Economy: Empower Ugandans to take centre stage position

Last week, President Museveni urged Ugandans living in the diaspora to make their mark on the economy of Uganda by investing in manufacturing, commercial agriculture, tourism and technology. As the President rightly pointed out, their skills, capital and international connections have the capacity to accelerate Uganda’s economic transformation.

Mr Museveni’s appeal came at a time when the Uganda Shilling had depreciated to its worst against the US dollar, slumping past the Shs4,150 mark.

The slump has been partly attributed to decisions by offshore investors to sell off shilling-denominated government bonds, which they had previously bought, converted and took the proceeds, estimated at between $400 million and $500 million, out of the country in a period of a few months. In these circumstances, it is imperative that the government thinks long term.
One of the long-term solutions, it would appear, would be to empower Ugandans to take centre stage position in the management and setting of their economic agenda.

Policies that lock Ugandans out of certain sectors and those that make it impossible need to be revisited. The financial reforms of 2010, which increased to Shs25b the minimum capital required to set up a commercial bank and also barred Ugandans from owning more than 30 percent of a microfinance institution, effectively locked Ugandans out of the banking sector.

Similarly, project implementation designs that require, among other things, bank guarantees have meant that local construction firms cannot win multimillion-dollar roads and bridges contracts.
We need policy tweaks and affirmative action to encourage and facilitate more Ugandans to enter and benefit from those sectors in which they are not playing major roles.

Shortly after the NRM took power, it introduced policies that helped rebuild the local manufacturing sector to allow for the production of essential commodities such as sugar, soap, tea leaves and vegetable oil, which were not available on the local market.
It was as a result of the implementation of that policy that local sugar manufacturers, Kakira Sugar, Sugar Corporation of Uganda Lugazi (SCOUL), Kinyara Sugar and vegetable and soap-making giants such as Mukwano industries rose to play major roles in the economy. It was also due to that policy, which entailed enabling them to access loans on concessionary terms to renovate and expand production capacity, that other local entrepreneurs like James Mulwana emerged.

President Museveni has always argued that “there is no way Africans can emancipate themselves from poverty and backwardness without carrying out an industrial revolution”. It is time to empower Ugandans to carry out that revolution.