A last rogue conversation with Keith Muhakanizi

Economist Keith Muhakanizi, one of the architects and shepherds of Uganda’s impressive post-1988 economic recovery, was laid to rest on Sunday in Lyantonde.

Keith spent most of his working at the Ministry of Finance, easily the longest top bureaucrat there of the President Yoweri Museveni era, as economist, deputy secretary to the Treasury, and then Secretary to the Treasury until 2021. He was then appointed as Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Keith was a good friend, so this is unlikely to be the most objective take on the man. Many things have been said about Keith: That he was arrogant. Yes, but more like an intellectual snob than a self-important uppity snort. That he was clever. Yes, but perhaps more cerebral. That he didn’t suffer fools gladly. No, he didn’t. Many people hated him, seeing him (and others like the former Central Bank governor Tumusiime Mutebile) as the parents of the liberal economic reforms that painfully disrupted the old order. He was and had no apologies to make.

Government suppliers cursed him, blaming him when their payments were delayed by scrutiny. Yes, he was deeply suspicious of people who sold things to the government. He was brash. That is an understatement. He could be very brash and unrestrained by bourgeois social niceties. He was a perfectionist. Well, more accurately, he was punctilious.

If you had touchy potential in-laws and wanted a frontman to take to the “kwanjula” (betrothal/introduction ceremony), you would have been crazy to choose Keith. You would return without a bride. However, if you wanted to tell the emperor that he was naked, Keith was the man you took to address the Big Man. You would both return from the palace alive. You, because you said nothing. Keith because plain-speaking sat more naturally with him, and the offended emperor would accept it because he would see it wasn’t offered gratuitously.

Keith was wedded deeply to the idea of a Uganda where entrepreneurs, innovators, and hard-working folk get the lion’s share of the fruits of their labour.

He didn’t think that government should be a nanny, as that had a corrupting influence on industry. He believed that one of the greatest incentives for people to apply themselves was the promise of profit. For that, statists and national capitalists vilified him as a “neo-liberal” sell-out. But it is one of the reasons I found his outlook and intellect fascinating.

There are many histories of Uganda. One is the history of its marginalised regions, marginalised people, and “small” national groups (i.e. you are too few to make a difference in an election, so the big people don’t offer you social bribes).

I am intimately familiar with life in those marginalised segments and have studied their histories. I used to tell Keith (to his delight) that economic liberalisation in Uganda was a blessing for these marginalised groups.

The free market opened a path for them to sell stuff and their labour in the national market in ways that the logic of post-independence majoritarian economic and political distribution had made impossible. We spent a lot of time arguing about things like that. He was fascinated by outside-the-box stuff and offered views that would make many cringe if given publicly.

I have imagined a conversation on a random subject in Keith’s memory.

COO: One of the most peculiar things about Uganda is its land size versus population. Uganda is currently the eighth most populated African country after Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, South Africa, and Kenya. The unusual thing here is that it is twice to eight times smaller in land size than the top seven. It is Africa’s -  and one of the world’s - most populous small countries. According to projections, by 2060, it will have overtaken Kenya and South Africa, becoming Africa’s sixth most populous country with nearly 104 million people. How do you explain that, Keith?

KM: The fertile lands of Uganda provide the wrong incentives. Feeding many children and wives is still relatively cheap, so more people have them. But they are being economically irrational.

COO: How do you mean “economically irrational”?

KM: Because they are spreading their resources too thin. If they had fewer children and concentrated their resources on them, they would offer them a higher quality of life, get them better education, and enable them to be more productive and earn more in the market, which would flow back to them in their old age.

COO: So, should there be a child tax?

KM: No, but I think things like free education and the absence of taxes on most agriculture are subsidies that encourage people to have large families. But I would never propose that; you natives would murder me.

Bless you, Keith. You were one of a kind.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist,

writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3