Who is crying for Agoa anyway?

Ugandans and their statutory parents started the year on a bumpy road. Just when some people thought 2023 was a difficult year, 2024 woke them up before its designated time. 

As Ugandans attempted to write their resolutions for the new year, looking to put 2023 far behind them, parents were dealing with how to tell them about their lost opportunity. The United States had decided it was time up for Uganda, along with some other countries to be shown the door. Uganda would be off the table that is the African Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa), through which many resources have entered the country since the early 2000s. 

Over the years, some people did their thing with Agoa, sometimes without many Ugandans keeping an eye on it, allowing those who either directly benefitted or exported using the framework to focus on it. The others sleep walked through life as usual while many remained married to our local hustles well enough not to bother with things like Agoa.

When you are a parent and you lose that kind of opportunity, you return to your children, convincing them that the opportunity was not so good after all. You persuade them, if they can understand, that you will do better than that opportunity had afforded you, as our leaders seem to say. 

‘They have done us a favour’, they are saying, citing how important family values are and how good our standards are in the face of difficult things. They recount how bad those partners are anyway. And that perhaps they actually have done more than a simple favour for this family. Of course, history is littered with examples of people who went on to do better than okay, after losing opportunities they thought meant a great deal. You name those for the children.

So, Uganda may work it all out, and remember what a blessing this sad situation is later in life. And it is an important part of moving on from a bad situation, to not look or sound defeated. While others are lamenting about the jobs that would be lost by leaving the table, others have announced that we ‘shall be better than okay’. You never know if they mean it.

So, who is crying for Agoa anyway? By the response of those who should be crying because the children will pay a price, it may seem Uganda will be alright. But is it that indeed we need not cry or we are lying to ourselves? And if we are lying to ourselves, we may resemble what Austin O’Malley described as ‘some liars are so expert they deceive themselves’. And that ‘those who believe it is all right to tell little white lies soon grow colour blind’. Increasingly, there is no shortage of people who are colour blind.

Maybe its true getting off that table will not harm.  As if that is not enough, there is the trouble with our friends in Kenya. Can these people not see that we are already dealing with a lot already? Surely, being the friends that our parents are, they could do better than make things more difficult for a good old neighbour’s children.  Talking of dealing with a lot, maybe our friends in Kenya are equally dealing with a lot. News over the border is not all that exciting these days. Hopefully, 2024 will be kind to them too.

But who is not dealing with a lot these days? There is so much some people no longer remember Ukraine and have decided Israel and Hamas is none of their business. Those who are not dealing with armed struggle are facing real economic giants. There is literally a Goliath for every David these days. The global south is promising a busy 2024.

Hopefully, our leaders will one day wake up and surprise us, saying they are sorry things are not working out as they imagined. They may surprise us and ask if there are any other labourers in the vineyard willing to lend some wisdom which they are willing to listen to. That they will surprise us and work hard at understanding the strangers they are leading and their needs. The year is young. 

That is more than enough to be thankful for. Maybe we shall have opportunities to provide new narratives about our countries or time to dig up the things we have not been telling ourselves. Maybe we shall grow numb and say nothing. But by all means, we have to wake up to new possibilities. Happy New Year!

Emilly Maractho (PhD) is the director of Africa Policy Centre and senior lecturer at Uganda Christian University.

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