Travel To Arua and Gulu

I traveled to Arua and Gulu this week and three things captured my imagination that are worthy commenting about.

1) Uganda's Natural Beauty and the fact that we are destroying it. As you drive into Packwach, there are always elephants by the roadside or crossing the road or somewhere in the bush. In this age, seeing live elephants is breath taking. Putting a need for us to preserve them. Unfortunately we are not doing this. As you approach Packwach from Karuma, you have threehabitats on the right hand side. These are going to develop and definitely in the future, with more people and in the next three to four years, the elephants will be gone. Besides these three, building structures even the people themselves are settling or have settled in the national game park. If people settle where there are wild animals, they definitely seize to be wild and the people will kill the wild animals. There is need to do something about this.

2) As we drove to Arua, somebody who has been to Arua many times told us that it was common practice in the recent months for people either constructing the road or those on the road side markets to plants nails in the road side especially where people stop. I was not surprised when two of our vehicles tires went flat with nails in them and in the night. The management of these roadside markets should encourage the vendors to desist from such practices. I don’t think I will stop again in such places. Two tires flat in the night is not a very good thing.

3) The poverty in Uganda, it is amazing that in this century we have such massive poverty and I do not see hope of getting rid of this poverty. As we reflect on the causes and solutions, you do not see a quick answer in the horizon. All the successful businesses in Uganda and in many African countries, are foreign owned. The few indigenous businesses are about selling those foreign owned products. I noted a number of DHL lorries on the road and I was told it is DHL transporting beer in Uganda. Amazing, isn’t it? If DHL is to do transport business in Uganda, what will the Ugandans do? But you will also answer the question, why do they choose DHL?

I hope that our political think tanks can put their thoughts on these touchy issues.

Is the Chinese economy in decline?

On Sunday I posted an article that talked about the plunge in world stock markets led by the Chinese markets.On Monday the markets again plunged worldwide. Mondays are not very good days for stock markets especially when they close on Friday after turmoil. If markets close down on Friday, the tendency is for them to go down further on Monday mornings. The weekend gives traders time to think through how best to safeguard their investments . The tendency is us lay for everybody to sell. Selling in a panicky market leads to lower prices as traders and investors try to stop loss. markets worldwide lost their value as a result of this condition. On Tuesday, investors had more confidence in the markets and most markets worldwide rallied except the Chinese markets which again closed down about 7 per cent lower. In a few days Chinese markets lost about 15 percent or more of their value and since June this may be almost 40 percent. The causes as explained in my earlier post are several . It's common in stock markets to see ups and downs like any capitalist system is. Now and again you have a longer than normal decline called a depression or a bearish movement. on the other hand you may have a strong bull movement, an upward movement of prices that may lead to overheating of an economy and possibly inflation. This is where governments especially the central bank must come in to support the markets through interest rates or other methods. The Chinese economy as earlier indicated has been under direct control of government and China has a large number of parastatals. The plunge in markets is a reflection of slow down of the Chinese economy and a challenge to the government control of markets. But it seems the worst is over for world markets except the US and China. The US DOW closed down almost four percent on Tuesday.! This is despite the health of the American economy that has been churning out jobs in recent months. It's possible that the US markets are also undergoing a correction before they settle down to reflect on actually conditions in the market. It may also also be a reaction to the strong dollar that has seen American exports decline. The US markets normally provide leadership in global trends. However the Chinese markets to settle down must accept market forces to determine their value not the government

Soroti Flying School

Recently, the Minister of Works Mr. John Byabagambe who was visiting Soroti flying school ordered that the Soroti Flying School be rehabilitated and requested that his permanent Secretary finds shs.5b to give to the school. Presently the School gets shs.400m every quarter and according to the flight instructor, they had not been paid for the last three months. Hon Minister, you may not be aware but I was the last chairman of Uganda Airlines and i took the decision to close that airline but it was making a loss of almost USD1million a year. At the end of every month, we had to run to the Minister of Finance to pay IATA and other creditors. Realizing that it was not sustainable, I recommended that we close the airline. If you check the records, there was even a decision to sell it to South African Airways for a dollar. I imagine you know what that means. They wanted the routes because that is an important asset in the airline business. I was also privileged to work with the flying school. I participated in drawing up a strategic plan for the school. At that time, the flying school had been selected as a Ugandan institution to be designated as a Centre of excellence by the East African Communities. The EAC required Uganda to put in some money into the school so that it could be taken up. This money unfortunately, was never availed by government.
In its hay days, the flying school trained pilots for the region mainly the East African airways and other airlines in the region. Today, the school is white elephant. Unfortunately Uganda’s aviation industry is not something to write on about. Kenya has a booming industry. Ethiopia probably is best placed in the region because it has the biggest airline in Africa. South Africa is an aggressive new comer in the aviation industry. Given all this with poor funding, the flying school is dead meat. I was recently in Nairobi and I read about East African flying school. I am aware, I hope it is not the same that the Wilson airport in Nairobi has a flying school. Given Uganda’s decimal position in the regions aviation industry, the flying school is not viable. It would be good if the flying school is turned into something else. I do not think its graduates do still have opportunities if an instructor has not been paid for three months. When you see hings happen, usually somebody has taken a bold decision. I hope you will take that decision.

PS. I have used this media because there is no other way to be heard. I have written about Uganda airlines, nobody talks about

Solar Powered Plane

Technology gave us another feat with the landing of the solar plane in Hawaii. The single sitter aircraft named Solar Impulse is make a breakthrough in solar technology in flying. In a project by two Swiss scientist who are campaigning for clean technologies, Mr. André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, created an aircraft that would fly over the world in a six month period. The aircraft took off from Abu Dhabi, flying eastwards. It’s expected to take six months before it reaches its original place of departure. The aircraft has a wing span of 72 meters, wider than the 747 jumbo jet and weighs 2.3 tons. It has 17,000 solar cells on its wings which power the plane. The originators of the project said; 16 years ago, they had a dream to fly around the world without fuel and they are now in the process of attempting to do so. They predict that by the year 2050, solar energy may be the biggest source of electricity globally. Solar energy is now a big source of jobs in developing countries. The plane they are using is the second version of their first version they made had some deficiencies in performance.

There has been a debate in the newspapers on whether to put emphasis on sciences or arts as part of Uganda’s education system. The debate has not been conclusive though president Museveni has adamantly pushed sciences to the forefront because he knows the role science has played worldwide in social economic transformation. Poverty in Africa is a result of our inability to use science to exploit our environment to improve ourselves. We have trees everywhere in this country but all we do is cut them down for firewood. We have failed to use them to improve our housing. We have numerous resources but still they go to waste because we cannot exploit them meaningfully. Here are people taking advantage of the sun to power an airplane yet in Europe they are at time when sun shines for only 6m. If we do not think through our needs and put some emphasis on science, we will continue to live in the squalid conditions that we are in. It is not surprising that some of the good brains leave the country, find work elsewhere where they can find the science related jobs.

Addressing the Joseph Mubiru memorial lecture, in Kampala last year 2014, Dr. Mamthphula Ramphele stated; they were 450,000 African graduates in OECD countries. The reason they live is because they don’t have the opportunities to work in their fields in African countries. They believe because they are unable to either work or explore the opportunities available. Most of Africa has 12 hours of sun and abundant free resources and we are short of electricity. If solar was developed, probably the brain power would be different. We should style up.

Thank You Red Pepper!

Last week the Red Pepper gave me free space and promoted me, don’t worry whether it was negative or positive, I got press space. They talked about Germany juice something I didn’t know. I said they always had a sexual angle to what they write, don’t blame them, that defines them, as I said that is their unique business model. They deliver news in a different way from mainstream newspapers. They again gave me space this week. This time their topic was “GONE”, I love the drama that such headlines cause, once in a while it is damaging or annoying but when you know what is being written as facts, you bear with it. This time though there were no sexual innuendos but they did not lose the journalistic perspective of a story, some degree of controversy. They had the good things and the bad things. Am pleased they recognized my contribution to the transformation of higher education, I know my “haters” will not like to hear that. They closed it with the issue of my qualifications. True I changed my names between my O levels and A levels and my detractors have used that to try and pull me down. If there was an iota of truth in those allegations, I will not have survived the venom that has been spat at me over the years. In 1996, the top dogs in Makerere found a reason to throw me out and among the things they identified was this, they found the truth and that was laid to rest. Those who use this to date do it to embarrass me well knowing it is not true. I really don’t care what negative they say for as long as it is not true. I was an identifiable student in my school days for good and bad reasons some of which i will be embarrassed to talk about now especially given my religious affiliation. Those who knew me as a stubborn young man knew my abilities and background.

I have been a friend with the Red Pepper for a long time, I respect them for the ability to run a unique business but now and again, they hit you below the belt, bibaawo, as it is said. On the substance of what they wrote about me, it is true I made a statement that come the 21st MUBS Annual International Management Conference in 2016, I would not attend it as Principal of MUBS. This controversial office is constrained by the law, MUBS with 17,000 students is treated as a public tertiary institute and cannot grow anymore. The dynamics of the institution now require others to take that position of Principal. I love to teach and I hope that the environment will enable me pursue my passion of teaching and research after relinquishing this office.

Red Pepper, thank you for giving me that space.

Uganda's Highways turn into the 50km per hour speed limit roads

One of the nightmares that Ugandans face today is the delay on the roads. We have beautiful new roads in many parts of the country which are ordinarily called highways. On our highways you can do 100km per hour. This means the Jinja Kampala road which is 80kms will take you less than a hour if was an highway as properly defined. But to the disappointment of everybody on the roads, we now have to plan for more time to move from one place to another. Reason is congestion on the roads, poor planning of the roads, poor location. Literally on all roads in the country, there are trading centres everywhere and in these centres the speed limit is 50km/hr. If you are lucky, there will be a zebra crossing without a hump.if you are not lucky, there will be several humps. This has made planning of travel very difficult. You need to plan for two hours to drive from Kampala to Entebbe which is a 40km journey. Our poor planning contributes greatly to this inefficiency which is finally cost in our production system. The Northern Bypass which was supposed to ease traffic, it has now become an ordinary street. The Lugogo bypass was intended to serve the same purpose, it is now full of big buildings. The Masaka town by pass is also developing business along the side. The Lyantonde Bypass is no longer a bypass. Now that Mrs. Kagina is in UNRA, maybe we will plan these roads properly. One thing that bothers me is why does everybody who builds a house make it face the road? It also posses a question, why are houses two or three bedrooms with a corridor and the garage even if the person building may never own a car.