I need to take a break from The Reality of AIDS for a moment
to get something off my chest. Why is it, with Uganda's tremendous oversupply of highly educated people, all those engineers, consultants, architects and
scientists – and access to the world’s expertise just for the asking - why can’t
they build a road?
Take a look at the photo included here. This is a brand new
road in Mbarara that collapsed earlier this month. There is a “bypass” in Kampala that was supposed to be completed for the Commonwealth Heads
of Government
(CHOGM) meeting in Uganda
a year ago and is not finished yet. A
60-mile road from Kabale to Kisoro, under construction for over a year, a very
very expensive and very needed project, has been graded and smoothed but is not
yet paved – and is washing away while it waits for macadam. The main roads in Kampala are paved while all others –
thousands of miles of them connecting neighborhoods and back streets are dirt,
eroded with ruts up to three feet deep. Dodging potholes,
people die on the Kampala-Mbarara Road
every week. Here is a typical
wreck.
Yet, the President vows major new road projects in the next
two years. “It will
help our economy,” he says. He’s said it
before and he is right. But it’s all for
naught if the roads don’t last more than a month.
“We are not organized” could be the nation’s motto. The chaos of society here is part of its
charm for visitors, but it wears thin for people who live here. Nothing is maintained – half the solar/wind
gizmos attached to light poles to impress CHOGM attendees are broken. The Nile River
dam in Jinja that supplies most of the nation’s electricity is not “wukking”
due to lack of maintenance so another
dam is being built. To a nation
desperately trying to build its economy, this one seems to be trying to fly
with porous wings.
Traveling the only route from Mbarara to Kamwenge and
getting a “road massage” as the car tackled the ruts, I saw a – wonder of
wonders – a yellow Caterpillar grader parked alongside the road. I asked the driver why the machine was
sitting idle when clearly the road needed grading. He said, “Oh, that is just the government
responding to the local council. They
want the road fixed.” He shrugged. “The
government sends a machine and a man. The man grades just enough to show he has done something. Then he siphons the diesel out of the tank,
sells it and spends the rest of his day in the bar. The next day there is no fuel so he cannot
continue. What is he to do?”
Well, I thought, while he’s sitting in the bar, he could
revise the national anthem to something like, “O, Uganda, We Are Not Organized.” There. I feel much better now.
Every time I go to Uganda,
I wonder “Where are the Americans?”
It’s not white faces I seek. There are plenty of white-skinned preachers
and missionaries, government people and aid workers. But where are the business people? This country is bursting with opportunity and
the government is pleading for foreign investment, yet the only established
American enterprises I find are Citibank, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, Google and
Micosoft. The Texas Cowboy Grill is
owned by a guy from Lebanon. And while Americana is everywhere – pirated DVDs and
knockoff jeans, American-inspired
production is not.
In 2005, I asked the United States
Ambassador to Uganda Jimmy Kolker why there doesn’t seem to be an American
business presence here. “It is hard to
do business here,” he said. “Electricity costs are about the highest in the
world and the supply is erratic. Transportation is difficult.” Whine
whine whine. When prospectors headed to Alaska to look for gold,
they weren’t hindered by lack of electricity. When railroads were built across America, they
didn’t worry about transportation.
“Uganda has great resources,” he
said. “… an educated population, low
labor costs, and good telecom infrastructure which makes it a good place for
call centers such as those found in India and Ghana. The agricultural environment makes this an
ideal place for growing and processing food products and ingredients. A Kansas firm recently invested $1 million in a flour mill. Nearly all the vanilla extract we buy in the US comes from Uganda, more than $20 million a
year. They are also exporting tilapia to
the U.S. and garments. It’s start.”
A start.
The Chinese will open an auto assembly plant
in Masaka this January. Indians run vast
sugar and tea plantations. Moammar
Qadafi has opened a combination mosque/university/shopping mall. The Aga Khan is building eco-lodges. Pearl Flowers, another Indian operation will
export 90 million stems - over $10 million worth of cut flowers from 25 hectares of greenhouses in Rubaare to Europe in the next year. American could rebuild
the railroad here and make a fortune in freight. We're on the equator where there
is a vast need and a vast market for solar panels & photovoltaic roofing
sheets. Huge tracts of land are
available to grow crops for ethanol. Clothing
manufacturing? Absolutely – thousands of
skilled people ready to go to work. Kampala needs coffee shops, good fast food, a
decent bakery, better distribution systems, better food processing- stuff we’re
really good at. If America doesn’t stake its claim in
this mother lode of a place, we will be sorry for it. Come on, Cowboy, giddyup.
Finally, at last, a world-class Western business publication
has noticed that Africa is a vast place of
opportunity. In its October 11, 2008 issue,
an extensive article in The Economist entitled Opportunity Knocks
highlights places on the
continent where commercial enterprise is thriving. Though it is very
authoritative in a
looking-down-your-nose sort of way, I have two gripes with this
report. First, it talks about Africa as one place; it is actually 48
places. And second, they completely overlooked Uganda as a
land of raw, unbridled opportunity and the remarkable economy that has
emerged there.
This must drive Emmanuel Tumusiimwe
Mutebile nuts. Mutebile is Governor of
the Bank of Uganda. The Governor is
described as “a hulking, hard-drinking hammer of a person, the chief architect
of Uganda’s success story
and the greatest contributor to Africa’s
struggle against poverty in his generation” – all in the same sentence by
author Sebastian Mallaby in his book The
World’s Banker (Penguin Press). Oxford educated and with more than 30 years
at the helm of a ship in ever-turbulent seas, Mutebile is also a gracious host and candid about his country’s
accomplishments.
I spoke with the Governor at his
home on Kololo Hill and asked about the Uganda economy. “It has taken us more than two decades,” he said. “But Uganda
has reached a point with its
financial and communications infrastructure to begin billing itself as
the
exception to the African stereotype. We
were the first to conquer the AIDS epidemic. Our gross domestic product
grows at more than 5% a year, 9% in 2007. Inflation is kept in check at
5% or
less. The shilling gets stronger against
the dollar and the Euro every year. And
our people are saving money in banks more than ever before in our
history and are rewarded with a 14% interest on
their accounts. We have 12 active Rotary
International Clubs in Kampala
alone. Our East African trade alliance which
includes Sudan,Kenya, Tanzania
and Rwanda
is already showing results. Then he added,
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
The Economist talks about Ghana and Mali and Mozambique as good-news
countries, but omits Uganda which outshines them all. In my next
post, I’ll outline why I think Uganda is a land where vast fortunes can be made by anyone with guts enough to invest
there.