OPINION COLUMN: THE MONITOR- 22ND JANUARY 2003
Ear to the Ground: - Uganda broke? Well, sell it to highest bidder
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
NAIROBI - I have lost count of the flights I have made between Entebbe and Nairobi in the last three years. Last Sunday was different. It was the first time - ever - that I flew to Nairobi on a one-way ticket.It was a rather loud statement about the fact that, if all goes well, for a long time to come Nairobi will be "home" for me. After the historic transfer of power in a free election in Kenya last month (and one of the less than ten in Africa in the last 50 years), Daniel arap Moi stepped down and handed over power to opposition leader Mwai Kibaki.
You can smell the pride in Kenya over that accomplishment, and optimism that the country, to use a headline in the Uganda government-owned New Vision, is set to "boom again". One remarkable sign of this upbeat mood is the response to the latest report by the UN Habitat that said Nairobi was one of the most crime-riddled cities. The newspapers shrugged it off, with the only prominent it go! t being on the back page of The East African Standard. The view of many journalists is that the report was not surprising, and in fact was inevitable given the recent elections that went off almost without violence. The UN's unofficial headquarter in Africa is Nairobi, and it has its most extensive facilities in the continent in Kenya. Hard-nosed journalists (and it would seem quite many Kenyans) believe that there is a kind of "African Mafia" that is making a fortune from the "hardship" allowances that are paid for sections of the UN staff who work in "high risk" areas. Now with Kibaki in power, they argue, everyone wants to be around to enjoy the party and the "boom", so the Mafia is scaring others off by drumming up the image of Nairobi as "Nairoberry".
It struck me as odd in this environment that the one mandatory trip I will be making to Kampala every month is to appear in court because The Monitor published a story that annoyed some cowboys in the government. Perh! aps it's only to be expected then that on the flight I had som! e mischi evous thoughts when a friend who was travelling for a meeting on global governance brought up the issue of debt. We discussed the initiative to reduce the burden of highly indebted countries, HIPC. Uganda that was the first beneficiary is doing worse today than before. Recently Finance minister Gerald Sendaula put it in very dramatic fashion, saying the progamme had been a flop.
"So where do we go from here?" I asked my friend.
He gave me a series of options, and said a new solution was inevitable because "when a country is bankrupt, or let's say insolvent, you can wind it up like a company".
"Why not" I asked.
He looked at me and my glass to see what I had been drinking. It was water.
I think it's time to consider handing over bankrupt countries like Uganda to a receiver, who can sell off what he or she can to the highest bidder. But since a country is a country as my friend argued, we could have a provision that once it's been nursed back to good health, and! the person who bought it off the auction has made a return on his investment, it can be handed back to Ugandans, Not necessarily, but hey, it doesn't hurt to be generous.
How would it work? Uganda owes $4bn it can't pay. Put the country up for auction. Maybe someone like Bill Gates buys it for $4.2bn. The $4bn is paid back, and we are clean. The result, $200m, is given to Bank of Uganda Governor Tumusiime Mutebile to bank on our foreign reserves.
So if I were Gates, what would I do? I would begin by slashing down the size of cabinet to 12 ministers. I would cut the number of districts by 50% to 25, and reduce Parliament to 50 MPs. I would pay Joseph Kony Shs 10bn, make peace with our neighbours, and abolish the UPDF (the army). In its place I would have a National Guard, which is not a standing army, but is only called up in times of emergency. I would take out all the fat in government contracts, privatise Uganda Railways and co-invest in it, then order all major lo! ng-distance haulage to be moved by Railways.
I would campa! ign for a constitutional amendment setting the maximum level of any tax at 10%, and thus make Uganda very competitive, spur consumption, leave businesses with money to invest and create jobs, and remove corruption in tax administration.
Then, of course, I would call elections and hold presidential, parliamentary, and LC polls on one day like Kenya, and make a huge saving. In two years, I will have got back my $4.2bn, and made a profit of $4.2bn. I would hand the country back to the Ugandans, knowing the politicians will soon be typical Africans and run it down. I won't, of course, spend my profits. In five years, a bankrupt Uganda will be on the market. This time for $3bn - much cheaper. I move in for the kill again, using just a portion of the profits that I made running the little thing some five years ago.
My buddy, being the ever-good humoured he is, told me upon parting that he was glad I wasn't going to the conference. He said if I made that proposal, he wouldn't have a ! conference to go to next year!
*The author is former Managing Editor of The Monitor. He's now Managing Editor for Media Convergence and Syndication at The Nation Media Group. His email is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
January 21, 2003 23:39:21
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