The United States has quietly opened a new chapter in its relationship with Africa. In negotiations with 16 nations, including Uganda, Washington is proposing a major shift. The plan is to move aid money away from international NGOs and channel it directly to local governments. This is a vote of confidence. But it is also a test. For decades, we relied on building capacity. We held workshops. We trained officers. Yet, inefficiencies remained. This happened because we focused on training people rather than building systems. People are temporary. They change jobs, they retire, and they make mistakes. Systems are permanent. If you build a strong process, it controls the human.
It makes it hard to be inefficient. For example, a 2023/2024 Auditor General report revealed that medicines worth Shs316 billion expired in stores or were written off. This did not happen because of theft, but because of inability of the system to produce auto generated facts necessary to predict, control and hold accountable the responsible officers. The capacity was there, but the system failed to match supply with demand. However, we also have proof that we can fix this. Look at the driving permit system. Years ago, getting a permit was a nightmare of delays and middlemen. Today, the wastage is gone. A deliberate effort was made to digitize the workflow.
Now, you walk in, follow the steps, and walk out with results in under an hour. The system was designed to work, regardless of who is sitting behind the desk. We must apply this same logic to the new US funding. The US deal is an opportunity to invest in this kind of process engineering. We must move away from the old way of accounting for money. The traditional annual audit is no longer enough. An audit is a post-mortem. It only tells you money was lost after it is gone. We need real-time accountability. The Uganda Revenue Authority already uses EFRIS to track every tax transaction. We should demand similar, EFRIS-verified digital receipts for aid expenditure and accountability.
We must stop using hand-written paper receipts from suppliers, which are easily manipulated and misplaced. Payments for consumables like fuel or food should leave a digital trail. Mobile money or direct bank transfers allow us to track every shilling instantly. This ensures resources reach the client and easily facilitate research into these processes to detect and flush out inefficiencies. Various political players and independent voices in this campaign period are arguing that service delivery must be demanded, not begged for. While this message is important to convey, they should teach the public to view this aid as our own resource. It is a generous gift from the people of America to the people of Uganda.
If we do not treat it with the same and even much more rigour as our own taxes, it will go to waste. Public ownership is key. The United States bilateral agreements must demand for enforcement of these and more controls at all levels of administration. They should deliberately set aside a budget to support locally developed mechanisms to strengthen our systems and enforce accountability. But the responsibility is ours. The choice is clear. Do not just fund the people who control the levers. Fund the invisible machinery they operate. We must build systems that make efficiency automatic. Only then will this new partnership buy health and services for our citizens, rather than just influence for the patrons.