Prime
How can we love foreign ‘investors’ if we don’t have any love for locals?
Author: Daniel K Kalinaki. PHOTO/FILE.
What you need to know:
- If you do not see it yet, chew it over slowly, or let me “eat it in for you” here. You turn up as a foreign “investor”, get free prime land and the money to build the project. What, exactly, are you investing?
In any self-respecting country Enrica Pinetti would be in jail, or at least under investigation. In 2014 this so-called “investor” was granted prime land on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala, to build an “international specialised hospital” which the government would take over in 10 years.
This quick payback period raised eyebrows and it was not long – five years to be precise – before the ruse was revealed. In 2019 the government guaranteed $379 million in private loans for the project to take off.
If you do not see it yet, chew it over slowly, or let me “eat it in for you” here. You turn up as a foreign “investor”, get free prime land and the money to build the project. What, exactly, are you investing?
It got worse. Some of the money borrowed for the project grew legs somewhere between the lenders and the developers. If it does not turn up guess who will have to pay it back? Yes, the guarantors – the poor Ugandan taxpayers.
The project was mired in wrangles over the land, and between the contractors. Government officials accused Ms Pinetti of calling them and threatening them when they refused to approve changes to the project team. When officials from the Ministry of Health, accompanied by Members of Parliament who had approved the loan guarantees went to inspect works at the hospital site they were chased away like chicken thieves.
Today the hospital remains unbuilt. Taxpayer money was guaranteed to a private foreign individual who remains untouchable and beyond reproach, let alone inspection, even by the elected representatives. One might be minded to think of this as a law enforcement issue, but in the infamously hapless words of one officer in uniform, what do we want the police to do?
But this being Uganda – a country with absolutely no sense of self-respect – we are not satisfied with self-inflicted financial pain. We demand, on top, a large dollop of humiliation and self-flagellation. “Tie us up,” Ms Pinetti, we shout lustily, “and do very bad things to us.”
Last week the Finance Ministry mandarins bent over and awarded Ms Pinetti another contract, including free prime land and other cash incentives, this time to construct a coffee roasting plant. It is not clear what the ‘investor’ will invest this time, and the terms of the deal have not been made public. No one knows if, at least on paper, our shafting will be at market rates. But the pained look on the face of Finance PS Ramathan Ggoobi, was one for the record books. Countries, like convicts, should never drop the soap!
If we are able and willing to give free prime land and guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars for a foreign “investor” to come and build a hospital or coffee roastery, why are we unable to do it for Dr Ssebaale to expand his Case Hospital or Mr Rugasira to revamp his Good African Coffee?
Could it be that we hate ourselves? That we would rather facilitate the success of others even if it perpetuates the pain of our own? That is it okay to preside over ribbon-cutting ceremonies of small plants assembling foreign-made wares while also presiding over the funerals of once-were and could-have-been local manufacturers like Mzee Sembuya?
For decades many Ugandans were unable to visit the Kabalega and Rwenzori National Parks due to the eye-watering prices charged for accommodation within the parks. A certain rule, enthusiastically defended by one Tourism minister after another, created a 50-kilometre exclusion zone within which no one else could set up a lodge.
One entity owned the two lodges in both parks, enjoyed a monopoly, and printed money. As game drives happened very early in the morning or late in the evening, it was impossible for anyone to realistically stay outside the 100-kilometre round-trip zone and still enjoy the experience in the parks.
It took Amos Wekesa a few hoops, some luck, and a favour or two to break this monopoly. Today many Ugandans are investors in the tourism sector and the more affordable prices that ensued have given many more access to the beauty of their country. We should not hate foreign investors, but we must start by loving ourselves.
Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.
Twitter: @Kalinaki
