President Museveni never tires of reminding us that Uganda’s economy has leapt from $4.2b in 1986 to over $50b today.
To him, this is ‘steady progress,’ the kind of miracle that should make angels clap and the rest of us sing the national anthem before breakfast.
He preaches this gospel at every campaign rally and state occasion, sometimes with the conviction of an evangelist certain that the congregation will not ask where the offering went.
But to the ordinary Ugandan, this prosperity exists only in PowerPoint slides, somewhere between the closing prayer and the promise of another miracle.
Yes, GDP has grown, but mostly in the accounts of foreigners who discovered that investing here is like fishing in a pond where the fish jump willingly into the net.
According to the Bank of Uganda, foreign direct investment now makes up nearly 38 percent of national output. In plain Luganda, we have become tenants in our own economy.
Take oil: 85 percent of the rights belong to TotalEnergies and CNOOC, while Uganda National Oil Company remains a minority partner in its own backyard.
Banking is dominated by Stanbic and Absa, and telecom profits beam to Johannesburg and Mumbai faster than ‘mobile money failed’ can be said in a queue.
Even Kampala landlords have joined the liberation struggle, liberating Ugandans from their rental spaces. They prefer ‘investors’ with shinier passports.
The rest are pushed to the city’s outskirts, where the only traffic jam is caused by mud and gossip.
Downtown traders, meanwhile, have mastered the art of the closed shop. Every few months they protest, furious that foreign nationals, rebranded as ‘investors,’ sell tax-free goods from warehouses anointed by government grace.
The Ministry of Investment calls it competition; the traders call it eviction. When they complain, the government lectures them about regional integration, as if patriotism means surrendering your business to someone without a work permit.
In the countryside, the comedy continues. Local leaders, desperate to impress the President, sing PDM success hymns.
‘Your Excellency,’ they beam, ‘our people have built houses and bought motorcycles!’ Meanwhile, those same ‘beneficiaries’ are hiding from moneylenders in banana plantations. The PDM miracle, like most miracles, is still under construction.
Travel north, and the story gets muddier, as roads vanish with every raindrop. But when citizens complain, the President asks: ‘Do you eat tarmac? Do you sleep on it? Do you want tarmac to transport poverty?’
A brilliant philosophy, if development makes you itch. Still, one must ask: is it this improved GDP that is attracting children from Karamoja to the streets of Kampala?
Who owns this ‘improved GDP’ that drives children from classrooms to streets, and the youth from Uganda to the Arab countries to work as housemaids? If GDP were a bus, surely it should drop children at school, not deliver them to traffic lights with begging cups.
Meanwhile, in the city, thousands of Ugandans employed by foreign-owned firms earn so little that they trek to and from work every day. Paying for transport would mean arriving home with nothing.
A cheap commuter train could have spared them the daily trek, but in Uganda, public transport remains a campaign promise rather than a policy.
Economists in Kampala continue to toast to ‘macroeconomic stability,’ quoting growth figures with the confidence of people who have never priced beans in Owino Market.
The numbers look good, but for whom? Rent rises, jobs vanish, and posho grows costlier by the week. Growth here is like a cow tethered to a foreign farm; we milk it, but the cream goes elsewhere.
Uganda has, however, perfected investor romance. We offer tax holidays, free land, and cheap labour, then applaud when profits fly abroad. Our leaders call them ‘strategic partnerships,’ but to the naked eye, they look like economic babysitting.
Of course, not every investor is a villain, Uganda needs capital and technology, but must we forever play waiter in our own restaurant? The ruling elite dine well on this dependency. Every foreign deal means another ribbon-cutting ceremony, another contract for the connected.
Those who profit by proxy have no reason to change the script; after all, it is hard to bite the hand that funds your campaign poster.
Uganda’s economy today is like Shakespeare’s smiling villain, handsome on the surface, bleeding underneath. We are told to celebrate GDP growth, but it is growth on someone else’s terms, in someone else’s ledger.
We are told to celebrate GDP growth, but it is growth on someone else’s terms…