‘We must rebrand ourselves to change the face of UIA’

Who is Jolly Kaguhangire, and what experience do you bring to Uganda Investment Authority?
I am a resilient person who operates with faith because I believe anything is possible when you have commitment.
I have a Master’s degree in Organisational Leadership and Management. I also have a Postgraduate diploma in Management plus a Post graduate diploma in Tax and Revenue Administration.
I have experience of 23 years working with Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). I worked as a junior officer and by the time I left URA, I was part of senior management working as assistant commissioner for Service Management.
I completed eight years at senior management but before that I was head of stations in different areas.
In URA, through experience and what I was challenged to do, I was in charge of operations for domestic taxes and leading a big number of staff so it really taught me how to deal with different types of people. I consider URA as my training ground for this job.
I was in charge of operations and that means I had to find how to expand the tax register and base because I had to recommend some policies. This has the component of marketing as I had to sensitise the business community, deal with different stakeholders in collecting the different taxes.
It nurtured my marketing skills and I believe this is very important in UIA because I am supposed to attract investors.
And with the transformation journey at URA, I was responsible for forming teams and I empowering them to be able to run with the business of URA.
We also came up with re-engineered processes and I implemented E-tax (integrated systems) which was a milestone for URA.
It connected departments, a payment platform and I put up a contact centre to serve tax payers locally and globally.
That is the part of facilitation because I need to facilitate investors with quality service which I was able to achieve in URA.
I do not have any big learning curve apart from the industrial parks that are new to me.
I am a married woman and a mother of four children.

What makes you feel you are fit for UIA top job?
As I told you from the experience that I have had, plus the leadership potential in me, by the time I convinced the Board, I believe it was the right decision to make. The education background is relevant, the practical work too and the big achievements I have already realised at URA.

Top leadership has for long been a male-dominated area. What do you think about the new trend where females are taking up CEO positions?
We are in the era when Uganda has woken up to know the potential that has been hidden. Women are leaders. Women make things happen so culture has disadvantaged this country by not having female leaders. The few times it has been tried I do not think we have been disappointed.
It is a very interesting season that Uganda is no longer hindered by traditions instead we are open to see to it that every person who is able can contribute to the development of the country.

Does it matter that such top jobs become competitive for both men and women?
What I know is that by nature, women multitask more than men. Men can pursue one thing and achieve it but may not manage to balance. Women can manage private life, formal public work and at the same time can excel because they have an eye to detail, a good sense of handling people and identifying great human resource.

Yours is a tax collection background. How is that going to help you ensure a good investment climate in Uganda?
In tax collection, I was mainly at the forefront of marketing URA. I was appointed at the time when its image was not good. We were just beginning the reforms, I was at the forefront of change management and I believe that background equips me very well to change the climate and we shall achieve it.
During my time, our revenue collections went high and our tax register grew.
If I can manage to sell taxes which no one wants to pay, I believe I can do this.

What are the priority areas you plan to address in your tenure?
Our main strategy is to build investor confidence to be able to have investors come to Uganda. UIA is that very place that should make investors know what is in Uganda. They should find information available, good services, condusive policies and of course, to achieve that, systems must be in place.
The promotion part is very important and to promote Uganda, we have to rebrand ourselves to change the face of UIA, the approach of how we do things. We cannot afford to do things the same way. Our approach is to work like a private oriented business with clients at the centre of it. We shall work with other agencies such as Uganda Tourism Board and Uganda Export Promotion Board to attract foreign investors.

UIA must be facing some challenges. What are these and how do you plan to address them?
The main challenge has been underfunding. Staff has reached a point of giving up because their efforts and interests have been frustrated in a way that they do not think can take this organisation to another level. You know that it is people’s mindsets that can make an organisation grow and because of such discouragement, we believe that is why the services are not good.
Our services are still wanting, we still have manual work, and we have some systems but not yet to standard so we lag behind in terms of best practices. We plan on finding other forms of external funding.
This organisation is like a coordinator of other agencies. When an investor applies, he has to go to NEMA, KCCA and others. UIA is at the centre but not final. It has to work with them but the systems are manual, those automated or online do not communicate well, so it has been a challenge for UIA to serve investors. That is why efforts have been put in place to put up the One Stop Centre to have representative of these agencies in one unit.
By the end of June, it will be ready and I believe it will change our services.
The other is the legal framework. The old Act OF 1991 has never been improved. As we talk we have amendments which are yet to come out. These are independent agencies so we must have another law that says we come together and have a one stop centre and empower UIA to monitor them to serve investors well.
We may not be at our best in terms of investment but there is a lot of potential. Every year, URA collects above Shs4 trillion from investors which contributes about 40 per cent tax collection and this is a big push.

How is UIA going to facilitate Buy Uganda Build Uganda policy?
We have created our division to serve our small and medium enterprises, mainly doing innovations and value addition businesses. We are encouraging Ugandans so we go out to sensitise them in that area.

There have been claims that you are connected to the First family and that this relationship influenced your appointment as UIA boss.
I can just laugh about it because people can say anything. I am used to these comments which also came up at URA. I know the First family of course. It is a total lie that I have relied on anyone for anything. You cannot dictate to a board of 15 people, at least some should disagree.

Your final message?
I appreciate the support that is available. I understand so many people try to promote Uganda and attract investors. However, I request that whoever has an investor, we are here to purposely do that work (handle investors).