Stressed-out Uganda

The young immigration officer at Entebbe Airport, Uganda, flipped through my passport and looked up, ‘Is this your first visit to Uganda?’ When I said yes, he smiled, ‘What took you so long?!” Immigration officers at airports are usually a harried lot. They face long lines of grumpy travellers. But no officer I ever faced made me more welcome to his country as this one did.

And yet, within a half hour, I saw the other face of administration. On the way to Kampala, I took a picture of a temple at the distance. Soon, a policeman was at my window asking me, sternly, why I was taking his picture. As I explained, he warned me against taking such random photographs. My taxi driver mumbled that this was a routine harassment.

Such contradictions define most developing countries. They sit on valuable natural resources, but suffer extreme poverty. Large wealth is generated within the country, but stashed overseas. They produce intellectuals who prefer to make major contributions in far off lands.

Uganda appears better off on paper. The economy was humming along quite nicely at 7 per cent and has taken a dip to half that in more recent times. Its highly regarded central bank governor, E Tumusiime-Mutebile is quoted as warning profligate ministers. Foreign donors and aid agencies seem pleased at Uganda’s economic progress, yet taxi drivers and professionals strain under high levels of corruption and a politically repressed society.

Even as Uganda hopes to raise all boats with the growth tide, income distribution remains a concern. The Gini coefficient is reported at 44 (India is at 33), and the country has a sliver of a middle class. Author Vali Jamal notes that prior to 1972, when Idi Amin threw out Asians and confiscated their assets, Asians were 1 per cent of the population, but accounted for 20 per cent of the income. Current President Yoweri Museveni, who came to power in 1986, worked to get the Asians back, and returned confiscated properties through the Expropriated Properties Act.

Building anew While not many of those who left returned, new Indians have arrived and are doing well although they do not dominate the economy as before. Now, Jamal frets about 1 per cent of Africans account for a majority of the GDP. Dominance of the economy by an elite continues, although the colour and language spoken by them has changed.

Makerere University in Kampala, 92-years-old, has a grand reputation of fostering leaders and intellectuals of East Africa and produced many who challenged colonisation, such Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The university has now set up a forum to foster partnerships between the various faculties and private sector institutions to encourage more private involvement in university efforts.

One of the business groups involved in such efforts is the Madhvani Group, of Indian-origin and founded in 1914, who were thrown out and returned. Samuel Njuba, a former minister, in his book The Betrayal commented that political leaders since independence ‘raise the people’s hopes and at the end, shutter (sic) the same hopes…’

The country faces several challenges. Olara Otunnu, President of the opposition UPC party, worries about the deteriorating availability of quality services for the common man. The elite can afford private facilities, he says, but what about those who cannot?

The writer is the dean of the Jindal Global Business School

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