Africa’s best resource is its human resources

Moses Khisa

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  • The challenge. Africa has lagged behind in part because of the failure to combine our vast natural resources with human resource...

Recently, a friend emailed me to say he was going to Entebbe airport. A relative’s body was arriving. A young woman and yet another tragic death in the Middle East. We have come to expect harrowing stories of young Ugandans out in the Arab Middle Eastern countries. From extreme undignified treatment, grievous humiliation to death.
When the smoke finally settles down on President Museveni’s decades-long rule, one of the biggest legacies will be the scandalous ‘sell’ of Ugandans into present-day slavery. Any government worth its name cannot acquiesce to the blatant trafficking of young and vulnerable citizens into servile labour, ostensibly in the name of finding employment abroad.

Museveni has consistently made a compelling case against the export of African raw materials like coffee, crude oil, etc. He rightly dubs it a donation to the West, never mind he has done little about the failure to process primary goods and add value before export for a higher return, but also for creation of jobs in the home economy.

Selling raw materials is bad enough, sending away young Ugandans, many semi-illiterate with little or no skills, is worse. It is scandalous. Better to export raw coffee. It is unconscionable to export raw human beings, individuals who are vulnerable because of limited training, who are desperate for an income and who have to toil away in foreign lands patently at the mercy of their masters. Matters are compounded by what we know about how societies in the Arab Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent perceive black people: As belonging to the lowest rungs of the caste systems and to be treated as, literally, the ‘slave race.’

The young Ugandan woman shipped away to the Middle East goes into an environment of racial prejudice against, and blanket debasement, of a black person. She would perhaps have a fighting chance had she been better educated, more skilled and able to defend her dignity while pursuing a productive professional life. For a poor country that is Uganda, we urgently need our human resources to be well educated, better trained and be able to meaningfully participate in the productive sectors.

To achieve this, there has to be a balance between acquiring general knowledge that equips one with the capacity to think and innovate with specialised skills that are directly usable in the market place. This means building both the university and the vocational or technical institute to provide quality tertiary education and technical skills.

If, out of a well-educated and highly skilled national workforce, some citizens choose to take up careers and better-paying employment abroad, that should be an informed choice not a desperate gamble. Such a move should benefit the person and the nation; it should enhance career success and plough remittances back home.
The intermediary-companies, many run by elements close to Uganda’s ruling cabal, involved in this business peddle baiting yet misleading information. They dangle seemingly attractive terms and exaggerations of how much young women sent to the Middle East will earn.

Yet, even if we set aside the possibility of being stripped of their dignity in a foreign land laden with racism, it is difficult to imagine that a less educated and unskilled young woman in fact can make any reasonable money for their own wellbeing let alone for the benefit of the national economy.
There has been inordinate focus on Africa’s natural resources, but little on the continent’s human resources. Natural resources count for nothing without the corresponding human resources to put them to productive use and to power prosperity. Any society’s best and indispensable resource is its human resources.

Africa has lagged behind in part because of the failure to combine our vast natural resources with human resource development, to maximise the raw material potential by growing the human resource pool that makes value-added production possible.
As we continue with the old practice of exporting raw materials, which is what our colonisers set our economies to do, adding the export of raw human resources will only strengthen Africa’s position as a source of both raw materials and cheap, servile labour.

It is possible that the Museveni regime cynically believes it can partially address the endemic problem of youth unemployment by allowing or passively aiding the shipping of young Ugandans to the Arab world. In practice, only a tiny fraction can actually leave the country. The net impact is likely to be negligible. Any serious government should stop what is undoubtedly a morally reprehensible business. The few politically connected can cash in, but the country benefits nothing much.
If for nothing, there is at a minimum the pride we must hold on as a people considering the long history of treating Africans as not deserving of the due dignity and full humanity of other races.

Khisa is assistant professor at North Carolina State University (USA).
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