those who complain. We are in a liberal economy; chances are they can take their business elsewhere.

Taking customer service as one business process the negative emotion of the frontline employee can cost you millions, billions or your whole business.

But at a strategic level, many businesses sink or swim depending on their asset allocation...

Ideally asset allocation should be slanted towards those assets that bring in more revenue to the business rather than costs.

Asset allocation is one place where emotions should be stored away and decisions be made with cold blooded precision.

So, take for instance the bank which breaks the mold of the high street bank and offers attractive propositions to depositors and borrowers. Soon the funds are flowing in, at a rate that they probably don’t know what to do – a good problem to have.

Staying with the normal bank business of collecting deposits and lending seems boring in the light of this avalanche of money. The managers start thinking they have hacked this money-making business and they can do no wrong, so they start speculating with the money – going into other businesses, bankrolling startups and dabbling in the stock exchange, they even build themselves a swanky new headquarters with all the whistles and bells. But soon the mismatch between their short-term deposits and their long-term assets catches up with them.

Another bank in the same industry, much bigger than the first, sells its headquarters to finance a roll out of computer system around all its branches, while renting its new headquarters. With the new computer system installed the bank can first, have access to all the resources mobilized around its countrywide network and attract customers, because now they have access to their funds from wherever they are in the country.

Twenty years down the road the first bank is history, remembered by older members of society during beer soaked reminisces, while the second is making money hand over fist, but still renting its corporate headquarters.

"The first bankers were making emotional decisions like we make as individuals. We want to buy land, build buildings and stock ranches, so we can point them out to our friends as our own and let them marvel at how progressive we are. The failed bank did that chest thumping on an industrial scale....

The second bankers – heartless bastards, let the numbers tell the the story. And numbers if looked at with cold logic, don’t lie. They cut back their costs, shoveled the savings into making their branch network more efficient and the rest is history.

This story does not apply to banking only. We saw it in telecommunications, media and nightclubs.

So, if you are to bet on one businessman or another shun the flashy businessman with the big, latest, four-wheel drive guzzler, with a company mansion atop the hill and expense account at the five star hotel, for the business still housed in a warehouse, holds its AGMs in the car park and whose CEO drives -- a four wheel drive nevertheless, but a ten year old version.

 

KEITH MUHAKANIZI: HOW WOULD UGANDA HAVE TURNED OUT WITHOUT ECONOMIC REFORM

Prompted by the recent passing of Keith Muhakanizi I got to thinking what would have happened to Uganda if we had not bitten the bullet and made the hard decisions in the 1980s and 1990 required to resurrect the economy?

First of all what did Uganda look like in 1986, when we can safely say the real recovery of the economy begun.

"Going by the first budget read by then finance minister Professor Ponsiano Mulema it is hard to tell objectively what Uganda was like...

“It was, however not possible to get reliable statistics. Such figures as we now have are rough estimates based on the few statistics available and lots of assumptions,” Mulema siad in the budget speech he read in August 1986.

He however managed to report that the industry had broken down due to poor management, inadequate working capital and was unable to get enough hard currency to buy raw materials, spares and other inputs. Coffee exports amounted to about 2.5 million bags but he suspected this was an understatement of the true production as a lot of coffee was being smuggled by individual and official agencies. Mulema also told the National Resistance Council (NRC) that sh402.5b in revenues were collected that year at the official rate of sh1400 to the dollar this came to about $287m or just over a trillion shillings at today’s rates. PS Ramathan Goobi would be unreachable if he had a resource envelope that light today.

Total budget that year was sh514.3b or $367m or about sh1.4trillion in today’s money. The 2023/24 budget is set to touch sh50trillion and we will still have a cash squeeze.

Numbers aside the anecdotal evidence draws a better picture. Everything was in short supply.

"It was not uncommon for grown men and women to cut work, on a predetermined day, to line up outside the Resistance Council I (RC1) chairman’s house for a piece of a bar of soap, a liter of kerosene or a kilo of sugar. While driving, your main preoccupation was to fall in the porthole that would cause least damage to your car, you couldn’t dodge them all (sound familiar?). Keeping left was a luxury car owners could not afford. At Makerere University when water run out, you went to Katanga to fetch from the protected well there. Being run over by a car as you crossed Bombo road wasn’t a concern as there was little traffic in those days. There were several wells around Kampala for this purpose. (Do you know he well nearest your home today?) Electricity was a rumour and we didn’t even have generators or power inverters...

I am sure living in today’s Uganda you cannot get the picture.

At a macro level as described by Mulema there was little economic activity – of the 80 factories surveyed at the time only 10 were working at 30 percent capacity, therefore there was little tax revenue -- Revenue collections to GDP stood at around five percent and therefore government had little to no leeway to provide public goods.

Government therefore had to suck up to the money men – The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a start, who had the resources we badly needed. But in order for them to open the money taps we had to bring government expenditure under control, privatise the inefficient public companies and liberalise the economy, by for one, breaking up government monopolies. That was the cost of their money more painful than the few percentage points of interest that would be due on some of those funds.

There were some idealists and armchair economists who thought we need not suffer the pain of the reforms to get the economy back on its feet. That if the donors want to help us it should be unconditional aid, they give us the money, don’t ask for repayment and let us spend it as we saw fit. The naivete of these people boggles the mind.

So, let us say we had taken that route, what would have happened?

Chances are in lieu of tax revenues the government would have printed more and more money – it was already doing that. Mulema reported that currency in circulation had grown 90 percent in the preceding year. And then inflation would have taken off. Inflation is a disincentive to business because you can not plan and discourages lending. The net effect of which would be that the government would be unable to provide essential services, services critical for lifting people out of poverty. Shortages of everything would persist and we would continue with our sub-human existence and we would be worse off than we were in 1986.

"We would be a cross between Eritrea, with its scarcity commodities and services and Zimbabwe, with its hyperinflation and useless currency....

What people don’t know or choose to forget that the economic reforms that pulled us out of the hole were not only necessary to unlock the donor vaults but at the heart of then they were good economics – control government spending and the let the private sector be central to economic growth.

While it is true that no country has developed using aid, the initial aid is useful to get the economy up and running. To take us to the next level, to transform our economy will require to improve the productivity of our labour, land and mobilise more of our own resources, which arguably will need the next level of policy beyond monetary discipline.

 

KEITH MUHAKANIZI AND THE PASSING OF AN ERA

Last week the permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) Keith Muhakanizi passed on in Milan, Italy where he had sought treatment for a long-time ailment.

But he is better known for his time at the finance ministry, where his role in the reconstruction of our economy since the early 1980s is indisputable.

While work to begin economic reforms begun with the Obote II government, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government is the one which really had to roll up its sleeves after 1987.

The first budget of the NRM in August 1986, painted a really bleak picture of the economy.  

"Revenues were thin as coffee exports, Uganda’s top tax earner at the time, were largely being smuggled; money in circulation had jumped 90 percent in the previous year, fuelling the already triple digit inflation, a situation not helped by the floating shilling, which was depreciating everyday for lack of foreign currency. As Uganda’s industrial base had been gutted and most things even the bare essentials like bar soap, sugar and cooking oil had to be imported, the depreciating shilling was a nightmare....

So, while the beginning of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) had already begun, “The financial programme failed …. the government was not particularly disciplined and therefore expansion in money supply to finance unplanned and in many cases irregular government spending,” then finance minister Professor Ponsiano Mulema reported in the 1986 budget speech.

It would take more than a few paragraphs to describe the dire straits into which the economy had sunk. No less a figure than Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, credited with leading his island nation from “third world to first in one generation” did not give Uganda a chance in 1988,

“When I met the leader of Uganda, I knew I was meeting a leader whose world has collapsed and may not be put back together for another 100 years,” he said in an interview at the time....

This is the situation the young economist Muhakanizi found himself in. There are many people who were involved on getting Uganda back on its feet but for longevity, former Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, Muhakanizi’s predecessor as finance permanent secretary and secretary to the treasury Chris Kassami, stand out. Muhakanizi was the understudy of his predecessors, an uncharacteristically vocal one at that.

In 2006 I interviewed Muhakanizi to commemorate the 20 years since the currency reform. The interview was at his farm in Sembabule where I drove for miles without seeing anyone, before getting to his door. I joked that even the loudness of the Bakiga would do him no good here in trying to talk to his neighbours.

He dismissed the explanation that Bakiga are loud because they had to communicate across valleys in Kigezi, explaining that the loudness of the Mukiga comes from confidence, which confidence comes from being the first place that the colonialist succeeded in titling land in Uganda, after futile attempts in Buganda and Busoga.

The psychology of a man who has his own property is very different from another who is beholden to another, for even the land on which he lives.

I have to admit I have never tried to verify this claim. As far as I was concerned, it was as good an analysis as any and I was not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

But this is a critical element to the turn around of Uganda’s economy. When the NRM came to power among the things they did was to stop the IMF program signed onto by the Obote II government. Their revolutionary fervor could not allow them to kowtow with the Bretton Woods institutions, the symbol of “western Imperial hegemony”.

"But President Yoweri Museveni, a quick study, soon realized that with empty coffers, no means to fill them and a political project that was about to die before it begun, later in 1986 called in then, central bank governor Leo Kibirango and Mutebile, then chief economist in the planning ministry, to chart a way forward. These two of course were already branded the “imperialist agents” whose voices had been drowned out by the “revolutionaries”....

Mutebile, a mukiga, was more forceful in his argument than Kibirango and thankfully, Museveni saw the logic of an about turn on the course the economic direction. The rest as they say is history.

But the devil is always in the detail. And it was left to technocrats like Muhakanizi and others to do the “dirty” work.

This entailed the freeing up of the foreign exchange market, the liberalization of produce marketing, the privatization of the state enterprise and bringing much needed discipline to government spending.

There were many moments when the government wavered, seduced by populism, and it took the combined efforts of the three – Mutebile, Kassami and Muhaknizi to show the politicians the error of their ways and reset the course.

The results are there for all to see in the more than three decades of unbroken economic growth – the last time the economy contracted was in 1985.

Muhaknizi, his strongly held convictions making him a polarizing figure, in his later years at the helm of the finance ministry maybe run into the limits of his own powers. The major criticism against him was that the market friendly policies he fronted seemed unable to translate into a transformation of the whole economy, especially the agricultural sector, in which seven in ten Ugandans derive a livelihood. Failing health and the conservatism that comes with age, maybe blamed for his seeming inability to embrace a new turn in the road.

"But it would be a very hard man to disagree that the net effect of his favoured policies have been positive for the economy and have set the basis for the economy’s future take off. And as such his passing – as the last of COO of the finance ministry involved in the reconstruction of the economy, although he was not in the finance ministry at his end, may very well signal the end of an era or at least a major milestone in this country’s economic journey.

Fare thee well Keith Muhakanizi.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL FOR THREE WAYS

Jeff Baitwa has been to hell and back.

Draining court battles and the near-death experience of his company are an understated snapshot of the journey he has been on.  But he can now see light at the end of the tunnel and his business, BroGroup Ltd seems set to return, stronger and wiser.

While the rest of us after university, in the mid-1990s, set out to find jobs, brothers Oscar and Jeff started Three Ways Shipping, which is now the flag ship of their BroGroup holding company. They struggled to get a foothold in the highly competitive clearing and forwarding business, building the business to the point that, at the height of its success about a decade ago, they were reporting top line revenues of $30m(sh110b) and were employing at least 750 people across a network that stretched from the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam to their operations in western Uganda, where they were gaining a foothold in the oil & gas industry.

"Ironically, the oil & gas industry almost did in all their hard work. After the commercial viability was determined in 2006 the frenetic work around the exploration slowed to a crawl. Critical legislation, a tax dispute with UK-based explored Tullow Oil and negotiations surrounding the development of the oil fields, most especially the pipeline to Tanga in Tanzania, were to blame for the slowing momentum in the sector...

The slowdown badly affected Three Ways Shipping, which had positioned itself as the leading local logistics company servicing the sector.

Their bankers put them under receivership in 2016, before the company extricated itself from it in 2019.

In the meantime, the company found itself in a debilitating court battle with their client telecom company, MTN, which is still winding its way through the court system, but which Jeff thinks, is about to be resolved.

Just as the company battered and bruised, was girding its loins to begin a comeback, the Covid pandemic happened, setting them back deeper into the hole they had found themselves in. In Uganda and globally the Covid pandemic prompted a worldwide lockdown, that started around March 2020 and only last week did the World Health Organisation (WHO) announce the pandemic was finally over.

“I think we are over the worst now,” Jeff told Business Vision last week in his office on Jinja road. But not without pain.

In order to resuscitate the group, the brothers have had to invite new shareholders, offshore investment firm, Delux Group, which took a 20 percent stake in the company and brought in much needed financing to tide the company over its earlier challenges.

“The new investors are college alumni, some of whom are Ugandan who saw our situation and thought they could help us get back on our feet not only with resources but with their own experience,” Jeff said.

As a result, Jeff is now co-managing the company with Daniel Pettersson and a new, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Human Resource Manager have been hired.

“Before our challenges we were servicing multiple industries -- trade, infrastructure, produce oil & gas and not only in Uganda but in Kenya ana Tanzania. In Kenya and Tanzania, we are already working through joint venture partners,” he said.

Already in Uganda, the BroGroup is in a joint venture partnership with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed Grindrod Logistics Africa, focused on freight forwarding business opportunities.

"With BroGroup’s ducks lined up, Jeff is confident about the company’s future, but this hope is tempered by the experience of the last decade.

“During the challenging times I have better come to appreciate the need for self-belief, perseverance, patience as personal attributes. Also, good friends, supportive family and supportive workers and all those who stuck with us in various ways during the period,” Jeff said. “The relationships we developed have remained largely intact and we are grateful for that.”

It started as a two-man operation – Oscar in the UK taking orders and Jeff in Uganda doing last mile deliveries – it was called Equator Freight Services. That was in 1996, 27 years ago.

Jeff says, these last few years were as close as the company has ever come to being shut down and maybe that is what was needed for it to bring in new partners and reach for the next level of its potential.

"In the immediate future the group will be focused on the oil & gas sector, where first oil is expected by 2026, but there is a lot of logistical work needed to be done over the next three years and hopefully carry everyone along with them.

“We will be looking to employ local, buy as much as we can from here and even source funding locally. We will try and get as many opportunities to locals in a sustainable manner,” he said.

In the medium to longterm they are going to see more corporate evolution as they mature.

“I may still be the MD for the next two, max five years. We are trying to drive the business so that management is more independent from the shareholders,” he explained.

Jeff thinks they are definitely out of the woods, never mind that the enduring lesson from the Covid pandemic is to hope for the best but expect the worst.

HOW WOULD A CORRUPTION FREE UGANDA LOOK LIKE

This week President Yoweri Museveni responded to critics to his easter messages on a number of subjects, not least of all corruption.

The President pointed out that there are institutions mandated to fight corruption and he as the president would be overstepping his mandate to start hunting down the corrupt. He nevertheless pointed out that he set up institutions to fight corruption though complained that some had been infiltrated by the very corrupt they were meant to be fighting.

"The argument that corruption should be fought based on evidence is hard to fault and it is as it should be. The seduction of public lynchings and arbitrary arrests and jailings should not be encouraged. Such methods may win a few cheap points with the people but will eventually lead down the dangerous path to destruction and chaos...

What about if the government was to give all the corrupt amnesty? That they come forward confess their sins, refund our monies and we live happily ever after.

This would be useful in helping us start from a clean slate and secondly serve as the basis for a determined attack on the corrupt. The deal would be you come forward or we come after you hammer and tongs.

And this would not be very difficult. Random lifestyle audits will easily uncover the corrupt. Our public officials have become so emboldened they are not afraid to live in palatial mansions, by their cars from the showroom rather than the bond, send their children to study abroad and holiday in exotic locations, right before our eyes.

I remember almost two decades ago during the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) probe, officials uncovered living a life way beyond their known incomes resorted to blaming “relatives abroad” for their massive wealth.

An amnesty for the corrupt is not unusual. During the early 2000s government passed a law granting Amnesty to people fighting against the government. The condition was that you would publicly renounce your insurgency against the government, get a certificate, on condition that were you to backslide your amnesty would be revoked and the full force of the law would be brought to bear on you.

This was offered to people who had committed despicable crimes -- rape, maiming and mass killings, why can’t the same be offered to our corrupt?

Of course, the practicality of publicly confessing your corrupt ways could be a challenge, your children’s classmates will not let them forget...

But assuming we could go past this stage, what would a corruption free Uganda look like?

For starters many public servants would have to cut back on their budgets. They would have to look for cheaper houses to rent, mothball or sell altogether, their monster private four-wheel drive cars, suspend weekly visits to the farm and much more of their ostentatious living.

This will have repercussions not only for the redeemed public servants but for their wider social networks.

The story is told of the minister who used to customarily ferry people to the village every weekend he was travelling. When he lost his position, he started going to the village on random days of the week to dodge his constituents’ demand for lifts.

Kampala at night, may not be as happy as it is now. Many years ago I met a big night club owner at Kigali airport. We were both returning home. I suggested to him that Kigali would do with good nightclub like has in Kampala. With a wave of his hand he dismissed my suggestion, “There are no corrupt in Kigali, who do you think come to my place?”

Which makes you realise that the biggest beneficiaries of corruption in our government are among us in Kampala and not in the rural areas.

So, a halt to corruption would be good for rural Uganda. Schools would be built and resourced, health centers the same, feeder roads would be opened up and maintained, essentially rural Uganda and the more marginalized urban dweller would be have access to the tools that would help him climb out of despondency and poverty.

"There would be much gnashing of teeth in the hills of Kampala as our public servants take a marked cut in their lifestyles and maybe because they would have to rely on public services, would ensure they worked well – after all they cannot afford treatment in Nairobi or Delhi or Johannesburg....

It would be interesting to see how long our public servants would continue with this class suicide before they fought to return to business as usual.

That is the challenge with fighting corruption in this country, it is now baked into our DNA to the point that the enforcers of the law are themselves part of the racket. As if we don’t know that.