I had gone last month for a check on the state of my vital organs – heart, prostate, lungs, pancreas, liver, bladder, the lot – when the doctor inquired about the surgical mark I had some place. I explained the surgery that happened 12 years previously, revealing that it had been done by Ignatius Kakande.

“Ah, Prof Kakande!” lamented my doctor. “He is in Rwanda. I do not know why Uganda cannot look after its doctors.” Another highly skilled medical practitioner lost to Uganda, Kakande had for long been one of our best surgeons. I can only second-guess the good old surgeon - I would bet that he went for the financial returns and the more conducive environment.

Surprisingly, Uganda has done better in the distant past. Researching our history in the Independence Jubilee season, I came across staggering but little-known reports of how some old communities were well-advanced in healthcare. Historian Shane Doyle writes in ‘Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro’ (The British Institute in Eastern Africa with James Currey/Fountain Publishers/Ohio University Press, 2006) how there was preventive healthcare, including “several reports of pre-colonial Banyoro protecting water sources from contamination, maintaining good hygiene, and consuming herbs to prevent malaria and stomach infections during dangerous seasons.”

He talks of “a close relationship between the state and traditional healers. Kings gave healers ‘land spread in the different areas so that their services reach more people.’” What this speaks to me is that economic opportunity was availed, in the form of land, to attract the healers to different areas. I submit that economics is the reason most of our contemporary medical practitioners remain in Kampala (and why health facilities upcountry are short of staff – official statistics show that of 7,300 required staff in 40 general hospitals, 2,964 posts are vacant; and in 853 Health Centre IIIs countrywide, 8,034 positions out of 14,872 are vacant of professionals like medical officers/doctors, anaesthetists, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, midwives, laboratory staff, clinical officers). (The Ministry of Health human resources audit report says that the proportion of approved positions filled by health workers is 56 per cent and vacancies are 44 per cent).
By giving their healers land in far-flung parts of Bunyoro, the pre-colonial kings were availing economic opportunity. Can’t we do similarly today?

Travelling in 2006 in a foreign city, I met an old friend, a neurosurgeon, and he lamented how he had written to Ugandan authorities requesting for help in financing the purchase of a piece of equipment that is vital for neurosurgery. That machine is too expensive for an individual to invest in on their own, and he wanted a public-private arrangement that would enable him come home, and save the country from referring complicated cases to overseas institutions. He got a negative response; his skills are still being enjoyed by another country.

Doyle also records how after an outbreak of sleeping sickness in 1886-87, causing many deaths, Omukama Kabalega ordered a Munyoro healer “to make experiments in the interest of science”, which were “eventually successful in procuring a cure.” Doyle reports J. Roscoe, a colonial anthropologist, being told that Kabalega sent men to learn about inoculation small pox inoculation from an Egyptian garrison.

Perhaps the most staggering is a chronicle by JNP Davies of the observation of surgery by caesarean section by ‘native’ surgeons in 1879. The place was Kahura, near Mruli (presumably present-day Nakasongola). A missionary doctor, Robert Felkin, observed as the patient/mother was anaesthesised with banana wine, incisions made, the baby removed, the bleeding stopped with red hot irons, and the wound stitched. Felkin’s description was published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, and the ‘native’ surgical knife, which he took, he eventually presented to Sir Henry Wellcome, and stored in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (Wellcome is the world’s second-largest medical research funder).

The Government has done wonderfully in setting up health infrastructure (1,454 Health Centre IIs, 853 Health Centre IIIs, and 164 Health Centre IVs), but is yet to produce sufficient personnel, let alone incentivise them to serve there. Makerere Medical School passes out about 90 MB ChB degrees, 20 dentists, 15 pharmacists and 10 radiographers a year, while others come from Mbarara University of Science & Technology (50), and Gulu (40). Not enough.

WHO says “the main constraint is the inequitable socioeconomic development of rural compared to urban areas and the comparative social, cultural and professional advantages of cities. Cities also offer more opportunities to diversify income generation”. WHO’s website says the World Bank “has made recommendations to tie access to professional education to a commitment to practise a certain number of years in the country or reimburse the costs of training, to limit opportunities for training abroad, and to finance professional education through loans to students that need not be reimbursed when they accept work in an under-served area.”
Or do as Bunyoro did. It’s back to the future.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

We export a lot of primary commodities or semi-processed things yet, if we are to catch up with the rest of the world, we should be using our natural endowment to kick-start our own development.

Last week, this column argued that the exploitation of our minerals needs to be done much more judiciously, allowing for the long term strategic interests of the country, and the need to avoid the Esau Syndrome that has laid to waste a lot of Africa’s natural resources.

Referring to Kilembe Mines, which is on offer for divestiture in a Public-Private Partnership arrangement, the argument was that the offer was premature, because Uganda is not yet industrially mature enough to consume the copper products and the cobalt, which means they would probably be exported, to our eternal disadvantage.

One correspondent, who is fairly familiar with the transaction, pointed out that Kilembe is not an outright sale and that the partnership would ensure that there is value addition, and good benefits for the country. The proviso that the entrepreneur ensures that “applicants should be able to demonstrate capacity to process all the copper ore in Uganda 100 per cent and for it to be usable in the manufacture of electrical wires, transformers and any other relevant materials for the purpose of Uganda’s industrialisation” was thoughtfully and authoritatively taken. Good points, which seem fine on paper, but likelihood is that the reality will be different to the intentions.

In Kilembe’s case, the odds are currently stacked against internal consumption of copper and cobalt because our levels of industrialisation today are such that the only market for revamped mining/smelted ore and semi-primary products thereof is the export market. And therein lies a strategic problem for Africa – we export a lot of primary commodities or semi-processed things yet, if we are to catch up with the rest of the world, we should be using our natural endowment to kick-start our own development through research and development, industrialisation and manufacturing for export, all with the attendant benefit of mass job creation. Because mass employment for our burgeoning population (Uganda’s population is projected to be 112 million in 50 years, a mere generation away) will only come from big industries, of which manufacturing is the most strategically viable. So our geological endowments need to be used for that strategic position.

Since we are not yet ready to maximise, why the rush? These minerals have been around for centuries, even millennia, so no need to get rid of them in a few short years. We still have many generations of Ugandans to come and, once they are ready when our development level has reached optimal point, then they can use the mineral resources for longer term benefit. I have an anecdotal account of un-mined resources of what is called “porphyry copper deposits” and other minerals in the semi-arid US state of Arizona. Who knows when these will finally be mined? The US does not lack the technical or financial means to mine them – they just have a strategic vision to do it later.

In contrast to many of these minerals whose exploitation needs to be phased strategically – Uganda’s geological resources include the metallic minerals beryl, bismuth, columbite, copper, chromite, diamond, gold, iron ore, tin and wolfram, and the industrial minerals asbestos, clay, diatomite, feldspar, granite, gneiss, graphite, gypsum, kaolin, kyanite, limestone, marble, mica, phosphates, rock salt, silca sand, talc, and vermiculite – the big one, oil, is ready for mining, refining, and exporting (with local consumption). Oil can sustainably change our economy, and there can be direct benefit to the citizens who would consume the oil themselves.

President Museveni has rightly, in my view, insisted on a refinery (Kenya’s own oil discoveries and existing refinery notwithstanding), so that we can maximise local value-addition to our exports. Oil’s time is now.

‘Understand Uganda’, the Daily Monitor publication marking 50 years of independence, published an insightful article on Uganda’s concentrated solar power (CSP) potential, pointing to CSP as a panacea to our chronic energy deficit. Put together by a think tank, the Institute for National Transformation (INT), the report pointed out that Uganda has some of the world’s highest CSP potential due to our high altitude location on the equatorial Sun Belt where we receive radiant solar energy, with potential to generate up to 100,000MW of electricity. The highest annual global radiation on earth is received in the Lira – Kaberamaido area.

Now Ghana is going to build Africa’s largest CSP plant. Blue Energy, the British company developing the $400m project, said last week the 155MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant will be fully operational by October 2015. Construction is due to begin near the village of Aiwiaso in western Ghana next year, the Guardian newspaper reported.

At the time of planning it was the fourth biggest of its kind in the world. Ghana wants to increase renewable energy from 1 per cent of the country’s energy mix to 10 per cent by 2020. Uganda can add CSP to its good but more complicated renewable hydropower.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

A resource-hungry country like China or Japan or the United States will probably take interest in this offer, pour in the capital, ‘extract’ the minerals and take them away to power their own economies. We shall get a few dollars, and then what shall we be left with?

Something is afoot in the physical endowments of Uganda. On the face of it, it is noble, but deeper examination shows that what is supposedly good for the nation or the local people could, in the end, be counter-productive. Take Kilembe Mines.

The Government has offered the venerable mines for divestiture, in a Public Private Partnership (PPP), in which the public (Uganda and its peoples) would jointly own the mines with a private entrepreneur. They are expected to, among other things, “enter an agreement with the Government, to take over rehabilitation of assets, to resuscitate Kilembe Mines Ltd’s mining operations, and to commit to exploring for potential further deposits within the concession precinct on an on-going basis”. The offered assets include land and buildings, minerals and mining rights, plant and machinery, timber treatment plant, mining plant, foundry and electrical workshops, hydroelectric power plant, lime works, and ponds with Cobalt content.

Sounds like rich pickings; indeed they could be rich pickings for those with the capital. Unfortunately, there will not be any local companies or entrepreneurs with the capital and technical wherewithal (one of the requirements is for applicants to “demonstrate experience in the operation and/or revitalisation of similar mines”, which effectively rules out local firms).

Even if we got a local firm or consortium of investors, the end result would still be a loss to Uganda, because the products – Copper and Cobalt – are unlikely to be consumed in Uganda.

The Privatisation Unit has, in its advert, put in a rider that “applicants should be able to demonstrate capacity to process all the Copper Ore in Uganda (which is what used to happen between 1956 and the 1980s, when mining closed down) 100 per cent and for it to be usable in the manufacture of electrical wires, transformers and any other relevant materials for the purpose of Uganda’s industrialisation”.

That sounds good, except that it is not feasible. With current levels of industrialisation, we do not have sufficient capacity to consume the copper products and the Cobalt (Cobalt is used for high strength alloys and, medically, is essential for all animals including humans), which leaves the only viable option to be export.

Any interested parties will probably see that there is no local market and will build in an export component in their proposal. Now, export of a country’s natural resources, raw or processed, is not wise especially if the country expects to industrialise and become a middle class economy, let alone a First World nation in the distant future.

A resource-hungry country like China or Japan or the United States will probably take interest in this offer, pour in the capital, ‘extract’ the minerals and take them away to power their own economies. We shall get a few dollars, and then what shall we be left with?

We need to heed lessons from the past – reports say many places in the famed Copper Belt of Zambia are bleak, empty expanses after decades of extraction. In Uganda, even the railway to Kasese no longer works – it was made to extract – and does not benefit local people. On the outskirts of Johannesburg are great mounds of earth coming from decades of mining and exporting gold – today the greatest gold reserves are held in, in descending order, America, Germany, Italy, France, China, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, Netherlands, and India, all of which keep a considerable percentage of their foreign reserves in gold (there is talk of one day going back to the gold standard as an international currency). Of those ten countries, only China, the US and Russia actually produce gold.

The haste to offer our mineral resources for mining and export for the sake of a few dollars and short-term ‘development’ is akin to the biblical story of Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25: 27-34), the former coming home hungry and demanding for a bowl of stew, and the latter only giving it to him on condition that he sells him his birth-right/inheritance. Esau was said to have ‘despised his birth-right/inheritance’. The same principle applies to individuals or families that, for short term gain like paying school fees or building a house, sell long-held valuables like land.

Is this resource nationalism? Call it that if you may, but the long term benefit for families/communities/countries from resources that have existed for centuries, even millennia, must be considered carefully. (Last week, religious leaders, local MPs, and elders in Karamoja protested a Government decision to locate a cement factory in Budaka, Pallisa, yet the limestone feeding it will come from Rupa, in Moroto. The factory should be in Karamoja, so that local Karimojong benefit from their inheritance. It is how their livelihood will be lifted).

We should keep these resources intact till we are absolutely ready to exploit them for our own internal, sustained benefit.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

How do we ensure some real trickle-down in our economy? Shouldn’t the Sudhirs and Mulwanas give out a little more? Philanthropy, though a short-term solution, does help

Forbes, the American business news and financial information source, has named our very own Sudhir Ruparelia as the wealthiest Ugandan and East African, weighing in at a cool $900 million. Good for Mr. Ruparelia, seeing how he has built a diverse portfolio of interests, but more so for pulling himself up by the bootstraps, having been a victim of President Idi Amin’s lunatic scheme of redistributing wealth by grabbing it from Asians in 1972.

Ugandans shall celebrate Sudhir, given our natural tendency to lionise wealth (hence the common phrase ‘mugagga wange’, or my wealthy prince/benefactor) and to idolise success (we like to follow achievement, hence supporting FC Barcelona and not Buikwe FC, and rooting for Barack Obama but not Bazilio Okello).

We love champions. But amid all the back-slapping that Sudhir may or may not notice, let us spare a thought for those on the other end of the financial/material spectrum. There is a need to stand up for the Buikwes, Bazilios and the poor of society, if only because their circumstances are not necessarily self-made, they are victims of situations beyond their control.

It has been repeated, many times, about how Uganda has lifted considerable proportions of its people out of poverty. It is a fact, stated well by the finance ministry’s Economic Development Policy and Research Department, that “the share of Ugandans living in poverty has reduced from 54.4 to 24.5 per cent (of the national population) between 1992/3 and 2009/10”. Or is it a fact?

The trouble with statistics is that they can be interpreted variously; the trouble with surveys like poverty reduction is that, spread over a long time, like this one over 20 years, the variables can be too many for one to draw definitive conclusions. Also different people – sociologists, political scientists, economists, politicians, and even we common folk – have different definitions for poverty and the attendant upward mobility to (lower) middle income status.

The variables include how to determine poverty - at one point in rural Uganda, the lack of a hand hoe indicated that you were poor. Today, it can be the absence of an ox plough that determines your poverty. But there are certain key indicators, like food as a share of total expenditure (the higher the proportion that a household spends on food, the poorer it is); literacy; electricity (less than 20 per cent use national grid electricity); piped water; percentage of people in rural areas (only about 20 per cent of Ugandans are town dwellers); and GDP per capita (Uganda’s is about $510, placing it among the world’s poorest) that are easy to compute. Then there are the common sense ones like the possession/wearing of shoes, use of a blanket, number of meals a day.
The verdicts of both the common sense and the key indicators are that we are still quite poor – you just need to travel a short distance out of any town to behold poverty in its inglorious fullness.

Last Friday, I went to the gardens where I get fresh food fortnightly. The little kids who swarmed around me had flies and snort on their bloated, half-naked bodies, were bare-footed, and most had evidently not gone to school. The volunteer loader had a rib cage-rattling cough under his waragi-laced breath. These were the definitions of poverty – when the loader asked for some pay to buy another drink, I declined, but left shs3,000 (much more money than he had probably seen in weeks, and to be increased, if necessary) in the safe hands of those who could ensure that he gets some treatment.

A constant refrain in analysing Uganda’s economic record of mixed success is that the gap between rich and poor is ever growing. What can be done to redress this? How do we ensure some real trickle-down in our economy? Shouldn’t the Sudhirs and Mulwanas give out a little more? Philanthropy, though a short-term solution, does help (Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, is regularly and happily giving away his billions.

Not unlike another happy giver, the poor widow who is the world’s most celebrated donor – the Bible records Jesus in Luke 21: 1-4: “As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “I tell you the truth,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”)

The long term fix is narrowing the rural: urban divide through urbanisation and industrialisation. That is what the history of development of nations says. That is how poverty is tackled.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

For now the reality is that we need to sort out the mess that has caused the pervasive cancer of corruption to eat at the very basic foundations of our existence that even the most colourful of weddings or beautiful of romantic occasions cannot paper over.

It is a triple whammy: First the monies that, in these tight global financial times, could have been used elsewhere in the countries of origin were given to us as development aid. Which is great for us, but not necessarily so for the giving taxpayer. Then the monies get stolen by bureaucrats, and the poor, the genuine targeted recipients, do not see not a shilling. Horrendous! And then the recipient (mismanaging) Government dares to say that they will refund the stolen monies (presumably diverting from the honest taxpayer in the recipient country). Unbelievable!

We all know, hand-on-heart, that recovering the stolen monies will be a stretch at the minimum, what of all the cover-ups and the disgraceful positions taken so shamelessly on the grand theft at the Office of the Prime Minister. That is not to say that recovery from the suspects should not be attempted – it should be done mercilessly and without prejudice.

Offering to refund is not exactly Robin Hood (Robin Hood being the character of English mythical legend who would rob from the rich to give to the poor), but more of another set of ill thought-out approaches to sort out a problem of immense magnitude. The refund suggestion is a bizarre sort of reverse Robin Hood, a Robbing You, if you may. It is shocking that anyone should consider “refunding”.

That the magnitude is intense is attested to by the latest aid cut – a full and unambiguous freeze by Britain, over the decades Uganda’s biggest development partner or donor, as they are euphemistically called. “Unless the government of Uganda can show that UK taxpayers’ money is going towards helping the poorest people lift themselves out of poverty, this aid will remain frozen and we will expect repayment and administrative and criminal sanctions (the UK’s total aid budget for Uganda this financial year is about £99m ($151m or Shs400 billion).” And still our Government does not get it.

By considering the supposed refund, the government really is missing the point. And the point is the heartless, selfish denial of services and help to Ugandans who badly need them, and a seemingly callous Establishment that appears to be out of touch with public mood and the gravity of the failure of governance. The point, actually, is that the donors are not interested in getting the money back, apology or no apology. Their interest, if I may second-guess them, is in proper accountability, to the people of Uganda, and accountability to their taxpayers. Their interest is in lifting the standard of life for the people of northern Uganda.

By mooting the refund idea, the government is saying that they only care about the public relations aspect of links with donors. They do not see, or realise, that the whole idea of “refunding” is really a kicking of the people of Uganda in the teeth. Where will the refund monies come from? They will, of course, come from taxpayers’ money. What will the opportunity cost be? It will be the diversion, wilfully this time, of funds from what are clearly deserving programmes or functions.

It will be a denial to Ugandans of what they need elsewhere. It will be telling Ugandans that, “You guys and your desperation do not matter. Let us appease the donors.” It is a callous approach which, incidentally if the government did not know, will not be appreciated by the donor countries or their taxpayers. It is a complete miss; the type that makes people wonder about the seriousness of our government. It is shameful that we should even consider it.
Wake up, Government of Uganda! Wake up!

****
The wedding of Princess Ruth Komuntale, princess of Tooro, was one of those wonderful little moments that relieve a nation from the stresses that various governance scandals force it to endure. It actually was a merciful moment – as are things like a good football victory or an Olympic triumph. But it was like two ships passing in the night – there for a short, fleeting moment, before reality returns with its more persistent glare.

For now the reality is that we need to sort out the mess that has caused the pervasive cancer of corruption to eat at the very basic foundations of our existence that even the most colourful of weddings or beautiful of romantic occasions cannot paper over. As we wake up to this horrible reality, we wish the princess and her handsome prince many blessings.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com

We’ll prosecute; we’ll act/ We have Penal Code Act/ And Prevention of Corruption Act/ We’ll invoke Leadership Code Act/ Or Inspectorate of Government Act/ There’s a National Audit Act...

Some live on dollar a day/ Shopping malls make my day/Won’t you make hay?/While system lives another day?

Taxes! You pay taxes?/ You’ll forever ride in taxis/ Only fools give access/To tax-lady to assess.

Global Fund, there’s no refund/ Chogm monies, not my worries/ Nusaf’s where he surfs/ Naads fits our big life fads.

Football went to the dogs/ Boxing’s followed the pigs/ Athletics run to the frogs/ Will rugby suit the warthogs?

Applying for a visa?/ Just come to the ‘misa’/ Prayer for a million/ Is my pastor’s bullion.

Donors, oh mighty donors/ Who needs your dollars?/ Now we’ve found oil/ Nicely it’ll come to the boil.

We’re setting up camp/ In the wetland swamp/ Because they’re investors/ Who cares about protestors.

Forest! Cut the forest!/ Animals don’t need more rest/ Plants are set for harvest/ Big capital shall invest.

Junk choppers just won’t fly/ But skyscrapers, they go fly/ Cash we store in their ceiling/ To hell with how you’re feeling.

National foreign reserves/ Uganda does not deserve/ At high table we’ll serve/ Dollars peasants can’t have.

Who actually still conserves?/ Who needs Central Bank reserves?/ Loyalty we have to preserve/ Though not the road reserve.

Justice’s delayed; it’s denied/ You are in full denial/ This is but a sham trial/ It’s not theft, but a mistrial.

Which Nodding Disease?/ You can’t be nodding off!/ It’s no time to sleep/ It’s just our time to eat.

It’s the party primaries/ We’re like kids in primary/ Class prefects do buy votes/ For your vote, what’s your quote?

Oh brother, dear brother/ How’s father and mother?/ This office’s full of brothers/ Doesn’t matter, nobody bothers.