By Anne mugisha
Nov 18, 2003
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I have no doubt that President Yoweri Museveni still holds onto the dream that he can modernise Uganda. But his policies are clearly not in line with his vision. I listened to him at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.; and his `news maker� speech centred on correcting the ills of the leaders of the 1960�s. He was clearly focusing on the economy and investment as he talked about the three great mistakes of past leaders: nationalisation of industry, lack of an export strategy and over reliance on the export of raw materials without value added. After a lengthy explanation of how producers of raw materials get a raw deal on exports, Museveni embarked on explaining his solutions for the three great mistakes and loopholes started to appear in his thought process. While he has no problem with identifying and illustrating the problem the solutions he gave were very deficient. Museveni seems to believe that mistakes can be solved by simply embracing whatever policy appears to be an exact opposite of the �mistakes�. However, this simplistic approach is adopted without an enabling policy environment and very soon his solutions, which comprise his modernisation vision, are failed by poor implementation strategies. So, for the first mistake that was nationalisation, he embraced the World Bank-funded solution of privatisation of public enterprises and the accompanying creation of an African middle class. But the implementation of the privatisation programme became such a debacle that many of its corruption scandals will remain a major footnote in any future writings on Museveni�s regime. Not surprisingly, the culprits of these scandals remain free to rule and expand their empires because of a �toothless� Ombudsman whose �gums� are also currently under attack and a police investigative capacity that is lacking and never prosecutes corrupt offenders close to the ruling elite. The resultant middle class of this scandal-ridden process is made up mostly by people close to the President. Clearly, the privatisation process has not resulted in an equitable distribution of wealth from the sale of national assets. And do not buy into the line that these industries were just shells without profits before they were privatised because it is not only those close to Museveni who know how to turn industries around. For an export strategy Museveni declared that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) was the greatest offer that the United States has made to Africa in 500 years! He added that this was a profound statement. But what has Agoa offered to Ugandans? One more �privatised� property has been put at the disposal of a foreign investor who is heavily subsidised by government.We are not collecting revenues but rather we are dishing out funds and contracts (army uniforms, export contracts) to a foreign investor at the expense of the Ugandan tax payer. I will not even go into the labour feud surrounding our star Apparels Tri-Star factory in Bugolobi. Over reliance on the export of raw materials is something I have heard since my school days but I still remember reading the banner advertisement: �Grow More Coffee� in very recent years. So when Museveni compares Uganda to Singapore because they had a comparable rate of growth in the �60s it is wrong. Singapore chose better strategies and grew by leaps and bounds while Uganda�s economy stalled; you wonder what it is that our transformational leader cannot see that Lee Kwan Yew saw. Uganda is lucky because it does not have to re-invent the wheel. The Singapore miracle was not about growing more agricultural raw materials nor was it focused on some foreign trade agreement like Agoa. It was based on investing in the human resources of the country. And that does not mean Universal Primary Education where kids get to P.4 before they can spell their names. Specialisation in areas of competitive advantage is not some magic strategy that only visionaries like Lee Kwan Yew could see. The magic of Lee Kwan Yew is that he was a leader who was deeply committed to transforming a vision into reality with feasible home-grown strategies. But the biggest weakness with Museveni�s approach is that it does not take into consideration that all good economic and investment strategies cannot be built on shaky political and security infrastructure. It was, therefore, surprising that he made a presentation for promoting investment and trade without touching on the foundation issues of peace, security, stability and freedom for the whole of Uganda. There has been insecurity and instability for 17 years in northern Uganda and for a long time in areas of western and eastern Uganda. Uganda has even been known to export insecurity to neighbouring countries. That insecurity is intensifying rather than improving. There can be no progress for a part of Uganda that is not cancelled out by the fact that over one million Ugandans have lived in Internally Displaced People�s camps, some of them permanently for a period of 17 years. All these are factors that will naturally affect any export strategy since they affect the production base. Museveni has to address those areas of policy which have made his vision of modernisation impossible to implement. And as the National Resistance Movement pointed out in its original ten point programme, the problem of Africa is not really the economy but bad political leaders who refuse to leave power. Ms Mugisha is a senior member of the Reform Agenda pressure group. |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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