In the name of the father, son, betting shops and railway

What you need to know:

  • Getting out of poverty. You cannot get out of poverty by gambling or betting, and miracles don’t exist outside the movies and fairytales. Also, it is disempowering in profound ways, if one falls into a long-term belief that good fortune will come to one through providence. This is not to say gambling and the belief in miracles, not to mention prayers, are useless.

President Yoweri Museveni’s recent criticism of miracle-peddling pastors, and move to ban (or is it to restrict?) sports betting, are broadly motivated by right goals.
You cannot get out of poverty by gambling or betting, and miracles don’t exist outside the movies and fairytales. Also, it is disempowering in profound ways, if one falls into a long-term belief that good fortune will come to one through providence.

This is not to say gambling and the belief in miracles, not to mention prayers, are useless. Going out to gamble and hoping we can win big, is far better than sitting under a tree and doing nothing, because occasionally people win. And it is also the same source of optimism and belief that informs the idea that if you apply yourself, you can achieve something. As the slogan says, you can’t win it if you are not in it.

Additionally, prayers often have the benefit of getting us centred, and the idea that there are forces out there greater than you is, first, necessary for us to be humble. Secondly, if being pure of heart and spirit can unlock godly goodies, then some people will do good, not evil. That helps produce a kinder and fairer society. The people who are preyed on by charlatan preachers, and being turned into zombies by betting, are ultimately seeking real world solutions to their problems. Their exploitation is a tragedy.

A few months back, I was in a largely rundown small Ugandan town. There was one nice building, all painted, and with neon lights. It looked out of place. I asked a chap running a kiosk nearby what was happening there, as there were many people milling around: “Those are betting shops owned by some Indians and Chinese”, he said. “They have finished people in this area. People come from far away to lose money there. People steal. Family members kill each other. Those three shops take out over Shs54 million a week from this poor area.”

He had a precise figure, which if true was mind-boggling. If that same amount were spent on the local economy a week, there would be a dramatic improvement in lives in the area. Banning betting, therefore, stems this deadly drain on capital in poor areas in a major way. However, even if crooked churches, and all sports betting sports in Uganda closed, their impact on youth unemployment and hopelessness would hardly be noticeable.
What simple things might we, therefore, do to improve lives?
The first thing is to realise that most productivity, and capital (especially belonging to groups who would invest it productively like women) is lost primarily to disease – especially malaria. Suppressing malaria, it has been estimated, could result in a 1.8 per cent increase in per capita GDP.

We could mobilise millions of young people into activities like bush clearing, educating people about insecticide-treated bed nets and distributing them, spraying the places where mosquitoes breed and so on. In the process, you would be giving the youth jobs.
The second thing is to bring greater water security, and to protect the health of farmlands. The government should pass regulations requiring people to harvest rainwater, and to compel them to have compost pits for making manure. These are things that can be done at near-zero additional cost.

Third, we should borrow from the colonialists and compel people to have granaries in their homes upcountry again. If just three million homes did it, it would radically change food storage, and stabilise food markets. There are even small beautiful silos you can buy from China and places like those for under $250, for those who don’t want the embarrassment of grass-thatched granaries in their yards.

Then we need to fix the transport infrastructure that allows deliveries in bulk and at economic rates – the railway. The Uganda railway is a shame. Long-dormant, in most places it has been eaten by wilderness, and the rest of it vandalised. The first thing I would do all along the old railway line in the country, is ask young people to form saccos, and contract them for even Shs100,000 each to clear the stretch along their villages. You can have 5,000 youth groups working on the dilapidated line at a go, in a week it would all be clear.

I would then contract out 10 to 50 companies to bring specialist knowledge, and supplies, to work with them in repairing the line. I would sub-contract those boys in Katwe and other jua kali hotspots to repair old trains, and with that start to chug along and transport stuff along the refurbished line, however rudimentary. A quarter of the money Museveni gets for donations, would actually be enough for all this. This country would change beyond recognition in five years, and quack pastors wouldn’t have flock.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data.
Visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3