Mr Nicholas Sengoba
For those of you who are apolitical and can’t understand why people ‘waste’ time on ‘those things of politics’ (sic), this is for you. The 47th President of the USA, Mr Donald John Trump, is now the talk of town. As promised in his campaigns for Presidency, Trump is ‘reassessing’ the way the US government spends taxpayers’ money.
On the recommendation of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump is planning to cut back on US aid to the world. Uganda is one of the many countries affected.
The US makes significant contributions to education, agriculture and most especially Uganda’s health sector.
Reports show that nearly 1.4 million people, which is about 95 percent of those living with HIV, receive Anti Retroviral (ARV) treatment. This is funded through The President’s Emergency Health Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Nearly 1.2 million of these have achieved viral suppression that curtails the spread of the virus. It has also been very fundamental in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) initiative. This has saved many babies from catching the virus from their mothers at birth. A lot more extend to treatment of Tuberculosis and malaria prevention through distribution of bed nets to hundreds of thousands of households.
In 2023, there were about 12.6 million infections of malaria translating to 35,520 cases daily. Of these, 15,945 died, meaning that we lost about 44 people daily. In October 2024, the US provided $4.1 million (Shs14.9 billion) to support the Mpox response. Imagine what would happen without the US aid.
In the face of all this, Uganda is an independent country. It has had relative peace for the last 39 years. This excludes the 20 years of war against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony in northern and parts of north-east Uganda. There has been a stable government that has been in power for over 39 years under the leadership of President Museveni.
For most of these years, Uganda has reportedly maintained economic growth of about six percent and is at the cusp, if not right inside the realm of a middle-income country. Investors and tourists are reportedly flocking into this favourable investment destination, leading to job creation.
Tax revenue has over the years increased significantly and stood at $8.692 billion as of June 2024.
The question is that with all these rosy figures, how is it that we can barely fund our health sector to keep our vulnerable people alive? Why do we have sleepless nights when the US threatens to cut aid.
The answer is that Uganda relies a lot on borrowing. We have an external debt of about $14.63 billion as of June 30, 2024. Uganda spent about $933 million (Shs3.4 trillion) on debt servicing in 2023.
Secondly and most important is corruption and waste. According to the IGG, Uganda loses over Shs10 trillion or $2.7 billion to corruption annually.
We have the scar on our face of the stalled Lubowa Hospital which Parliament from time-to-time funds with hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet there are no tangible results.
Now many Ugandans are angrily crying out to the US government saying that we are going to die if the funding especially for HIV programmes, is cut.
Years of spoon feeding and spoiling of our own governments have given way to the misguided sense of entitlement. The donor must pay for our upkeep and if we die our blood is on their hands. The government has also lost its sense of shame and duty to the citizen. It also waits upon the donors.
Meanwhile, many who make up the government and their cronies steal as much of whatever is available as they wait for the donor to fill the gap.
The donor is not an innocent party or the legendary mother goose that fends for its vulnerable young ones, in all this. In very many places, they are into charity as a business and for personal aggrandizement. DOGE has exposed a lot of these questionable ventures using US taxpayer’s money. The wonderful book, Lords of Poverty by Graham Hancock lays everything bare. Many times most of the money does not even leave the donor country. They buy cars, computers, office and household furniture for expatriates, from the donor country. They are shipped into the recipient country, tax-free for the use of the expatriates whose enormous salaries are part of the aid to be paid for by the recipient country. Spare parts are imported from the home country which turns the recipient country into a ready consumer market.
Many times, the donors are aware that the politicians in countries like Uganda steal whatever cash comes as aid and bank it into foreign accounts in the global north. Then the begging country is held at ransom as it spends enormous amounts, servicing and repaying debts which did not serve their intended purpose. Uganda once had the Global Funds money for HIV, stolen but the main culprits escaped justice. The donor complained a bit and resumed ‘donating.’
It has to beg more and the vicious cycle continues. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
All this has persisted because as a society we don’t have a critical mass of people who focus attention on political on goings. We only notice when we are personally affected as is the case with the looming ARV crisis. Even then we do not make the connection of the impact of corruption and impunity on our daily lives. We do not ask for accountability from our own government but instead blame the donor for ‘abandoning the people.’ Many times, you hear people saying that Museveni’s highly corrupt and inefficient government ‘has done well, except for corruption.’ But corruption is an existential threat to our lives. It is the mother of all the problems.
As put by German playwright and poet, Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (February 10, 1898 – August 14, 1956), “the worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn’t seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn’t know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and worst of all the corrupt officials, the lackeys of exploitative multinational corporations.”
Uganda is headed for an election in 2026. Many whose children don’t go to school, can’t access decent housing and healthcare, drive on bad roads, struggle to eat a meal a day, or a vulnerable to insecurity by thugs etc will vote for the very people who are the source of this predicament.
Then they will cry out to Trump with his crazy hairstyle not to let them die by cutting off aid. Sadly, we are going to learn the hard way.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues.
X: @nsengoba
