Mtukufu Rais Yoweri Museveni, shikamoo Mzee! May it please the Lord to protect and preserve you! I respectfully invite you to pause for a moment and consider my response to your State of the Nation Address of June 4, in which you saw fit, somewhat hastily, I venture to suggest, to dismiss this column as a purveyor of lies. The charge is serious. The evidence, however, points in the opposite direction. Two things, for now.
One, I’m not sure if your technical team is developed to the level of cultivating a culture of carrying out post-event surveys as Standard Operating Procedure to gauge public response to such an important address. In the unlikely event they have and in fact did so, they’d perhaps have communicated that very many people found it interesting that you were able to identify only one family in my community of Bugwere, which, you said, has been transformed by your Parish Development Model, PDM. Mtukufu Rais, Uganda has 1,000,000 Bagwere. As a statistical expression, therefore, one successful family out of a million Bagwere presents a disturbing antithesis to your middle-income narrative. It certainly didn’t cover your speech in glory. It was an overt admission of PDM as a policy failure, just like all the other similarly high-sounding interventions before it -Entandiikwa, Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP), National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF), Prosperity for All, Operation Wealth Creation, Emyooga, etc. We see a consistent pattern: billions released, but with the only beneficiaries being officers who run those programmes.
Mtukufu Rais, the second point is that your speech, once again, repeated the claim that Uganda attained lower-middle-income status. Absolute fallacy! Your well-paid economists remind us of King Ahab of Israel, who kept 400 prophets at his palace, all bought and paid-for, whose job was to prophesy to the King what he wanted to hear. When the time came for battle, they sold him a dummy – all of them assured him that the Lord would give him victory. Only one prophet – Micaiah, an outsider – whom King Ahab disliked for speaking unpleasant truths, told King Ahab the truth: you’re a dead man if you go to battle with Syria. King Ahab, therefore, threw Micaiah in jail (sound familiar?) and went to battle. He died. As a qualified public policy analyst (omutendeke), I respectfully draw your attention to two broad approaches to middle-income considerations – quantitative and qualitative.
The first approach, which clearly is what you are using, is the ‘Statistical middle-income status’ – a country reaches a certain Gross National Income (GNI) per capita threshold set by institutions such as the World Bank. How do we get that? Simple example: 10 people are in a village. Nine earn $1 a day, but one earns $1,000 d a day. The GNI per capita is total income divided by population. That means that even though 90 percent of the people earn only $1 per day, the GNI is $100.90. Officially, the village is rich! Now, that is excellent for propaganda purposes, but, as you can see, it’s an insult and injustice to the vast majority who are struggling to survive. This is what, in public policy analysis, we call ‘the tyranny of averages’.
Mtukufu Rais, the more enlightened and elevated approach is qualitative and is, in essence, ‘Sociological middle-income status’ – the emergence of a broad, stable middle class with disposable income, property ownership, educational attainment, and economic security.
Can most Ugandans afford decent housing, access decent healthcare, save monies aside, educate their children with ease, and retire with dignity? No! Most people live hand-to-mouth. Can’t pay rent, find transport to work, or even put food on the table. Mtukufu Rais, even the few with jobs fear retiring because they wouldn’t survive. In fact, at least 3000 Karimojong practically starved to death under our noses in 2022 – as you stood at the podium in Kampala proclaiming ‘middle-income’ status. A nation does not prove its middle-income status by a presidential address in the comfort of a conference hall, surrounded by rich politicians. It proves it by producing millions of citizens who live middle-class lives. Mtukufu Rais, would you feel able to repeat that ‘middle-income’ speech in Karamoja, where my umbilical cord is buried? Mungu azidi kukusitiri, Mtukufu Rais!