Dear Milton Anguyo, I really like your technical analysis of the Arua airport physical structure. Big projects start from a concept paper that is distilled by a steering committee. Your analysis of the airport could simply be taken as a serious concept paper to stimulate further discussion with various stakeholders including our elected representatives from this region.
Experience has taught us that a lot of mega projects take a long time to execute. First, there is the lobbying processes that takes many years until we get a buy in from somebody who finally says, lets get this work done. Second, there is bilateral money hunting from a donor country, which in itself takes another many years. Third, there is feasibility study that consumes another junk of time. Fourth, there is the start of actual project and construction phase that could take many years. Charles Male put it rightly, there has been serious brain drain from the region to the south or other parts of Uganda, DR Congo or South Sudan in search of jobs/basic survival. These migrations are inevitable human pattern of life that exists in almost every society. Human beings have been migrating in search of resources for thousands of years. We can only reverse this process by creating tangible attractive jobs that can retain people to stay in the region. To achieve this goal requires serious private investment either by the people from the West Nile region, foreign investment and revitalization of the economy that collapsed since 1970's. Although many of us have migrated to work in different places far from West Nile region where we were born, perhaps it would be very important for us to figure out some practical ways we can encourage each other and articulate strategies for serious economic development of the region. Assuming we had a consortium where we work and collaborate effectively as a team, we could augment the efforts of local leaders in the region. Bring strategic ideas of development to our elected representatives who can pursue some of these ideas with various ministries. If we have good plans we can bring forward to the government, a lot of things may get done. Mind you, the government has its own priorities. There have been some instances where money for development in this region was returned to the National Treasury because the money for projects was not used. Perhaps if we all teamed up well and identified key projects that needs to be implemented by the local districts, we could avoid money being returned to the Treasury. While we all recognize manpower development short comings in the region, the big question for all of us to think about is how do we come together to support the efforts of the people on the ground who are trying their best? In this forum, we have expertise from various disciplines. if we could form a consortium (resource pool) of consultants,this would be extremely useful to this region we all belong to even we though we do not live it everyday. JJ
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