Balunywa comments on Uganda Airlines wrong

Narrating her evolution experience from a humble beginning to the current industrial magnate that she is, Ms Juliana Adyeeri Omara of the Cheers fame, says one big obstacle she encountered was the discouragement from friends and relatives: ‘...how can you manage manufacturing, ...are you a muhindi?.!

A related experience is from Grandpa Nelson Mandela. During his liberation struggle travels, his first shock and fear was in Dar es Salaam, when he realised that the pilot of the plane he was about to board, was Black. He writes...but there was one problem. The pilot was Black... a Black man piloting a plane...?
The common thread between these two experiences, so apart in time and space, is the power of the mindset: positive and liberating or negative and enslaving.
In both scenarios here, the African mind had been conditioned to believe that a Blackman cannot pilot a plane or run a manufacturing establishment.
The reason for such strange belief is the normalisation of exclusion, which in the case of Mzee Mandela, was institutionalised in apartheid South Africa, while in the case of Uganda, the belief that only Asians (Indians) can engage in manufacturing, has its roots in the structure of the Ugandan colonial economy, where indigenous Ugandans were only relegated to producing raw materials and providing labour for menial jobs.
Parastatals in emerging economies play a bigger, liberating role beyond balance sheet profitability.

This is the reason the state in Uganda must play a direct, active, dirigiste role in the economy, including aviation.

Unless we have Ugandans working as pilots, aeronautic engineers, air hosts and hostesses and other jobs, we shall soon have a generation of Ugandans who believe that Ugandans have no faculties capable of being pilots, flight engineers or any other aviation jobs, besides ground handling and cleaning.

In this context, Prof Balunywa’s argument in The Observer of Friday July 26, against the revival of Ugandan Airlines is wrong. He is right only in the narrow sense of looking at balance sheet profitability as the only variable to evaluate parastatal performance and viability. But parastatals play bigger and more roles beyond balance sheet profitability.
Prof Balunywa falls into the standard Ugandan lamentation cycle about mismanaged parastatals.

This was the argument advanced at the advent of privatisation, which essentially threw away the baby with its soiled bath water.

Corporate Management Seminaries
One other core role played by parastatals is the nurturing of a core indigenous corporate management corps, to run the economy. The current dominance of key sector positions by foreigners has its reasons and limitations. We have a lot to learn from Brazil’s Pockets of Efficiency strategy: commanding heights of the economy (leather, sugar, motor vehicle and aviation), all state-owned and run by specially trained nationalist managers.

Read this against our current situation: Uganda Revenue Authority rents office space in a prime building formerly owned by government (now foreign-owned and managed), and banks with a dominant bank in the same building (formerly parastatal, now foreign-owned). Where is internal integration in such a situation?

Closer home in Kenya, which is more capitalist-linked than Uganda, the State still runs key sector parastatals, including Kenya Airways. Aviation training in Kenya is now commonplace, thanks to this liberating presence of the national carrier.
The reason why Kenyans dominate management positions in Uganda is traceable to the nurturing role played by parastatals in key sectors. And talking of dominance, Ugandans should brace themselves for even greater dominance in the Ugandan oil industry by Kenyans.

Not only Uganda Airlines
The reasons advanced by Prof. Balunywa are normal business cycle situations facing any business in any industry. Kenya Airways is presently posting losses, but we have not heard of calls for its total privatisation or liquidation. The state’s role in the economy should go beyond Uganda Airlines. Transformative industrialisation in Uganda will only be possible with the state as the core shareholder in key through UDC, in the following parastatals:
• The Agricultural Development Bank
• Industrial Development Bank
• Uganda Reinsurance Corporation
• Uganda Leather Industries
• Uganda Housing Bank
• Uganda Railways Corporation
• Uganda Petroleum Company
• Uganda Steel Corporation
• Uganda Textile Industries
• Uganda Transport Company
• Uganda General Mines Corporation
We need these, else, we shall in the near future, only qualify to be guards, cooks, cleaners, messengers and at best concubines, as our economy gets rich.