Do Boards play a role in Family Business

The Future of Business is in IT related Areas

This article appeared in the British Airways High Life Magazine of April 2014. The future of business is in IT related areas. I always joke with my students when we ask them to dream about business and guess what kinds of business they come up with Funeral service, Nursery School, a Take away, primary school among others. I have been encouraging them to look at businesses with IT orientation. Looking at this article, there are two major issues;

    a) A group of young people are getting it right. They have gone into IT business. That is where the money is as we move into the information technology economy

    b) Kenya the biggest economy in the region has done it again, besides their industrial base, they are developing an IT base. this is is to whoever is concerned ICT ministry, government planners, universities, this is where the future is. 

Welcome to Silicon Savannah

Whatever you thought about Nairobi. Think again. Kenya’s capital is fast becoming the San Francisco of Africa. Intel, Samsung and HP have set up shop. IBM is opening an innovation centre and now Google’s Eric Schmidt has tipped it for success. Ben Rawlence meets the entrepreneurs turning the country’s lack of infrastructure to everyone’s advantage.

From the outside, the centre of Africa’s digital revolution looks much like the other second-rate shopping malls in the leafy Kilimani suburb of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Traffic goes by on the Ngong road from Karen the town named after the author of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen. But inside, the energy is palpable. On the top floor of this glass-and-steel building is a coffee shop with windows on all sides and rows of young people bent over computers, plugged into headphones, their earnest faces lit by the glow of screens. No one is talking and the hush is all the more intimidating for the patter of fingers on laptops.

 This is iHub, a co-working space where tech entrepreneurs are gathering to rent desks by the square inch to be part of a growing movement that is not only inventing new ways of using the internet in Africa but is creating whole new sectors of the economy. The huge opportunities are attracting talent from all over the world and have even led to a new nickname: ‘Silicon Savannah’.

In the café, I meet Ben Lyon, a 26-year old American with a thin beard and intense eyes behind wire spectacles. A generation ago, someone like Lyon might have come to Africa as a volunteer, but after graduating in economics from the University of Memphis, he came to Nairobi to start his own business. He pays for our coffee using technology he has developed called Kopo Kopo that turns his phone into a debit card. He sends all coffee shops till a text message and out pops the receipt.

Kopo Kopo uses the M-Pesa money platform. “Pesa” means money in Swahili and the ‘M’ stands for mobile. It is a Kenyan innovation that evolved from pay-as-you go mobile phones, in effect turning a phone number into a bank account number. Over 40 percent of Kenyan GDP is now transacted on M-Pesa and 80 percent of the population use it. Kopo Kopo aims to turn phones, Lyon says, ‘into the debit card of the poor’. With debit cards out of reach for most people and mobile phone usage in Sub-Saharan Africa expanding at lightening speed, Lyon’s biggest problem is the pace of the company’s growth. He rushes off to attend a Kopo Kopo staff meeting that is spilling out into the corridor.

From the iHub on the top floor, start-ups have cascaded down through the building and out into the Kilimani neighbourhood. There are, of course, computer game developers, online shops and sports website enterprises, but it is the range of start-ups improving real lives that have captured global attention. Apps such as MFarm which supplies market details on harvests by text message, MedAfrica, an app providing health information and database of doctors, and M-Kopa Solar, which sells pay as-you-go solar-power units connected to phones for areas beyond the national grid.

SILICON SAVANNAH NAIROBI	SILICON SAVANNAH CALIFORNIA
Born
Circa 2008	Circa 1953
Workers
10,000	235,000
Companies in Fortune 1000
0	30
Universities
18	33
Venture Capital Raised
$10million (Approx)	$11.2billion
Government Funding
$14 billion	Unknown (but considerable)
Average Rainfall
925mm	389mm
Sunny Days
211	261
Lingua Franca
Swahili, English	English

The common principle at play is what Lyon calls ‘leapfrogging’. What has up until recently been a source of despair the gap between Africa and the rest of the world –Nairobi’s techies see as an enormous opportunity. Technology offers the very real possibility at that a country may not need to industrialise in order to develop, that there can be a light weight, mobile, high-speed route to economic prosperity for the continent. Banking services have already gone ‘straight to mobile’, the domestic energy market is going ‘straight to solar’, and computer storage will likely go ‘straight to cloud’.

‘The potential is huge’, says Nikolai Barnwell, a blond, boyish Danish investor who came to Kenya for ‘love and adventure’ but ended up becoming a partner in venture capital firm and incubator 88mph. ‘The macro trends: population, growth, information, the cost of data… are like a tsunami’.

This is why, last year, Google chairman Eric Schmidt visited five cities in sub-Saharan Africa, but tipped Nairobi as the ‘serious tech hub’ which ‘may become African leader’. In the past few years, companies including Google, Intel, Samsung and HP have established their Africa headquarters here. IBM has just unveiled a new innovation centre and an elite research unit, one of 12 around the world. Dr. Kamal Bhattacharya is the director, who moved here from Berlin attracted by the desire of the tech community ‘to attack the big problems with technology… there is urgency, certain dramatics at play’. Infront of a bank of screens monitoring Nairobi’s main intersections, he described to me his first project towards making Nairobi an ‘intelligent city’ using algorithms to improve the city’s notoriously gridlocked traffic.

Part of Nairobi’s success, according to Phares Kariuki, a quiet 28 year-old programmer who dropped out of a degree in chemical engineering to build Africa’s first supercomputer and to set up angani.co, a cloud computing company, was, initially, precisely this lack of regulation. ‘The tech community here has always been largely self-organizing’, he says. The government supplied undersea cables and left the programmers to it. But now the expanding industry has attracted government attention. On every street it seems trenches are being dug to lay fibre-optic cable. Nairobi is growing at breakneck speed.

In a grand office in City Hall, Nairobi’s mayor, Evans Kidero, a tall former newspaper man with movies-star looks, explains government’s bold plans to nationalize the fibre-optic network, provide every primary school pupil with a laptop and build a new £8.4bn technology city called Konza on the outskirts of the capital. ‘There is something in the air in Nairobi,’ he says, although none of the start-ups I spoke to will commit to relocating to Konza yet.

It is familiar story. Ever since Silicon Valley took off in the 1960s, governments the world over have spent billions trying to replicate it. Most have failed but Nairobi might just do it. What made Silicon Valley different from anywhere else was the culture of sharing between universities, established technology companies and start-ups and a healthy dose of idealism. California during 1960s was a place where scientists believed in the power of innovation to change the world for the better. Nairobi in 2014 has a similar feel.

It might have something to do with the fact that the current boom has its roots in the social upheaval and political violence that followed the 2007 election, coinciding with the arrival of mobile broadband in the country. As the city burned, a small group of bloggers urgently discussed what they could do to help. They came up with an online ‘catastrophe map’ on which they plotted reports of violence sent in by text message. They called the crowd-sourced software Ushahidi, the Swahili word for ‘testimony’. It has since been used to map crisis situations from oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico to floods in Australia and war in Congo. Indicative of the spirit of Nairobi’s tech scene is a woman who was present in those early Ushahidi meetings. 30 years old Jessica Colaco. Colaco went on to become the iHub’s first general manager and now runs iHub Research, an offshoot that does consulting on the shape of the African tech ‘ecosystem’ and the impact of technology on democracy. She is motivated, she says, not by making money but by solving problems. Her ambition is to become an angel investor to help young people. She wants them to learn the importance of culture, good ethics, good communication, good people… it is people that make you what you are.’

For Ben Lyon, this is a large part of what makes Nairobi an exciting place to make a career and it is what is drawing more and more young people to this unlikely technology Mecca. ‘It’s not like trying to find a better way to share a video on social media,’ he says. The revolution in Silicon Savannah is about changing the world. It just might.

By Ben Rawlence  

The software

The dotcom boom at the turn of the millennium was largely fuelled by the ability of consumers to pay online. All of a sudden, a parallel shopping experience was born. Online payment platforms such as paypal were key. Kenya leads the world in mobile money payments. M-Pesa, launched in 2008, basically turned mobile phone credit into cash. Now 30 percent of Kenya’s GDP is transacted through M-Pesa and £1.5bn is held in M-Pesa accounts. Kopo Kopo has devised a platform that allows a mobile phone to be used like a debit card to pay for goods and services.

The meeting point

Stanford University was where scientists, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists came together in the 1950s and 60s in Silicon Valley. Stanford graduates William Hewlett and David Packard founded their computer company in Packard relocated to the new Stanford Industrial Park in 1953. iHub is Nairobi’s main co-working space founded by bloggers turned entrepreneurs with funding from the e-Bay founder Pierre Omidyar and backing from Google, Intel and others. It includes M-Lab, where programmers can test their software and regular networking events are hosted.

The hardware

The two devices that have defined the technology revolution are the laptop and the mobile phone. Smartphones have some respects incorporated the two and can do almost everything that a regular computer can. Devices designed for California, however, where connectivity and power are ever constant, do not always translate to Africa. Enter BRCK, a battery and modem in a tough shell that will provide power and connectivity for up to 20 computers for up to ten hours, automatically switching from Wi-Fi to mobile networks to find the cheapest, most reliable connection. Add a processor and it becomes a powerful, all-weather computer remotely operable from anywhere.

The social network

Facebook is perhaps Silicon Valley’s most famous export, used in every country in the world and worth just over £60bn. Nairobi’s best known product is also social network, used in 128 countries, but isn’t worth a penny. Ushahidi.com is an open-source platform which is not run for profit. An early example of ‘crowd sourcing’, it has been used in situations as diverse as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the earthquake in Haiti and the war in Congo. Ushahidi.com

The Guru

 Many of the Godfathers (and mothers) of the Silicon Valley were members of the US counterculture. They were anti-establishment and believed that computer science was about more than making money. Steve Jobs famously said, ‘Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they are basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they will do wonderful things with them.’ Julian Rotich got involved with Ushahidi because she wanted to raise awareness about the election violence of early 2008. She had been living in Chicago but moved back to her hometown of Nairobi to become Ushahidi’s executive director two years later. At 35, she is a mentor to the younger entrepreneurs. A senior TED Fellow and a World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2011), she is a frequent speaker around the world about technology in Africa. Rotich believes strongly in the importance of culture in business and feels that sustaining ‘the culture of sharing’ is the key to Nairobi’s future success.

It is Business Stupid: The Theory of Business.

Society has evolved from the agrarian feudal society to a modern society driven by business through technology, motivation and competition. The business unit has been the driving force of this change and the pursuit of the creation of the customer and the pursuit of profit have been at the forefront of business. In the recent years, the issues of keeping in mind different stakeholders has come to the forefront. Unfortunately, the developing countries have not yet grasped the concept of business.

A few entrepreneurs have emerged and the multi-nationals have come to fill the void. The poor people in these countries have then been blamed for being poor rather than enabling them understand what business is. There is so much effort in developing entrepreneurship and possibly very little effort in helping the people understand what business is.

The need to integrate the poor people into business needs not to be re-emphasized but many cures for startup and successful business have been provided without providing the understanding the very concept of what business is.

To understand the business, we need to understand the theory behind it hence this proposition. The theory of the business is constituted by the mission of the business, the productivity challenge and empowering the people that manage the business. In religious literature, Jesus’ mission on earth has been most enduring and most visible. This Easter weekend, Jesus’ mission on earth is being remembered. No individual, no organization without a mission can claim to exisit because it is the reason why that individual or that organization exists. Those that are unable to articulate their missions drift hopelessly. From the business perceptive must be very clear on why they are starting a business not simply do something because another person is doing it. Business is anchored in a mission.

It is Peter Drucker who talked about the essence of business as creating a customer. The customer will be the person to buy the products that you intend to produce. Before ideas go onto paper, there must be visualization of who the customer will be, who is going to buy, how does he buy, where does he buy from, why does he buy among others. looking at the folks in the current side, without the exposure of the dynamics of production, competition, demanding consumers, there is no way  the person in the current side will figure out customers on a large scale. Without customers, there is no business.

The productivity challenge is the other determinant of the business. Productivity is an expression of the efficiency of the organization. The input output relationship. It is driven by technology and the quality of the workforce. It is only when you are able to produce efficiently that you can sell your products in the market competitively. Every business must therefore be highly competitive.

While the productivity challenge involves the effective utilization of resources, the people who will do this are the fuel for the success of the business. Without motivated people, without knowledgeable people, without skilled people, no business can survive competition.

What Africa needs is educating people about what business and bringing them in on the theory of business.

The Ugandan Rains!

The rains came recently but with ferocity. It has ravaged the country with storms that have left many people wounded. It has destroyed plantations, food and wreaked havoc on schools around the country. We have the threat of deforestation which we never take seriously. It is not only causing droughts that are now prolonged but also wreck the country when the storms and heavy rains come. Each one of you reading this, please go and plant a tree to save your property, country and your life.

Government Cannot do business, not even poorly. IV

There has been a debate in Uganda over the revival of Uganda Airlines as a Government corporation. I am one of those who believe that government cannot do business and I will add not even poorly. However government enterprises were at one time seen as vehicles to deliver development in the poor developing countries. These countries that adopted this policy especially the United Kingdom, saw economic decline. The fortunes of the United Kingdom were revived by Margaret Thatcher (RIP) who advocated for private enterprises and it did the miracles in the UK.

Most of the developing countries disbanded public enterprises especially as the pressure for economic reform in the World Bank mounted. Uganda was no exception; we disbanded most of the parastatals. However Europe continues to have public enterprises that actually operate profitably. The difference is in management and possibly societal values. The public enterprises in the developed countries are essentially intended for public good. In the developing countries, they have tended to be more organs for distribution of public assets to managers and employees rather than an organ for the public benefit.

When we closed Uganda airlines, it was losing money. Government was paying almost a million dollars a month as a subsidy to support the airline. This was not necessary because the service that the airline was rendering could be rendered by somebody else cheaply. Earlier on as a Board, we had requested for funds from government to invest in equipment to enable the airline operate efficiently. This was never granted instead government simply picked up the bills monthly. There was no critical will and no proper mission for the airline. The result is what we saw.

Air Rwanda, a recent institution, has had investments by government in the article appended to this one, it is reported that the Rwandese government was to invest USD200million. For an African airline, this is something to talk about. For a small African airline, this is something to talk about. Rwanda is said to have the will and determination to do things. This is attributed to President Paul Kagame, one time described as a man of steel.  Coming to the scene about 20 years back, he has led Rwanda to economic prosperity in an orderly manner. Hiss possibly somebody we can compare to Lee Kwan Singapore or Mahatir Mohammed of Malaysia. Like Singapore, understand Kigali, the Rwandese capital, screams, clean at you. This is attributed to the no nonsense approach that President Kagame has had which has resulted into economic change in the country.

Rwanda Air may or may not succeed. Being landlocked like Uganda and of course being in a much worse condition, Rwanda needs an airline. Whether it us Rwandese government or the private sector, it is a different matter.  If it is the Rwandese government, the airline will not fail because of government failure rather if it fails, it will be due to market failure. Market failure will be because it fails to get passengers to fly on the airline. Ethiopia airlines, one of the oldest airlines in Africa, has a very interesting marketing strategy, it combines a retail strategy with wholesale. It collects passengers from different parts of Africa and then puts them in one plane and then distributes them. Whether Rwandese Air can get passengers and finally get a return on investment is an open question. I know the airline because if there is a will of government to operate it, it will operate for years but not with commercial profit.

I have been one of the people who think Uganda needs no government airline yet. For Uganda’s case, the challenges would be more than those of the Rwandese government. We are likely to have problems of government failure, market failure and even management failure. The closure of Uganda airlines, the inability to restart Soroti flying school is because of the weaknesses that government has had. Either government does not have the money or if it has, it is reluctant to invest. That is government failure. Market failure is due to the small numbers the Ugandan economy has. Management failure would again be attributed to management failure. Uganda therefore cannot run an airline profitably for the time being. To stimulate air traffic, Uganda needs an economic boom, the type that will come out of the petroleum boom or a mineral that will bring wealth to the country. But with the current numbers of the economy, Uganda cannot have a government run airline.

I am talking about a government owned airline because, if there is enough economic activity, this will be a right option. Having looked at the parastatals in Europe, I look at parastatals as vehicles for wealth creation in poor countries like Uganda but only if they are managed properly. Government would start the businesses and sell shares especially through unit trusts to the public. This is the only way the poor people in the developing countries will ever participate within free market enterprises that has a global dimension.

Read More about RwandaAir aims to fly high USD200M boost

Is Africa a rich beggar?

Writing in East African of March 29 to April 4, 2014, Mwaura Kimani reckons that the continent goes begging when it has over USD 200 billion in overseas banks. According to him, Africa fears investing its own earned money in its countries because it fears the instability in these countries. These are interesting articles to read and sad at the same time. 

 ‘Rich beggar’ paradox that is Africa’s forex reserves Central bank governors want some of the excess foreign reserves used for infrastructure development and to seal financing deficits. TEA Graphic By Mwaura Kimani The EastAfrican IN SUMMARY • The funds, nearly a third of the more than $500 billion in total reserves held by the countries, have been invested mainly in developed economies, said the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). • ECA is pushing for discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on how the forex reserve funds can be used to give the local currency market the necessary buffers and be considered as financing vehicles on the continent. • The push for better use of the excess foreign reserves is expected to complement other fundraising initiatives across the continent.

 Africa’s $200 billion kept in foreign banks African countries are holding outside the continent cash reserves totalling nearly $200 billion, which they fear to invest locally owing to rising risks at home. The funds, nearly a third of the more than $500 billion in total reserves held by the countries, have been invested mainly in developed economies, said the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The UN agency said that this denied the continent’s economies the much needed funds, which could be used to seal financing deficits, especially in building infrastructure. As such, the agency is pushing for discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on how the forex reserve funds can be used to give the local currency market the necessary buffers and be considered as financing vehicles on the continent. “It is troubling that, unlike other developing regions of the world, African countries hold in aggregate more deposits in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reporting banks than they receive in loans from them,” said Carlos Lopes, the executive secretary at the ECA, adding that the continent has put up to $500 billion in foreign reserves. BIS is a global association of central banks which serves as a bank for members. Remain in overseas banks This trend, economists said, suggests that the bulk of revenues from exports of African oil and commodities are not intermediated by local banks. Instead, they remain in overseas banks, which recycle about 60 per cent of these deposits as cross-border loans back to African banks and the non-bank sector. “This situation is totally unacceptable,” Dr Lopes told a meeting of African central bank governors in Abuja, Nigeria, on Thursday and added that central banks must ensure more productive use of Africa’s reserves. In times of shocks and a volatile market, the central banks intervene using the reserves to calm the market and stem the volatility. January 2014 data showed that the central banks of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania were holding a combined $14 billion in forex reserves.

 READ: Central banks move to shore up forex reserves “You cannot accumulate public debt forever, hence the need to think outside public borrowing,” said Njuguna Ndung’u, the Central Bank of Kenya governor. Need for flexibility Prof Ndung’u added: “We need flexibility in seeking funds to finance infrastructure and tap into the reserves and repackaging available instruments to attract more monies such as diaspora-focused bonds and Shariah-compliant bond facilities.” The push for better use of the excess foreign reserves is expected to complement other fundraising initiatives across the continent. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that Africa requires at least $100 billion annually for infrastructure projects for the next 10 years. The bank plans to create a fund that could raise as much as $50 billion for infrastructure. The Africa 50 Infrastructure Fund will tap monies from sovereign wealth funds, insurance and pension funds as well as Africans living and working in the diaspora. READ: Is East Africa ready for sovereign wealth fund? “It is clear that excess foreign reserves held by African countries can meet the infrastructure financing needs of the continent,” said Cédric Mbeng Mezui, a senior economist at AfDB. “Investing just about 30 per cent of the excess reserves in investment vehicles for infrastructure will go a long way in meeting the financing needs of infrastructure on the continent. “Such a move would put close to $200 billion into infrastructure. We should, however, be careful.” Some African economies, such as Ghana, are running foreign reserve deficits. “We need to think of the optimal excess reserves which can be put into such a proposal,” said Henry Kofi Wampah, the governor of the Central Bank of Ghana. The excess reserves can also be used to finance syndicated loans to ensure countries retained price and financial stability, he said. Economists have warned that growing conflict in most African countries was raising the continent’s political risk, dimming hopes of such funds being repatriated to fund infrastructure. Economists at the AfDB, ECA and the African Union Commission attending the Abuja meeting warned that conflicts have emerged as the biggest risk factor on the continent. “Conflicts are now a major risk issue across Africa and investors are taking note,” said Dr Lopes. Prospects of instability The greater East African and Great Lakes regions are facing prospects of instability with conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR) and Somalia. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) considers all countries in the larger East African region, apart from Tanzania, as fragile states, based on a 2013 report. Burundi, CAR, Chad, DRC and Eritrea are listed as some of Africa¹s fragile states. Others are South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. However, Anthony Maruping, the African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs, said the huge levels of reserves was helping to lift investor confidence in Africa. “With reserves safely in foreign financial vehicles and banks, investors know they can invest in Africa since there is some level of financial stability,” he said. “But we need to contain the growing amounts of illicit outflows leaving Africa annually.” The Global Financial Integrity, in its latest report, said countries in the East African Community (EAC) saw a combined $1.33 billion moved out of the region through illicit financial transactions over 10 years, raising questions over the efficiency of regulations meant to curb illegal capital outflows. Ranked 66th out of 143 economies surveyed, Uganda leads the EAC pack with illicit financial transactions costing it at least $680 million. At 86th, Tanzania lost $333 million and Rwanda, ranked 106th, $158 million. Kenya lost an estimated $112 million while Burundi, the EAC’s smallest economy, lost $49 million. 

READ: $1.33bn siphoned out of EA in 10 years Central bankers at the conference said most African economies were battling a significant gap between the demand for investments and the availability of investible funds. The situation, they said, was due, in part, to low levels of savings, large spreads between the lending and savings rate, weak financial intermediation, shallow capital markets and limited competition among banks. While central banks have succeeded in ensuring price and financial stability through monetary policy interventions to tame inflation, this has not led to job creation and the infrastructure deficits continue to grow, said Sarah Alade, the acting governor, Central Bank of Nigeria. However, the search for funds is exposing countries to high financial sector risks, which could destabilise the economies in the coming years.

To solve our own problems, we must first define what it means to be African

I like the piece below by Daniel Kalinaki that appeared in the monitor of Thursday April 10, 2014. He is wondering why African countries beg when they have so much wealth and so much potential. He wonders why Nigeria which is so wealthy goes to beg for money from developed countries. He also indicates that in Nigeria some people had stolen USD 10 billion and the Nigerian President had gone out to share in the 28 billion euro promised by the European Union to spend on Africa. Daniel goes on to describe challenges of leadership and other related matters. In these leadership issues, he wonders why France to sort out the mess in Mali while Nigeria the next door simply looks on. It is true we should not beg as African countries because we have the wealth but on the other hand, we have to beg because the global circumstances we are in makes us beggars. As Africans, we cannot win this war of emerging out of poverty. A very interesting story on South Africa appears in the New African of April 2014 number 538. South Africa like many other African countries are in a catch 22 situation. The decision we take is either we lose or they win. Daniel, read that article, it may give you an insight on how policy is administered in Africa. 

    To solve our own problems, we must first define what it means to be African Why do we Africans and our leaders allow ourselves the constant indignity of going abroad to beg when we have so much wealth and so much potential? It is hard not to return to that question every time the question of Africa’s poverty and vulnerability is raised, as it was at the European Union-Africa Union Summit in Brussels last week. The conventional wisdom – that we are poor – does not explain the underlying notion of why we are poor, and whether we really are poor. We might be the poorest people in the world but Africa is not a poor continent. From the oil fields of Libya to the mines in South Africa to the lush fertile soils of East Africa to the forests of Central Africa; we are not lacking in resources. The quality of our leaders, or the lack of it, offers a more viable explanation. Take for instance, the sight of President Goodluck Jonathan joining the Begging Brigade in Brussels seeking to share in the €28 billion that the EU promised to spend in Africa over the next six years. This is a leader whose corrupt government officials have stolen $10 billion of Nigeria’s oil money in just a couple of years. If Nigeria put this money in an Africa Fund, it would not go from a beggar to a lender overnight. That President Jonathan, begging hat in hand, does not see this or does but is unable to do anything about it, says a lot about his incompetence. Yet this begs a subsequent question; why do we have incompetent leaders in Africa? We have not always been this way. Our pre-colonial era is littered with examples of visionary leaders and elaborate government structures. Our independence and post-independence movements gave birth to visionary leaders, from Kwame Nkrumah to Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba to Abdel Nasser Gamal. Why is it that today we have the likes of Teodore Obiang Nguema, the thieving dictator of Equatorial Guinea? How could South Africa have gone from the selflessness of Nelson Mandela to the selfishness of Jacob Zuma? One suspects that the problem could be a lack of a unifying ideology among our leaders and us. For all the claims to African solutions to African problems, we only claim our African identity in relation to outsiders, not in relation to ourselves. Thus while we are Africans abroad, we become Ugandans, Kenyans, Somali when we return to the continent, and narrow ourselves even further within our boundaries by seeking the warm, familiar embrace of the tribe. The Lord’s Resistance Army rebels killed and maimed people for decades but no one came to intervene because the victims weren’t African; they were Ugandans. We watched Somalia implode and slide into anarchy in the same way we now watch the Central African Republic or Mali but there is no inclination to lift a finger because they are Somalis or Fulani. Our problem is not that we fight too many wars in Africa, but that we fight the wrong wars – small civil wars over meagre State resources, instead of big regional wars to redraw borders, united people, and build empire. Why does it take France to sort out the mess in Mali when Nigeria, next door, simply looks on, its military leaders too bloated with graft to deal with Boko Haram? The Africa that seeks to deal with the world is an artificial and unsustainable construct of tribal tensions locked up in nation-states. We must put our empty claims to sovereignty aside and define a pan-African set of values and ideology. It is the only way to overcome the residual indignity of the leader of a country as big, rich and proud as the Congo, going to beg from its colonial master – a small country best known for a small statue of a small boy holding a small thing.

Effective Board Performance

Will Uganda move towards a knowledge Economy? Not just yet!!!!

For the last 50 years i have seen people use the hoe as the basic instrument to cultivate their land. In the last three years I have owned an iPhone and iPad and a samsung galaxy. Fortunately for me, i got the samsung from my friend Bitature and the iPad and iPhone from a friend in the USA. If it was not them my employer MUBS would have had to but i
The phone for me and I guess the ipad. The hoe costs less than $5 and the iphone is in tne region of $ 1,000!!!! The hoe is basic iron from the industrialization era and the phone are knoweldge products. No wonder apple Computers the makers of the iphone and ipad had at one time more money in their bank accounts than the US government. The fellas wreckin dollars and we wreck in poverty. How do we expect to turn our fortunes around as developing nations if we don’t give priority to the development of knowledge. Last year MUBS staff won grants from government for research. A year later the money has never been disbursed!!!! If we don't put importance to research then how can we develop knowledge?

In my presentation i reviewed the models by Solow and Romer  two economist who talked about knowledge and research and development as the  additional requirements to labour and capital in the equation to  fast track economic growth. The industrial revolution transformed western countries from agrarian economies to industrial ones. Development of technology has enabled these countries to move from industry based to service based and in recent years to information based. The information based economy is the knowledge based economy.

But how does Uganda or other developing countries get there? These countries cannot develop similar technologies as the west or the other developing countries have done. They don't have the human resource let alone the money to do it. Singapore and Malaysia tried a home based model, they achieved a great deal but earned the wrath of the developed countries who called their leaders dictators. But sustaining that growth has only been through opening to western technologies. This way these counties have joined the mainstream world economics. Without those dictators this change in these countries would not have happened. My prescription is very simple. First of all we have to get people to. Know they are poor and it’s important that they get out of that condition. In the literature of change management we call this  a compelling need for change. Probably this is the most difficult. It is at times referee to as change in mind set. I have heard this word around for so long  that i am not sure what it means any more. How do i get the 80% of the people in Uganda who leave in the rural areas to see the need for change. The next is make them work a little more for those already working and those who are not to make them  see the need to work and actually work. This increase in production would then be followed up with increase in productivity. Tough not so. Changing the 100 year old hoe!!! With more production produced efficiently you have  something to sell especially outside your country. Uganda i guess can feed its neighbors only if was able to produce more and more cheaply. Its at this stage that adoption of more advanced technologies would be necessary. Technology can be used in production and logistics management, but there must be something to manage!!!
The leapfrog in technology usage provided by mobile technology gives an indication of what  is possible. Technology would lead to more efficient production and this should move the population away from agriculture. Industry in these countries will never move to heavy industry.  That should be left to the advanced countries.

 
Funding research should receive some priority. I am surprised that our research is in products like cassava,  matooke !!! What benefit will cassava research add to the country? If it is in how to convert cassava into manufactured products i would go with it. But to provide better yield for consumption is a lost cause!!! What products can we get out of cassava or matooke is ok but how to produce it better is not a research matter. Matooke is one of the things that are so cumbersome to produce and cook. A bunch of matooke tales 18 months to be harvested and is eaten in one meal by a group of about 10  people.  In 18 months you will produce possibly three crops of maize!!! If you look at an acre of matooke and acre of maize. I think you will go for maize. Good matooke and i must assure you I love matooke, takes over 6 hours to cook. This is energy you are spending. It is no surprise, poor people growing matooke and cooking it for those many hours!! They cannot emerge from poverty!!! They can never transform into a knowledge economy. Knowledge economy for Uganda  Not Just Yet