By Nelson Bwire Kapo
In July 2019, President Museveni cut short his participation at the Comesa International Trade Fair and High-Level Business Summit in Kenya saying he needed to dash back to Uganda and attend to the villagers with ‘one bedsheet.’
To further explain his need for leave, he said his tours in villages of Uganda at the time had further enlightened the problem of Under production and Consumption, he indeed was dashing to Nakaseke where he was due to hold his wealth creation tour.
Uganda and Africa at large are champions of Under production and under consumption, little wonder, you would find a family of ten people with about 4 ( four bedsheets), hence most mornings, are filled with squabbles about who grabbed the bedsheet from another in the deep of the night, rather than plans forward. This means that our consumption even in meters of textile is so wanting!
Recently, Uganda lost AGOA on account of other reasons. Notwithstanding, AGOA is one of the most important presents ever granted by the Americans to Africa in centuries, and over 6500 products are allowed to enter the American market tax-free, alas, we were not able to sustain that because we can not produce!
Recently, sharing pictures from the Presidential tour of the Parish Development Model (PDM) has become like running the gauntlet. My friend Godwin Toko, who wakes up with the routine of discrediting everything government, connived with another sworn critic in Jimmy Kiberu to shame-tag me in an image of President Museveni standing before a cluster of chickens in Lango. The two took turns to mock me ( as usual) and the President for allegedly wasting time to go five-bird-watching!
Unknown to these short-sighted full-time fault finders, even Jesus came for the sinners and not the righteous. It is the legion of sinners that made a strong foundation of religion, and not the few righteous and elite. Food in Uganda is produced by only 5 million families, utilizing about 17m of the 40m acres that are arguably productive. Hence it is from farmers like this that we must galvanize to create a firm economy.
In the Book of Mathew: Chapter 7: 26-27, it talks about the foolish man that built his house on sand. The rain came down and washed it away! In our push for a real economy with a solid base, it is in the greatest wisdom that we are visiting those who are starting to wake up, the ones Kiberu and Toko are habitually mocking.
To attain a firm economy, we answer the fundamental human needs of food, clothes, shelter, defense, education, health and infrastructure, and medicine. With these, the society is secure. It is these that support life and provide a basic economy that is firm.
Toko and Kiberu should know that just a couple of years back, COVID-19 shook the economy like a leaf, but that did not in itself stop the general demand for food, clothes, shelter, health or infrastructure, this is because these are the most basic and durable human needs, these are the things the countries we admire in Europe decided to sort several decades ago while African chiefs were designing regalia from animal skins.
We can build a robust production cycle by ensuring unit production at every household, and ensuring even those with three pigs are great contributors when they achieve a cumulative effect, for instance, if each household had 3 cows, then cumulatively we would have more milk, more heads of cattle or even more milk, this means that we can actively engage in the lines of food production.
Countries like Ireland have just milk to thank for their economic boom, earning 5b USD from milk alone, and that is $2b less than New Zealand, what about Holland and their poultry?
Therefore, the reason President Museveni is visiting farmers who are waking up is because, they hold the key to building a basic economy, an economy of survival, an economy of living, an economy of independence, and all these can be best answered by addressing the most basics, which President Museveni intends to do by visiting and motivating those who are waking up.
As for my friends Toko and Kiberu, they should listen to the testimonies of these people, there is a former government official whose name is: Balibaseka! The wisdom in it is, that it is short for Balibaseka, kati bajje bandabe.. Toko and Kiberu, come to the next PDM Tour.
Nelson Bwire Kapo is the Online Editor at State House
