FROM: FATHER
TO: ALL DEPENDANTS AND RELATIVES
CC: MOTHER
DATE: July 2011.
WORSENING ECONOMIC SITUATION AND MITIGATION MEASURES TO THEM IN OUR HOUSEHOLD
Due to the current economic situation and the so-called zero deficit budget, all domestic rules and regulations have been revised until further notice as below and under no circumstance is any violation going to be accepted. You have already seen what 'walk to work', closing of shops, etc have been handled. So violation of the rules shall meet similar responses.
1. The Kitchen and all pantries are declared Restricted Zones. Entry and/or passage shall require express permission from myself or lady of the house upon submission of written request.
2. Breakfast for adults is banned and children shall eat one bun each and a cup of milk. No more concentrated milk and each cup uses 1 teaspoon of sugar. This matter cannot be discussed!
3. Such food items as rice, chicken, blue band (margarine), butter, jam, sausages, frankfurters, eggs, bread and milk are restricted. Anyone intending to eat any of such foodstuffs must write to me in triplicate, with three days notice, giving justifications backed by a qualified dietician's report.
4. Watering flower gardens is banned. Further, only food-giving plants shall be watered. No lawns or flowers shall receive water. For internal decoration, only plastic and dry-flower arrangements shall be permitted.
5. Bathing in the morning is limited to 5 litres of water per day per person while bathing in the evening is banned unless there are medical reasons. Evidence of medical reasons should be provided from a qualified health worker. Ladies in the monthly Ps shall be allowed to use an extra litre in the evening for those areas only.
6. All security lights should be removed with immediate effect. The guard services have been terminated and in place all dependants shall abide by an all-night guard-duty roster I shall make available shortly.
7. No dependant shall entertain friends indoors, far less attempt to offer food, drinks or even music. Those who want their guests to listen to music shall sing for them.
8. To further reduce food costs, all dependants without due reason for being in Kampala are required to board the first bus tomorrow next morning. Don't ask for transport.
9. Anybody who breaks a glass, furniture or any other property in the house, shall immediately have to seek temporary employment somewhere to earn money to replace such broken item(s).
10. All visitors intending to spend a night/week or more shall apply in triplicate and give two months notice, with an endorsement from their MP, clan head, their religious leader clearly giving convincing reasons why they can't stay at their homes. Failure to do this shall result in their being turned away, at the gate, upon arrival.
11. Domestic animals like dogs and cats shall also have their food rations reduced and no meat shall be provided. They have to learn to eat some grass to supplement their diet.
All guests are subject to tax upon arrival at the gate.
THESE RULES ARE BINDING AND NOT SUBJECT TO ANY DISCUSSION WHATSOEVER!!!
Signed: DAD
Chairman of Home Affairs
PLEASE NOTE: And you have to choose between (Posho or Cassava or Sweet Potatoes) NOT ALL THE THREE OR EVEN TWO.
HARD TIMES REQUIRE TOUGH DECISIONS.
YOUR COOPERATION IS EXPECTED AND IS NOT SUBJECT TO DISCUSSION
Note: Not being the original author of this, I posted it here because of the way it captures the serious situation--the current economic hard times--in a hilarious way. We can still laugh despite the tears. Thanks to the person who sent it to me and credit to the author whom I don't know
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Why does marriage go haywire?
by Isaac Kalembe
I've just been discussing with colleagues over why relations (especially married life) finally go haywire. Here is my position:
1. Marriage is the most difficult institution.
2. There are few genuinely happily married couples.
3. Since marriage is a treacherous territory, the foundation of a happy marriage is love, trust and faithfulness.
Those three ingredients should be there from the word go.
Love: By love I mean the ability to be selfless in anything in relationship to the other person (s). Look beyond the physical appearance of your spouse (beauty/handsomeness), social status, connections, etc. Look at the inner person (character and personality). Ask yourself: "Is this the man/woman I'd like to spend the rest of my life with?
Compromise: You should be able to compromise, forgive and tolerate. It's impossible to get a clone, or a person with 100% of your likes and dislikes. But if s/he can meet at least 70% of your values/likes, then go for it.
Trust: Give the benefit of the doubt to your spouse. Believe what they tell you. Avoid spying on them or trying to find out what they do in their private time or even at their place of work. Don't even entertain rumours about them. Try to keep what you do to yourself.
Faithful: Be faithful to him/her. But remember, we are not angels, but human beings. Humans are fallible - have weaknesses and make mistakes (including lust, infatuation, or even cheating)! Being faithful does not mean you don't have your doubts about your lover/spouse. But simply treat them as such (Ekyotarozire tikikuruma-that's our Runyakitara proverb).
Timing: Do not rush to marry; take your time. It's not advisable to marry in teenage or adolescence age. You should be at least 27 years and above. For men, it's preferable to marry in 30+ (35 is better). Do not marry your agemate. There should be at least a gap of 5-7 years.
Similarly, grow with age and experience. Experience is the best teacher. As you grow, your perspective and values change. For instance, should you divorce your spouse because they have cheated on you? Or, is sex the be-all and end-all of marriage? Certainly yes, buy one's answer will vary depending on your age and experience.
True, humans are, by nature, selfish. Nobody would wish to share their spouse/fiancee with another person (I stand to be corrected as we've a few exceptions, for example, okurirana (sharing of spouses among close family members or clan/tribemates) in Western Uganda or the Tooro adage: omusaija tayangwa...literally a woman should respond favourably to any man's advance). But such liberalism is not good and merely an exception.
Cautious: Always think through your actions or intended actions. Do not act on impulse (emotionally) or under influence (alcohol, drugs, peer pressure, propaganda, etc). Act in a sane and mature way.
Responsibility: Own up to your actions. Always accept the outcome of your actions whether they are positive or negative, good or bad. There is little need to regret anything you do. But, if it's adverse, act honourably: confess, recant and ask for forgiveness genuinely. Even if the other person may not forgive you, it will clear your conscience. And, pray over it. By the way, prayer should be at the forefront of your plans and actions.
Morality: Morality and religion go together. Try to lead a morally-upright life. By this I mean, do not be a bad person; be good to others and to yourself. This rhymes with my definition of love above. Avoid doing evil (but do not confuse evil with human weaknesses/follies - things that any human being is culpable of, for example, lying, sex, anger, hunger, crying, or any form of emotional breakdown at one point or another). That's why I do not subscribe to such practices as celibacy (leading a sexless life) - yes, one can abstain, but not leave without sex. Similarly, one can fast, but not live on an empty stomach). That tantamounts to suicide! I do not believe in virginity/chastity beyond marriage age (35+).
I've just been discussing with colleagues over why relations (especially married life) finally go haywire. Here is my position:
1. Marriage is the most difficult institution.
2. There are few genuinely happily married couples.
3. Since marriage is a treacherous territory, the foundation of a happy marriage is love, trust and faithfulness.
Those three ingredients should be there from the word go.
Love: By love I mean the ability to be selfless in anything in relationship to the other person (s). Look beyond the physical appearance of your spouse (beauty/handsomeness), social status, connections, etc. Look at the inner person (character and personality). Ask yourself: "Is this the man/woman I'd like to spend the rest of my life with?
Compromise: You should be able to compromise, forgive and tolerate. It's impossible to get a clone, or a person with 100% of your likes and dislikes. But if s/he can meet at least 70% of your values/likes, then go for it.
Trust: Give the benefit of the doubt to your spouse. Believe what they tell you. Avoid spying on them or trying to find out what they do in their private time or even at their place of work. Don't even entertain rumours about them. Try to keep what you do to yourself.
Faithful: Be faithful to him/her. But remember, we are not angels, but human beings. Humans are fallible - have weaknesses and make mistakes (including lust, infatuation, or even cheating)! Being faithful does not mean you don't have your doubts about your lover/spouse. But simply treat them as such (Ekyotarozire tikikuruma-that's our Runyakitara proverb).
Timing: Do not rush to marry; take your time. It's not advisable to marry in teenage or adolescence age. You should be at least 27 years and above. For men, it's preferable to marry in 30+ (35 is better). Do not marry your agemate. There should be at least a gap of 5-7 years.
Similarly, grow with age and experience. Experience is the best teacher. As you grow, your perspective and values change. For instance, should you divorce your spouse because they have cheated on you? Or, is sex the be-all and end-all of marriage? Certainly yes, buy one's answer will vary depending on your age and experience.
True, humans are, by nature, selfish. Nobody would wish to share their spouse/fiancee with another person (I stand to be corrected as we've a few exceptions, for example, okurirana (sharing of spouses among close family members or clan/tribemates) in Western Uganda or the Tooro adage: omusaija tayangwa...literally a woman should respond favourably to any man's advance). But such liberalism is not good and merely an exception.
Cautious: Always think through your actions or intended actions. Do not act on impulse (emotionally) or under influence (alcohol, drugs, peer pressure, propaganda, etc). Act in a sane and mature way.
Responsibility: Own up to your actions. Always accept the outcome of your actions whether they are positive or negative, good or bad. There is little need to regret anything you do. But, if it's adverse, act honourably: confess, recant and ask for forgiveness genuinely. Even if the other person may not forgive you, it will clear your conscience. And, pray over it. By the way, prayer should be at the forefront of your plans and actions.
Morality: Morality and religion go together. Try to lead a morally-upright life. By this I mean, do not be a bad person; be good to others and to yourself. This rhymes with my definition of love above. Avoid doing evil (but do not confuse evil with human weaknesses/follies - things that any human being is culpable of, for example, lying, sex, anger, hunger, crying, or any form of emotional breakdown at one point or another). That's why I do not subscribe to such practices as celibacy (leading a sexless life) - yes, one can abstain, but not leave without sex. Similarly, one can fast, but not live on an empty stomach). That tantamounts to suicide! I do not believe in virginity/chastity beyond marriage age (35+).
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
Flashback: When Patriotism was the Catch Word
A few years ago, when I was a columnist for an upstart weekly newspaper called The Manager, I wrote this article for People and Power (which was the name of my short-lived column). With the just-elected MPs tabling issues of their emoluments as the first business to be considered and the Speaker and her deputy getting Shs 800m (US$334,700.03) cars in the same week, I chanced upon this piece in my archive.
How pertinent it is in light of the fact that in Uganda, even the best intentions are belied by the spectre of the monetary benefit that rears its ugly head!
Does Patriotism Drive Need A Budget?
by Mwesigye Gumisiriza
When President Yoweri Museveni embarked on a country-wide tour to revive, according to him, the spirit of patriotism among Ugandans, he sparked off a huge debate on the subject. He defined a patriot as one who loves Uganda and Africa, promotes the East African federation, protects the environment and takes care of himself or herself.
Views for and against have been expressed in various fora on its definition, whether Museveni is the appropriate person to spearhead this initiative or the best example of patriotism but perhaps most significant is whether it can be or should be taught in schools. Secondary school students and teachers are the target group for the patriotism lectures and for the establishment of patriotism clubs. “Teaching children to love their country and its citizens…will promote patriotism”, Museveni argues. Starting off in Arua where he met teachers from the West Nile region, he has toured different areas including Lango, Acholi, Teso, Busoga, Mukono, Luwero and western Uganda.
As the debate continued, this week, government requested the parliament to approve Shs. 3.5 billion for the purpose of teaching patriotism in schools across the country and putting in place the necessary mechanisms to support this. Also, in the vote, there is Shs. 1 billion to fund a proposed Patriotism Secretariat to be established under the Ministry of Security while Shs. 2.5 billion is to be spent on lectures and clubs in schools.
Interestingly, though the money is to be spent by this Ministry, the funds were requested through the Ministry of Education and Sports.
“I want the money to remain where it is because that will help us work together with the other ministries”, said the Education Minister, Namirembe Bitamizire, as she defended this arrangement that raised eyebrows while appearing before the members of the Social Services Committee. However, this was not enough to convince the Committee who expressed their misgivings. These include whether Ugandans were aware of what the patriotism lectures entailed, whether if membership to the club is voluntary it is worthwhile, and whether the money would not be misappropriated.
Concerns are heightened by the fact that the Ministry of Security has no budget line, the Minister, Amama Mbabazi, is also the Secretary General of NRM—the National Resistance Movement and has accompanied the President on the patriotism tours. In addition, precedent has shown that accountability for funds spent under the ‘security’ tag tends to be ‘classified’ and hidden from scrutiny.
Furthermore, the President’s patriotism crusade has not inclusive, assuming partisan overtones as he justified his current pet theme. While in Masaka, Museveni said, “The liberation of Uganda was done by patriots, everybody should remember that...We the patriots said, we cannot give up Uganda, and we fought”. This is a definite reference to what is known as the Bush War that the then National Resistance Army (NRA) waged between 1981 and 1986, mostly from the infamous Luwero Triangle.
Col. Kizza Besigye, who was part of this Bush War but now leader of the main opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), has criticised the President over the patriotism campaign. The FDC are reported to have embarked on similar drive to counter it on a tour that will take them to Bunyoro, Kigezi, Tororo, Ankole including eastern and northern parts of Uganda.
Beti Kamya, a member of the party, in an article published in one of the newspapers, while alluding to the biblical Moses who grew up as an Egyptian prince but on discovering his Jewish parentage turned his back on a privileged lifestyle and sided with the enslaved Jews, argued that patriotism is inborn. She further wrote that patriotism cannot be budget-driven while drawing parallel to the voluntary but vibrant Nkobazambogo, Akalib’akendo and Ssubi lya Buganda groups that bring together Baganda students in tertiary institutions and secondary and primary schools respectively.
President of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Bidandi Ssali, one of those who formed Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) with Museveni to contest in the 1980 elections, says a patriot should be ready to serve at no cost.
Ironically, in Masaka, Museveni pointed out, “We did not fight for a salary. Who was paying us?” So, the question that Ugandans may be asking themselves is why does the government need Shs 3.5 billion that will mostly end up in paying salaries, per diem allowances, fuel and other costs to make us love our country more?
How pertinent it is in light of the fact that in Uganda, even the best intentions are belied by the spectre of the monetary benefit that rears its ugly head!
Does Patriotism Drive Need A Budget?
by Mwesigye Gumisiriza
When President Yoweri Museveni embarked on a country-wide tour to revive, according to him, the spirit of patriotism among Ugandans, he sparked off a huge debate on the subject. He defined a patriot as one who loves Uganda and Africa, promotes the East African federation, protects the environment and takes care of himself or herself.
Views for and against have been expressed in various fora on its definition, whether Museveni is the appropriate person to spearhead this initiative or the best example of patriotism but perhaps most significant is whether it can be or should be taught in schools. Secondary school students and teachers are the target group for the patriotism lectures and for the establishment of patriotism clubs. “Teaching children to love their country and its citizens…will promote patriotism”, Museveni argues. Starting off in Arua where he met teachers from the West Nile region, he has toured different areas including Lango, Acholi, Teso, Busoga, Mukono, Luwero and western Uganda.
As the debate continued, this week, government requested the parliament to approve Shs. 3.5 billion for the purpose of teaching patriotism in schools across the country and putting in place the necessary mechanisms to support this. Also, in the vote, there is Shs. 1 billion to fund a proposed Patriotism Secretariat to be established under the Ministry of Security while Shs. 2.5 billion is to be spent on lectures and clubs in schools.
Interestingly, though the money is to be spent by this Ministry, the funds were requested through the Ministry of Education and Sports.
“I want the money to remain where it is because that will help us work together with the other ministries”, said the Education Minister, Namirembe Bitamizire, as she defended this arrangement that raised eyebrows while appearing before the members of the Social Services Committee. However, this was not enough to convince the Committee who expressed their misgivings. These include whether Ugandans were aware of what the patriotism lectures entailed, whether if membership to the club is voluntary it is worthwhile, and whether the money would not be misappropriated.
Concerns are heightened by the fact that the Ministry of Security has no budget line, the Minister, Amama Mbabazi, is also the Secretary General of NRM—the National Resistance Movement and has accompanied the President on the patriotism tours. In addition, precedent has shown that accountability for funds spent under the ‘security’ tag tends to be ‘classified’ and hidden from scrutiny.
Furthermore, the President’s patriotism crusade has not inclusive, assuming partisan overtones as he justified his current pet theme. While in Masaka, Museveni said, “The liberation of Uganda was done by patriots, everybody should remember that...We the patriots said, we cannot give up Uganda, and we fought”. This is a definite reference to what is known as the Bush War that the then National Resistance Army (NRA) waged between 1981 and 1986, mostly from the infamous Luwero Triangle.
Col. Kizza Besigye, who was part of this Bush War but now leader of the main opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), has criticised the President over the patriotism campaign. The FDC are reported to have embarked on similar drive to counter it on a tour that will take them to Bunyoro, Kigezi, Tororo, Ankole including eastern and northern parts of Uganda.
Beti Kamya, a member of the party, in an article published in one of the newspapers, while alluding to the biblical Moses who grew up as an Egyptian prince but on discovering his Jewish parentage turned his back on a privileged lifestyle and sided with the enslaved Jews, argued that patriotism is inborn. She further wrote that patriotism cannot be budget-driven while drawing parallel to the voluntary but vibrant Nkobazambogo, Akalib’akendo and Ssubi lya Buganda groups that bring together Baganda students in tertiary institutions and secondary and primary schools respectively.
President of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Bidandi Ssali, one of those who formed Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) with Museveni to contest in the 1980 elections, says a patriot should be ready to serve at no cost.
Ironically, in Masaka, Museveni pointed out, “We did not fight for a salary. Who was paying us?” So, the question that Ugandans may be asking themselves is why does the government need Shs 3.5 billion that will mostly end up in paying salaries, per diem allowances, fuel and other costs to make us love our country more?
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Book Review: Mind, Man and the Spirits
Title: Mind, Man and the Spirits: Man's Desperate Search for Meaning in Intellectualism, Mysticism and the Occult
Author: J. Stafford Wright
Pages: 160
Publisher: The Pasternoster Press
Reviewer: Mwesigye Gumisiriza
The author starts off by navigating through the varying explanations of what the mind is, the unconscious and subconscious as well as its relationship with the body, time and space. He also explores these definitions in the different branches of psychology and psychiatry and the varying schools of thought.
This lays the basis for the book to delve deeper into phenomena such as miracles, occultism, spiritualism, ghosts, angels and demons, reincarnation, telepathy, clairvoyance (what is known as sixth sense), to mention but a few. Being subjects that have, and continue to provoke, a lot of debate and fuel controversy, evidence and scientific experiments which have been carried to investigate them are cited from a variety of sources.
Wright puts in his own perspective, drawing from a Christian or Biblical context, in such a way that is not overbearing, preachy or self-righteous. Instead he writes in such a way that welcomes further debate and discussion and with the view that even after the book is published, further advances in the field will bring more knowledge. This is an interesting read for the kind of person interested in such issues otherwise it may a difficult read (or even boring) for the average book aficionado.
Author: J. Stafford Wright
Pages: 160
Publisher: The Pasternoster Press
Reviewer: Mwesigye Gumisiriza
The author starts off by navigating through the varying explanations of what the mind is, the unconscious and subconscious as well as its relationship with the body, time and space. He also explores these definitions in the different branches of psychology and psychiatry and the varying schools of thought.
This lays the basis for the book to delve deeper into phenomena such as miracles, occultism, spiritualism, ghosts, angels and demons, reincarnation, telepathy, clairvoyance (what is known as sixth sense), to mention but a few. Being subjects that have, and continue to provoke, a lot of debate and fuel controversy, evidence and scientific experiments which have been carried to investigate them are cited from a variety of sources.
Wright puts in his own perspective, drawing from a Christian or Biblical context, in such a way that is not overbearing, preachy or self-righteous. Instead he writes in such a way that welcomes further debate and discussion and with the view that even after the book is published, further advances in the field will bring more knowledge. This is an interesting read for the kind of person interested in such issues otherwise it may a difficult read (or even boring) for the average book aficionado.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Book Review: Making Sense of Social Policy in Uganda
Title: Social Policy: The Integrated Approach to Social Development
Author: George Muriisa Zirimu
Pages: xvi+331
Publisher: Makerere University Printery
Reviewer: Mwesigye Gumisiriza
Available at leading bookshops
How to bring about the kind of development that ensures equitable benefits for all groups within a society is a complex issue that spurs debate, discussion and controversy. The government, through its ministries and departments as well as various agencies, uses several approaches to realise this goal.
Policy is the guideline on how government and the other institutional actors would facilitate development and address the problems that hinder it. But in defining what policy is, the author draws from different authorities on the subject to build on his presentation of social policy, which is the main topic of the book. By his admission, “Defining policy is not an easy exercise. What makes it difficult is partly because of its dependence of one policy area on the others, for example, social policy is related to health policy, employment policy, education policy...” He concurs with many others that “defining policy is still contentious as it lacks consensus”.
However, the complexity and diversity of policy, in general, and social policy, in particular, does not prevent him from delving into making it clear for the users of this book, amidst the range of view points from a number of social scientists that they may already be familiar with. To this end, he concludes that most of the definitions contain three aspects: to promote welfare, have both economic and non-economic objectives, and involve some measure of redistribution.
The first six chapters are focused on defining social policy, explaining the different concepts and theories and exploring the myriad of factors that impact on it. Through this, a firm basis is set to understand the later chapters that tackle the social policy that has been formulated to address social problems, provide social needs, ensure resource distribution and enhance service delivery within the Ugandan context.
There are numerous cases, examples and statistics that are used to illustrate this. But these practical examples only come from the period starting 1986, that is the time that the National Resistance Movement has been in government. May be it is because the author is a civil servant and thus restricted himself to this period so that he is not misinterpreted as giving credit to previous governments’ efforts. This book would have benefited from case studies that cover how the various governments in Uganda, from colonial to post-colonial, have handled social policy. Needless to say, the readers would appreciate that too.
There are a few factual errors, which though minor, that should be corrected in a second edition because the tremendous amount of work that the author put in to write a book on such a contentious complex subject cannot be discounted. For instance, the development of the Millennium Development Goals are attributed to G8—the grouping of the eight most industrialised countries (pg 10) yet these were formulated by the United Nations organisation. Also, in listing some of the organisations that involved in work in the HIV/Aids area (pg 168), Mildmay is referred to as “Maldmay Medical Centre”, which is not even its full name either.
Otherwise, the book is very helpful to not only students of development studies, social sciences and management, the practitioners and the policy makers but also to anyone who seeks to understand how inequality in societies like Uganda can be corrected. As most of the publications on social policy in university libraries are from the developed countries’ perspective, Dr George Zirimu is commended for adding one that is more in tune with our situation.
This review was published in Saturday Monitor 18 June 2011, check it here
Author: George Muriisa Zirimu
Pages: xvi+331
Publisher: Makerere University Printery
Reviewer: Mwesigye Gumisiriza
Available at leading bookshops
How to bring about the kind of development that ensures equitable benefits for all groups within a society is a complex issue that spurs debate, discussion and controversy. The government, through its ministries and departments as well as various agencies, uses several approaches to realise this goal.
Policy is the guideline on how government and the other institutional actors would facilitate development and address the problems that hinder it. But in defining what policy is, the author draws from different authorities on the subject to build on his presentation of social policy, which is the main topic of the book. By his admission, “Defining policy is not an easy exercise. What makes it difficult is partly because of its dependence of one policy area on the others, for example, social policy is related to health policy, employment policy, education policy...” He concurs with many others that “defining policy is still contentious as it lacks consensus”.
However, the complexity and diversity of policy, in general, and social policy, in particular, does not prevent him from delving into making it clear for the users of this book, amidst the range of view points from a number of social scientists that they may already be familiar with. To this end, he concludes that most of the definitions contain three aspects: to promote welfare, have both economic and non-economic objectives, and involve some measure of redistribution.
The first six chapters are focused on defining social policy, explaining the different concepts and theories and exploring the myriad of factors that impact on it. Through this, a firm basis is set to understand the later chapters that tackle the social policy that has been formulated to address social problems, provide social needs, ensure resource distribution and enhance service delivery within the Ugandan context.
There are numerous cases, examples and statistics that are used to illustrate this. But these practical examples only come from the period starting 1986, that is the time that the National Resistance Movement has been in government. May be it is because the author is a civil servant and thus restricted himself to this period so that he is not misinterpreted as giving credit to previous governments’ efforts. This book would have benefited from case studies that cover how the various governments in Uganda, from colonial to post-colonial, have handled social policy. Needless to say, the readers would appreciate that too.
There are a few factual errors, which though minor, that should be corrected in a second edition because the tremendous amount of work that the author put in to write a book on such a contentious complex subject cannot be discounted. For instance, the development of the Millennium Development Goals are attributed to G8—the grouping of the eight most industrialised countries (pg 10) yet these were formulated by the United Nations organisation. Also, in listing some of the organisations that involved in work in the HIV/Aids area (pg 168), Mildmay is referred to as “Maldmay Medical Centre”, which is not even its full name either.
Otherwise, the book is very helpful to not only students of development studies, social sciences and management, the practitioners and the policy makers but also to anyone who seeks to understand how inequality in societies like Uganda can be corrected. As most of the publications on social policy in university libraries are from the developed countries’ perspective, Dr George Zirimu is commended for adding one that is more in tune with our situation.
This review was published in Saturday Monitor 18 June 2011, check it here
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite
by Rebecca Solnit
Source: Huffington Post website
How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d’Ivoire, a name she had been given because of her export products, not her own identity.
Her name was Asia. His was Europe. Her name was silence. His was power. Her name was poverty. His was wealth. Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought he could take her without asking and without consequences. It was a very old story, though its outcome had been changing a little in recent decades. And this time around the consequences are shaking a lot of foundations, all of which clearly needed shaking.
Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we’ve just been given? The extraordinarily powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a global organization that has created mass poverty and economic injustice, allegedly assaulted a hotel maid, an immigrant from Africa, in a hotel’s luxury suite in New York City.
Worlds have collided. In an earlier era, her word would have been worthless against his and she might not have filed charges, or the police might not have followed through and yanked Dominique Strauss-Kahn off the plane to Paris at the last moment. But she did, and they did, and now he’s in custody, and the economy of Europe has been dealt a blow, and French politics have been upended, and that nation is reeling and soul-searching.
What were they thinking, these men who decided to give him this singular position of power, despite all the stories and evidence of such viciousness? What was he thinking when he decided he could get away with it? Did he think he was in France, where apparently he did get away with it? Only now is the young woman who says he assaulted her in 2002 pressing charges -- her own politician mother talked her out of it, and she worried about the impact it could have on her journalistic career (while her mother was apparently worrying more about his career).
And the Guardian reports that these stories “have added weight to claims by Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born economist, that the fund's director engaged in sustained harassment when she was working at the IMF that left her feeling she had little choice but to agree to sleep with him at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2008. She alleged he persistently called and emailed on the pretext of asking questions about [her expertise,] Ghana's economy, but then used sexual language and asked her out.”
In some accounts, the woman Strauss-Kahn is charged with assaulting in New York is from Ghana, in others a Muslim from nearby Guinea. “Ghana -- Prisoner of the IMF” ran a headline in 2001 by the usually mild-mannered BBC. Its report documented the way the IMF’s policies had destroyed that rice-growing nation’s food security, opening it up to cheap imported U.S. rice, and plunging the country’s majority into dire poverty.
Everything became a commodity for which you had to pay, from using a toilet to getting a bucket of water, and many could not pay. Perhaps it would be too perfect if she was a refugee from the IMF’s policies in Ghana. Guinea, on the other hand, liberated itself from the IMF management thanks to the discovery of major oil reserves, but remains a country of severe corruption and economic disparity.
Pimping for the Global North
There’s an axiom evolutionary biologists used to like: “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” or the development of the embryonic individual repeats that of its species’ evolution. Does the ontogeny of this alleged assault echo the phylogeny of the International Monetary Fund? After all, the organization was founded late in World War II as part of the notorious Bretton Woods conference that would impose American economic visions on the rest of the world.
The IMF was meant to be a lending institution to help countries develop, but by the 1980s it had become an organization with an ideology -- free trade and free-market fundamentalism. It used its loans to gain enormous power over the economies and policies of nations throughout the global South.
However, if the IMF gained power throughout the 1990s, it began losing that power in the twenty-first century, thanks to powerful popular resistance to the economic policies it embodied and the economic collapse such policies produced. Strauss-Kahn was brought in to salvage the wreckage of an organization that, in 2008, had to sell off its gold reserves and reinvent its mission.
Her name was Africa. His name was IMF. He set her up to be pillaged, to go without health care, to starve. He laid waste to her to enrich his friends. Her name was Global South. His name was Washington Consensus. But his winning streak was running out and her star was rising.
It was the IMF that created the economic conditions that destroyed the Argentinian economy by 2001, and it was the revolt against the IMF (among other neoliberal forces) that prompted Latin America’s rebirth over the past decade. Whatever you think of Hugo Chavez, it was loans from oil-rich Venezuela that allowed Argentina to pay off its IMF loans early so that it could set its own saner economic policies.
The IMF was a predatory force, opening developing countries up to economic assaults from the wealthy North and powerful transnational corporations. It was a pimp. Maybe it still is.
But since the Seattle anti-corporate demonstrations of 1999 set a global movement alight, there has been a revolt against it, and those forces have won in Latin America, changing the framework of all economic debates to come and enriching our imaginations when it comes to economies and possibilities.
Today, the IMF is a mess, the World Trade Organization largely sidelined, NAFTA almost universally reviled, the Free Trade Area of the Americas cancelled (though bilateral free-trade agreements continue), and much of the world has learned a great deal from the decade’s crash course in economic policy.
Strangers on a Train
The New York Times reported it this way:
"As the impact of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s predicament hit home, others, including some in the news media, began to reveal accounts, long suppressed or anonymous, of what they called Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s previously predatory behavior toward women and his aggressive sexual pursuit of them, from students and journalists to subordinates."
In other words, he created an atmosphere that was uncomfortable or dangerous for women, which would be one thing if he were working in, say, a small office. But that a man who controls some part of the fate of the world apparently devoted his energies to generating fear, misery, and injustice around him says something about the shape of our world and the values of the nations and institutions that tolerated his behavior and that of men like him.
The United States has not been short on sex scandals of late, and they reek of the same arrogance, but they were at least consensual (as far as we know). The head of the IMF is charged with sexual assault. If that term confuses you take out the word “sexual” and just focus on “assault,” on violence, on the refusal to treat someone as a human being, on the denial of the most basic of human rights, the right to bodily integrity and corporeal safety. “The rights of man” was one of the great phrases of the French Revolution, but it’s always been questionable whether it included the rights of women.
The United States has a hundred million flaws, but I am proud that the police believed this woman and that she will have her day in court. I am gratified this time not to be in a country which has decided that the career of a powerful man or the fate of an international institution matters more than this woman and her rights and wellbeing. This is what we mean by democracy: that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race, or gender.
Two days before Strauss-Kahn allegedly emerged from that hotel bathroom naked, there was a big demonstration in New York City. “Make Wall Street Pay” was the theme and union workers, radicals, the unemployed, and more -- 20,000 people -- gathered to protest the economic assault in this country that is creating such suffering and deprivation for the many -- and obscene wealth for the few.
I attended. On the crowded subway car back to Brooklyn afterwards, the youngest of my three female companions had her bottom groped by a man about Strauss-Kahn’s age. At first, she thought he had simply bumped into her. That was before she felt her buttock being cupped and said something to me, as young women often do, tentatively, quietly, as though it were perhaps not happening or perhaps not quite a problem.
Finally, she glared at him and told him to stop. I was reminded of a moment when I was an impoverished seventeen-year-old living in Paris and some geezer grabbed my ass. It was perhaps my most American moment in France, then the land of a thousand disdainful gropers; American because I was carrying three grapefruits, a precious purchase from my small collection of funds, and I threw those grapefruits, one after another, like baseballs at the creep and had the satisfaction of watching him scuttle into the night.
His action, like so much sexual violence against women, was undoubtedly meant to be a reminder that this world was not mine, that my rights -- my liberté, egalité, sororité, if you will -- didn’t matter. Except that I had sent him running in a barrage of fruit. And Dominique Strauss-Kahn got pulled off a plane to answer to justice. Still, that a friend of mine got groped on her way back from a march about justice makes it clear how much there still is to be done.
The Poor Starve, While the Rich Eat Their Words
What makes the sex scandal that broke open last week so resonant is the way the alleged assailant and victim model larger relationships around the world, starting with the IMF’s assault on the poor. That assault is part of the great class war of our era, in which the rich and their proxies in government have endeavored to aggrandize their holdings at the expense of the rest of us.
Poor countries in the developing world paid first, but the rest of us are paying now, as those policies and the suffering they impose come home to roost via right-wing economics that savages unions, education systems, the environment, and programs for the poor, disabled, and elderly in the name of privatization, free markets, and tax cuts.
In one of the more remarkable apologies of our era, Bill Clinton -- who had his own sex scandal once upon a time -- told the United Nations on World Food Day in October 2008, as the global economy was melting down:“We need the World Bank, the IMF, all the big foundations, and all the governments to admit that, for 30 years, we all blew it, including me when I was President. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade, and we all have to go back to a more responsible and sustainable form of agriculture.”
He said it even more bluntly last year:
“Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did.”
Clinton’s admissions were on a level with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s 2008 admission that the premise of his economic politics was wrong. The former policies and those of the IMF, World Bank, and free-trade fundamentalists had created poverty, suffering, hunger, and death. We have learned, most of us, and the world has changed remarkably since the day when those who opposed free-market fundamentalism were labeled “flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960's fix,” in the mortal words of Thomas Friedman, later eaten.
A remarkable thing happened after the devastating Haitian earthquake last year: the IMF under Strauss-Kahn planned to use the vulnerability of that country to force new loans on it with the usual terms. Activists reacted to a plan guaranteed to increase the indebtedness of a nation already crippled by the kind of neoliberal policies for which Clinton belatedly apologized. The IMF blinked, stepped back, and agreed to cancel Haiti’s existing debt to the organization. It was a remarkable victory for informed activism.
Powers of the Powerless
It looks as though a hotel maid may end the career of one of the most powerful men in the world, or rather that he will have ended it himself by discounting the rights and humanity of that worker. Pretty much the same thing happened to Meg Whitman, the former E-Bay billionaire who ran for governor of California last year. She leapt on the conservative bandwagon by attacking undocumented immigrants -- until it turned out that she had herself long employed one, Nickie Diaz, as a housekeeper.
When, after nine years, it had become politically inconvenient to keep Diaz around, she fired the woman abruptly, claimed she’d never known her employee was undocumented, and refused to pay her final wages. In other words, Whitman was willing to spend $140 million on her campaign, but may have brought herself down thanks, in part, to $6,210 in unpaid wages.
Diaz said, "I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage." The garbage had a voice, the California Nurses Union amplified it, and California was spared domination by a billionaire whose policies would have further brutalized the poor and impoverished the middle class.
The struggles for justice of an undocumented housekeeper and an immigrant hotel maid are microcosms of the great world war of our time. If Nickie Diaz and the battle over last year’s IMF loans to Haiti demonstrate anything, it’s that the outcome is uncertain. Sometimes we win the skirmishes, but the war continues.
So much remains to be known about what happened in that expensive hotel suite in Manhattan last week, but what we do know is this: a genuine class war is being fought openly in our time, and last week, a so-called socialist put himself on the wrong side of it.
His name was privilege, but hers was possibility. His was the same old story, but hers was a new one about the possibility of changing a story that remains unfinished, that includes all of us, that matters so much, that we will watch, but also make and tell in the weeks, months, years, decades to come.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books, including A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.
Source: Huffington Post website
How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d’Ivoire, a name she had been given because of her export products, not her own identity.
Her name was Asia. His was Europe. Her name was silence. His was power. Her name was poverty. His was wealth. Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought he could take her without asking and without consequences. It was a very old story, though its outcome had been changing a little in recent decades. And this time around the consequences are shaking a lot of foundations, all of which clearly needed shaking.
Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we’ve just been given? The extraordinarily powerful head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a global organization that has created mass poverty and economic injustice, allegedly assaulted a hotel maid, an immigrant from Africa, in a hotel’s luxury suite in New York City.
Worlds have collided. In an earlier era, her word would have been worthless against his and she might not have filed charges, or the police might not have followed through and yanked Dominique Strauss-Kahn off the plane to Paris at the last moment. But she did, and they did, and now he’s in custody, and the economy of Europe has been dealt a blow, and French politics have been upended, and that nation is reeling and soul-searching.
What were they thinking, these men who decided to give him this singular position of power, despite all the stories and evidence of such viciousness? What was he thinking when he decided he could get away with it? Did he think he was in France, where apparently he did get away with it? Only now is the young woman who says he assaulted her in 2002 pressing charges -- her own politician mother talked her out of it, and she worried about the impact it could have on her journalistic career (while her mother was apparently worrying more about his career).
And the Guardian reports that these stories “have added weight to claims by Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born economist, that the fund's director engaged in sustained harassment when she was working at the IMF that left her feeling she had little choice but to agree to sleep with him at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2008. She alleged he persistently called and emailed on the pretext of asking questions about [her expertise,] Ghana's economy, but then used sexual language and asked her out.”
In some accounts, the woman Strauss-Kahn is charged with assaulting in New York is from Ghana, in others a Muslim from nearby Guinea. “Ghana -- Prisoner of the IMF” ran a headline in 2001 by the usually mild-mannered BBC. Its report documented the way the IMF’s policies had destroyed that rice-growing nation’s food security, opening it up to cheap imported U.S. rice, and plunging the country’s majority into dire poverty.
Everything became a commodity for which you had to pay, from using a toilet to getting a bucket of water, and many could not pay. Perhaps it would be too perfect if she was a refugee from the IMF’s policies in Ghana. Guinea, on the other hand, liberated itself from the IMF management thanks to the discovery of major oil reserves, but remains a country of severe corruption and economic disparity.
Pimping for the Global North
There’s an axiom evolutionary biologists used to like: “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” or the development of the embryonic individual repeats that of its species’ evolution. Does the ontogeny of this alleged assault echo the phylogeny of the International Monetary Fund? After all, the organization was founded late in World War II as part of the notorious Bretton Woods conference that would impose American economic visions on the rest of the world.
The IMF was meant to be a lending institution to help countries develop, but by the 1980s it had become an organization with an ideology -- free trade and free-market fundamentalism. It used its loans to gain enormous power over the economies and policies of nations throughout the global South.
However, if the IMF gained power throughout the 1990s, it began losing that power in the twenty-first century, thanks to powerful popular resistance to the economic policies it embodied and the economic collapse such policies produced. Strauss-Kahn was brought in to salvage the wreckage of an organization that, in 2008, had to sell off its gold reserves and reinvent its mission.
Her name was Africa. His name was IMF. He set her up to be pillaged, to go without health care, to starve. He laid waste to her to enrich his friends. Her name was Global South. His name was Washington Consensus. But his winning streak was running out and her star was rising.
It was the IMF that created the economic conditions that destroyed the Argentinian economy by 2001, and it was the revolt against the IMF (among other neoliberal forces) that prompted Latin America’s rebirth over the past decade. Whatever you think of Hugo Chavez, it was loans from oil-rich Venezuela that allowed Argentina to pay off its IMF loans early so that it could set its own saner economic policies.
The IMF was a predatory force, opening developing countries up to economic assaults from the wealthy North and powerful transnational corporations. It was a pimp. Maybe it still is.
But since the Seattle anti-corporate demonstrations of 1999 set a global movement alight, there has been a revolt against it, and those forces have won in Latin America, changing the framework of all economic debates to come and enriching our imaginations when it comes to economies and possibilities.
Today, the IMF is a mess, the World Trade Organization largely sidelined, NAFTA almost universally reviled, the Free Trade Area of the Americas cancelled (though bilateral free-trade agreements continue), and much of the world has learned a great deal from the decade’s crash course in economic policy.
Strangers on a Train
The New York Times reported it this way:
"As the impact of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s predicament hit home, others, including some in the news media, began to reveal accounts, long suppressed or anonymous, of what they called Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s previously predatory behavior toward women and his aggressive sexual pursuit of them, from students and journalists to subordinates."
In other words, he created an atmosphere that was uncomfortable or dangerous for women, which would be one thing if he were working in, say, a small office. But that a man who controls some part of the fate of the world apparently devoted his energies to generating fear, misery, and injustice around him says something about the shape of our world and the values of the nations and institutions that tolerated his behavior and that of men like him.
The United States has not been short on sex scandals of late, and they reek of the same arrogance, but they were at least consensual (as far as we know). The head of the IMF is charged with sexual assault. If that term confuses you take out the word “sexual” and just focus on “assault,” on violence, on the refusal to treat someone as a human being, on the denial of the most basic of human rights, the right to bodily integrity and corporeal safety. “The rights of man” was one of the great phrases of the French Revolution, but it’s always been questionable whether it included the rights of women.
The United States has a hundred million flaws, but I am proud that the police believed this woman and that she will have her day in court. I am gratified this time not to be in a country which has decided that the career of a powerful man or the fate of an international institution matters more than this woman and her rights and wellbeing. This is what we mean by democracy: that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race, or gender.
Two days before Strauss-Kahn allegedly emerged from that hotel bathroom naked, there was a big demonstration in New York City. “Make Wall Street Pay” was the theme and union workers, radicals, the unemployed, and more -- 20,000 people -- gathered to protest the economic assault in this country that is creating such suffering and deprivation for the many -- and obscene wealth for the few.
I attended. On the crowded subway car back to Brooklyn afterwards, the youngest of my three female companions had her bottom groped by a man about Strauss-Kahn’s age. At first, she thought he had simply bumped into her. That was before she felt her buttock being cupped and said something to me, as young women often do, tentatively, quietly, as though it were perhaps not happening or perhaps not quite a problem.
Finally, she glared at him and told him to stop. I was reminded of a moment when I was an impoverished seventeen-year-old living in Paris and some geezer grabbed my ass. It was perhaps my most American moment in France, then the land of a thousand disdainful gropers; American because I was carrying three grapefruits, a precious purchase from my small collection of funds, and I threw those grapefruits, one after another, like baseballs at the creep and had the satisfaction of watching him scuttle into the night.
His action, like so much sexual violence against women, was undoubtedly meant to be a reminder that this world was not mine, that my rights -- my liberté, egalité, sororité, if you will -- didn’t matter. Except that I had sent him running in a barrage of fruit. And Dominique Strauss-Kahn got pulled off a plane to answer to justice. Still, that a friend of mine got groped on her way back from a march about justice makes it clear how much there still is to be done.
The Poor Starve, While the Rich Eat Their Words
What makes the sex scandal that broke open last week so resonant is the way the alleged assailant and victim model larger relationships around the world, starting with the IMF’s assault on the poor. That assault is part of the great class war of our era, in which the rich and their proxies in government have endeavored to aggrandize their holdings at the expense of the rest of us.
Poor countries in the developing world paid first, but the rest of us are paying now, as those policies and the suffering they impose come home to roost via right-wing economics that savages unions, education systems, the environment, and programs for the poor, disabled, and elderly in the name of privatization, free markets, and tax cuts.
In one of the more remarkable apologies of our era, Bill Clinton -- who had his own sex scandal once upon a time -- told the United Nations on World Food Day in October 2008, as the global economy was melting down:“We need the World Bank, the IMF, all the big foundations, and all the governments to admit that, for 30 years, we all blew it, including me when I was President. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade, and we all have to go back to a more responsible and sustainable form of agriculture.”
He said it even more bluntly last year:
“Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did.”
Clinton’s admissions were on a level with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s 2008 admission that the premise of his economic politics was wrong. The former policies and those of the IMF, World Bank, and free-trade fundamentalists had created poverty, suffering, hunger, and death. We have learned, most of us, and the world has changed remarkably since the day when those who opposed free-market fundamentalism were labeled “flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions, and yuppies looking for their 1960's fix,” in the mortal words of Thomas Friedman, later eaten.
A remarkable thing happened after the devastating Haitian earthquake last year: the IMF under Strauss-Kahn planned to use the vulnerability of that country to force new loans on it with the usual terms. Activists reacted to a plan guaranteed to increase the indebtedness of a nation already crippled by the kind of neoliberal policies for which Clinton belatedly apologized. The IMF blinked, stepped back, and agreed to cancel Haiti’s existing debt to the organization. It was a remarkable victory for informed activism.
Powers of the Powerless
It looks as though a hotel maid may end the career of one of the most powerful men in the world, or rather that he will have ended it himself by discounting the rights and humanity of that worker. Pretty much the same thing happened to Meg Whitman, the former E-Bay billionaire who ran for governor of California last year. She leapt on the conservative bandwagon by attacking undocumented immigrants -- until it turned out that she had herself long employed one, Nickie Diaz, as a housekeeper.
When, after nine years, it had become politically inconvenient to keep Diaz around, she fired the woman abruptly, claimed she’d never known her employee was undocumented, and refused to pay her final wages. In other words, Whitman was willing to spend $140 million on her campaign, but may have brought herself down thanks, in part, to $6,210 in unpaid wages.
Diaz said, "I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage." The garbage had a voice, the California Nurses Union amplified it, and California was spared domination by a billionaire whose policies would have further brutalized the poor and impoverished the middle class.
The struggles for justice of an undocumented housekeeper and an immigrant hotel maid are microcosms of the great world war of our time. If Nickie Diaz and the battle over last year’s IMF loans to Haiti demonstrate anything, it’s that the outcome is uncertain. Sometimes we win the skirmishes, but the war continues.
So much remains to be known about what happened in that expensive hotel suite in Manhattan last week, but what we do know is this: a genuine class war is being fought openly in our time, and last week, a so-called socialist put himself on the wrong side of it.
His name was privilege, but hers was possibility. His was the same old story, but hers was a new one about the possibility of changing a story that remains unfinished, that includes all of us, that matters so much, that we will watch, but also make and tell in the weeks, months, years, decades to come.
Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books, including A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters and Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Despite economic growth, Africa still lacks industries
Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa like Uganda have been posting impressive rates of economic growth over the past decade and experiencing increasing urbanisation, but the pace of industrialisation has remained slow.
And despite investments in infrastructure like roads and the spread of modern technologies like mobile telephony, several African countries have largely remained exporters of primary commodities. In many cases, labour has moved from more productive roles to less productive ones. These were some of the findings by studies carried out under the International Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Economic growth ultimately stems from rising productivity within different sectors of the economy and directing a country’s limited resources, including its labour force, to increasingly productive activities,” observed Ms Margaret McMillan, a deputy director at IFPRI.
Other than Uganda, the studies covered Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Nigeria. Highlights from the Ugandan study showed that agriculture was the biggest employer—involving up to 85 per cent of the population, thus the largest source of income and livelihood, though the sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had declined to just 20 per cent. Compared to other sectors, agriculture has continued to remain sluggish but a source of the most of the export earnings. In this, the role of exports of fish, flowers and other horticultural products was significant.
With the shrinking of agriculture’s contribution to GDP, the services sector, which has benefited from foreign investment and remittances from abroad, has filled the gap. But it was noted that in spite of the increased value, the number of Ugandans employed in the sector had in fact declined over the last 10 years.
Another factor pointed out was the high population rate. At 3.4 per cent, Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world. Interestingly, this was surpassed by urban growth that increased at 5.4 per cent between 1991 and 2002. One of the conclusions that the researchers arrived at was: “The high population growth rate of Uganda poses an immense challenge for Uganda’s economic development. The increasing number of Ugandans engaged in agriculture is more a reflection of the inability of the more modern sectors of the economy to provide adequate employment for the many Ugandans entering the workforce every year”
The research paper, titled Rural-Urban Transformation in Uganda, was written by Paul Mukwaya, Yazidhi Bamutaze, Samuel Mugarura and Todd Benson. The paper was presented at an international conference that was held in Accra, Ghana, from 10-11 May 2011. It was jointly organised by IFPRI and University of Ghana. The event focused on the opportunities and obstacles in transforming African economies and the policy implications. There was also comparison of lessons learned from other developing regions—Asia and Latin America.
“Industrialisation and urbanisation tend to go hand-in-hand with economic development,” In his remarks, Dr Shenggen Fan, director general of IFPRI, noted in his remarks, “Without appropriate policies, sufficient public investments in infrastructure, and adequate provision of critical social services, these changes will not necessarily accelerate economic growth or improve human welfare. However, if these concerns are taken into account, the transformation of national economies will no doubt have a huge and positive impact on Africa’s future.”
And despite investments in infrastructure like roads and the spread of modern technologies like mobile telephony, several African countries have largely remained exporters of primary commodities. In many cases, labour has moved from more productive roles to less productive ones. These were some of the findings by studies carried out under the International Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Economic growth ultimately stems from rising productivity within different sectors of the economy and directing a country’s limited resources, including its labour force, to increasingly productive activities,” observed Ms Margaret McMillan, a deputy director at IFPRI.
Other than Uganda, the studies covered Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Nigeria. Highlights from the Ugandan study showed that agriculture was the biggest employer—involving up to 85 per cent of the population, thus the largest source of income and livelihood, though the sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had declined to just 20 per cent. Compared to other sectors, agriculture has continued to remain sluggish but a source of the most of the export earnings. In this, the role of exports of fish, flowers and other horticultural products was significant.
With the shrinking of agriculture’s contribution to GDP, the services sector, which has benefited from foreign investment and remittances from abroad, has filled the gap. But it was noted that in spite of the increased value, the number of Ugandans employed in the sector had in fact declined over the last 10 years.
Another factor pointed out was the high population rate. At 3.4 per cent, Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world. Interestingly, this was surpassed by urban growth that increased at 5.4 per cent between 1991 and 2002. One of the conclusions that the researchers arrived at was: “The high population growth rate of Uganda poses an immense challenge for Uganda’s economic development. The increasing number of Ugandans engaged in agriculture is more a reflection of the inability of the more modern sectors of the economy to provide adequate employment for the many Ugandans entering the workforce every year”
The research paper, titled Rural-Urban Transformation in Uganda, was written by Paul Mukwaya, Yazidhi Bamutaze, Samuel Mugarura and Todd Benson. The paper was presented at an international conference that was held in Accra, Ghana, from 10-11 May 2011. It was jointly organised by IFPRI and University of Ghana. The event focused on the opportunities and obstacles in transforming African economies and the policy implications. There was also comparison of lessons learned from other developing regions—Asia and Latin America.
“Industrialisation and urbanisation tend to go hand-in-hand with economic development,” In his remarks, Dr Shenggen Fan, director general of IFPRI, noted in his remarks, “Without appropriate policies, sufficient public investments in infrastructure, and adequate provision of critical social services, these changes will not necessarily accelerate economic growth or improve human welfare. However, if these concerns are taken into account, the transformation of national economies will no doubt have a huge and positive impact on Africa’s future.”
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