Women Leaders Training

This morning the MUBS Leadership Centre started a women's leaders training programme that has attracted participants from different organizations. One of the things that MUBS has done is to promote empowering of women. Knowing that being the majority of people, if they are not empowered there is a slow and uneven development especially of the poor people in the world. We have been socialized to believe certain things about ourselves both as men and women. For this reason men tend to disadvantage women which lead to lesser development. Social exclusion of women starts right from our parent's home as they give different roles to different children; it goes to schools, workplaces and world at large. All this is disadvantaging and subordinating women to men. There is need for empowerment of women but we need to be careful on what we mean by empowerment. For instance, there are cultural aspects of respects of parents and all people which are part of African culture. It would be unfortunate if in the name of social inclusion we tampered with such cultures. We should remember 20% of our population in Uganda is in the rural areas with the traditional values that have subordinated women to men. How you transform these, is important. Women empowerment is done through legislation, affirmative action, feminism and sensitization but most important is building family values that encourage women inclusion in all spheres of life subject to biological differences that they face.

Research on Markets in Kampala, Uganda

Recently an article appeared in the New Vision as one of the series on Uganda at 50 years of Independence. In that article, they explained the evolution of trade in Uganda and how Africans were kept away from trade and left to be peasant farmers because they were poor and could not build shops a phenomenon that continues to date. Africans were put into markets to sell agricultural products, local crafts and metal products produced by local smiths. Up to the early 1980's, markets were in certain fixed places and it was not easy to start a market without the authority of local markets. Due to the increasing population, markets have sprung up everywhere in the country. Markets today are places today where the poor Africans go to start their businesses; it is still a perpetuation of what existed then unfortunately. At the MUBS Entrepreneurship Centre a research is being done on markets in Uganda trying to establish why they develop, who sells in them, what they sell and why they are spread everywhere. Owino is the largest market in the country with over 30,000 vendors, the majority of which are women. What is Uganda's business model? Why can't majority of Ugandans establish fixed shops? These are interesting questions for researchers like us.

A case of Failure of family Values and Family Leadership

In Summary

Case. Prossy wants court to compel her fiancé John to pay her Shs20 million for his alleged failure to marry her.

When Prossy introduced John to her parents in Vanvin Village in 2010 as her fiancé, she was sure a wedding would follow shortly to cement their relationship.

However, two years later and without a wedding ring, Prossy has decided to seek legal recourse, dragging her fiancé to court for allegedly failing to wed her.

In what many in Peru have described as a “strange” case, Prossy, a resident of Costa in the municipality, says John, who is the National Agricultural Advisory Services, (Naads) coordinator for Ganka Sub-county in Chez District, should pay for failing to marry her.

In the suit, Prossy says she went an extra mile to facilitate their introduction ceremony and make it “colourful” with a Shs2 million cash injection—and it is just proper that her fiancé—who “had a small income” then, reciprocates a good turn.

In her submission to the Brazy Chief Magistrate, Prossy laments that Saturday December 17, 2011, should have been her lucky day—when she should have walked down the aisle with her heartthrob.

Instead, Prossy says, she nearly dropped dead when Pastor Fred of Brazy Deliverance Church, who was to preside over the function, told her John had halted the wedding “until further notice”.

Prossy told court her misery is further compounded by the fact that her house in Dirdi in Brazy town is where the couple had co-habited in “tough” times and that she had contributed Shs2 million to help her fiancé get a job.

Prossy’s lawyer told court: “Since then my client has suffered mental anguish and torture, lost chances to marry and suffered injured feelings and shame in community.”

The lawyer says court should compel John to pay Prossy Shs20 million in costs and general damages, noting that the former’s conduct was “unlawful” and tantamounts to “breach of promise”.

John in his defence, however, states that he is still in love with Prossy and is surprised by the suit.
Chief magistrate Cathy Slyvia has given the pair up to November 19 to organise a wedding or have the case resume.

Can Uganda translate its Military Prowess to the Economic Arena?

No doubt Uganda has a a major military war in the neighboring countries and presently has a major war in Somalia as it did in Sudan. Economic and political pundits believe that while Uganda has contributed to fixing the political and military challenges in its neighboring countries, it has lost out to Kenya in its economic front. In Rwanda, its Kenya's companies that sell most. A very visible case is that of Airline case. Kenya Airways is making a kill in that. In Sudan, the Kenya companies including banks have established shop. You may recall Garang died in Ugandan helicopter, we will come back to this letter. In Somalia, despite Kenya sharing a border with Somalia, the Ugandans took the initiative to contribute to peace keeping in Mogadishu. As the Somalia rebels are weakened, the Kenya military enters the fry. When the war settles down, it will be the Kenyan businesses that will take the day. Uganda recently lost three helicopters and 7 soldiers in Kenya on their way to Somalia. This brings me to the reason for this posting. In an article that appeared in Red Pepper of August 22, 2012 entitled "CHOPPER CRUSH; Kenyans mock Ugandans" which was adopted from Kenya's daily nation. The authors are not very kind to Ugandans. First of all the author says losing three (3) helicopters is neither a misfortune nor carelessness, he called it incompetence. 2) He talks about the mode of communication the pilots are using, if this is true, of course that was wrong. But most important, he says "Uganda is supposed to lead the area of bombardment of Kismayo while Kenya handles the naval assault. Kenyan ground forces are depending on Ugandan control of air. I have serious misgivings about Uganda's ability to do this....but i do not doubt their resolve" Of course Kenya with its economic stability and history probably has a better air-force the author may have written it in that context. But having bashed Uganda so much, in such circumstances, i thought he would have had some kind words Uganda especially where it involves death of people. The lessons are we have the military edge in terms of resolve to achieve as pointed out by this author. Our neighbors laugh their way to the banks after we have opened up the political space in our neighboring countries. Can this resolve be turned into an economic one?

Getting Busoga out of Poverty

The Busoga sub region is said to be one of the poorest in the country. Possibly this is true, we need to look at the census to be able to make judgment about it. Unfortunately, the 10 yearly that was due in 2011 has not been done. About 30% of Uganda's 34 million, approximately 10 million live below the poverty line. This is serious statistic that needs to be addressed. It is possible that there are other parts that are as poor as Busoga region. I can't say but we need to lift the veil on poverty especially its causes and how to address it to be able to speak with authority even prescribe some solutions. We should not only lament and condemn others. My presentation is a simple thesis of the issues the way i see them given the knowledge that i have. In recent weeks, Busoga's leaders have met with the President several times and all the time people want more government jobs others want more government money for SACCOs. Others simply want the President to give them cash. It is in order for different people to ask for more government jobs. This called sharing the national cake. Such jobs may bring additional jobs to the region since your own people are on the decision making process. Some bit of national asset, it is true that if you are a minister you are able to influence establishment of schools, boreholes, health centres and other things for your region. However, that is not a solution to alleviating poverty. Today in parts of the country, people have got schools, sewing machines, cows, bicycles, gifts from politicians but the people are still poor. Poverty is not simply addressed by people receiving things, poverty is addressed by the productive capacity of an individual and the value of what that individual produces. I will in my next posting introduce the Misery Index. Without incomes and with inability to acquire what you want from the income that you have, you are in misery. My Busoga colleagues, we need to address development differently. We need to address development at two levels namely empowering people to produce and empowering them to produce the right products that create value and exchange things with others produced with a similar measure of effort. In supporting productive capacity in Busoga and indeed in any other part of Uganda we must realize that not everybody will be able to plan the process of production competently and efficiently. These are called entrepreneurs. In Uganda given the GEM studies this is only three out of ten the others can only be employed. These three have to identified and empowered those will create the multiplier effect needed in the economy to produce the jobs and goods that we want. The second aspect involves what to produce. In the Busoga environment and indeed Uganda we need to assure ourselves of full security. We therefore need to produce sufficient food for ourselves but we have also seen Uganda's capacity to produce food for our neighbors, Kenya, Sudan, Congo it is possible to add Ethopia, Eriteria however the problem with this is that food is a low value product interestingly imported food is expensive. While this will put money on the table of peasant farmers, that money by international standards is worthless. A Toyota Land Cruiser costs about 100,000 dollars, how much human effort is required to produce that? Given a number of days it possibly requires 10 people for 10 days to produce something like that. What can 10 people for 10 days produce in value in our typical agricultural products? This is what is meant by poverty. We are poor because we do not produce goods or a value capable of being exchanged for other products that we need. Imagine all the road construction equipment that government recently imported. How much people and for how long are required to produce maize to be able to pay for that maize. Since we can't raise the money, our big brothers in the western countries give us loans to be repaid over years, meaning take longer to produce more maize with more men to be able to pay us. The tendency is for these poor countries to default. So my fellow Abasoga lets first conceptualize poverty in our minds, let us think about modernization that includes urbanization for better planning, let us empower our people to produce but more important to produce the right products. These right products are going to come out of exploitation science.

Customer Service.

I traveled to Jinja on Thursday night. I was with a group of people, travelling about 9pm. You do not expect much traffic however there was still traffic in the Bweyogerere and Mukono areas. These days it is a night mare to drive on many of Uganda's roads. If you are up in the air, you may mistake cars in the traffic jam for cars that have packed somewhere. I hope our engineers can get us out of this mess and if they don't do so soon it will only grow us. I don't know what is worse than a night mare but an interesting thing was when we decided to have dinner at some restaurant in Jinja that opens late. We have eaten there before and the food isn't that great but for a traveler in our conditions, it serves the purpose. This time we got a shock of our lives. After taking our order, the waiter comes and says "omugagga agambye temujja kulila wanno, tetujja kubawa mmere okujako nga you take away" we were shocked of course and since I like obeying silly rules I stood up to go. One tough person in our group confronted the "omugagga" and we were finally allowed to eat. I forgot to say that the waiter said we were going to indulge in drinking beer and not wanting to go away. Imagine someone making these allegations? And I think in the group, I had possibly none of them enjoy beer very much. The service was so miserable, the food was terrible. I remembered my customer service rules, one which said "when you are mistreated, do not shout or kick, just do not go back" I hope the owners of this restaurant where i have eaten before several times can improve their customer service.

KIPROTICH: The rising star

Like any other Ugandan I am proud of Kiprotich for bringing us the Gold but for me that’s where the Gold story ends. There are several issues in Kiprotich’s story. 1) He comes from a very humble background one without privileges a

nd the lesson is, whatever background, there is a combination of a winning formula. 2) In this competitive world, still the people with the power, the money, the knowledge, the resources, do have a winning formula. The world’s most powerful nation the USA has the largest number of medals. This tells you about their preparedness. 3) Preparation for anything that you do. In the USA, today those that want to pick up the Gold in the next Olympics have started preparing themselves. I will not be surprised if Uganda’s medal seekers prepare 3 months to the events time. Why is it so? I think it’s our attention to detail as a nation, our desire to win and this reflects through all our other activities including ownership and management of risks. Those that prepare win. 4)What do we want as Ugandans? Is it true that there were more of officials than the sports people themselves? Is it true that the sports people earned less allowance than the officials? it’s a shame if they did but not surprising. Some time back I did earn more than the vice chancellor of Makerere and he went out to complain. He had no reason to complain because I created the money. For Uganda to look for the respect and the sporting power we must start now, identify the talent, prepare well and we will seek Gold.
I must congratulate Team Uganda especially my friend Dorcus, Its unfortunate that during the competition the winner takes it all. But for the competition to take place there must be other people who constitute it. It’s like an election in politics. We congratulate Team Uganda for representing us and having the courage to reach that level. I am very proud of you all.

COFFEE AND POVERTY IN UGANDA

Growing up in my village in Iganga, we may have had about 6 acres of coffee and during the seasons possibly over 10 acres of cotton. What I remember in the villages then especially during the cotton which used to be in December holidays was that there was activity in every home. People picked coffee, hand processed it and took to the ginnery. During those times, many families that didn’t have people into paid jobs and they celebrated the receipt of incomes by purchasing radios, bicycles, iron sheets and all. The coffee and cotton plantations were well tendered. As I speak now, the coffee in our home is largely gone. We have built up some of the areas, some of the coffee is in the bush and I am told that one of the maids in the home plucks the coffee and sells it for her benefit. Last weekend I was in Butambala district and I paid special attention to the state of coffee which was the gold to the African family. What I saw what is not very different in my own home compound and in the shambas of many other Ugandans. Coffee is in the bush unattended to. The Daily monitor of June 20th on the Business page reported that for the month of May there was a 13.5% drop in volume and 17.5 drop in value of coffee exported compared to the same time in the previous year. One MP from Busoga had told me that coffee production had declined 70% in the Busoga region. Remember the population has since doubled. It doesn’t take rocket science to explain a fact that people are poorer than they were before. The dominator, the population has more than doubled and the numerator, the coffee production has declined. I can’t say by how much in aggregate figures. In addressing poverty we must address production as a first item, we must have something to produce and then we must address poverty which is the competitiveness of what we produce. If production has gone down, what do we need to do to improve it? This will give incomes to the ordinarily people on a hard tested product that has demand. The Monitor report said Uganda will miss out on the proceeds from the coffee boom. I do not support government interference in markets other than regulation however I would now support a subsidy to the coffee industry. Crazy isn’t it? But it’s crazy enough to put incomes on the tables of the ordinarily people. We should boost production of poor people and productivity through education, implements and these SACCOs that people are slowly getting into. See a story in the New Vision of August 7, 2012 by one Bonny Kayondo on how to empower subsistence farmers.