Uganda: We Could Still Do Much Better
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The Monitor (Kampala)
EDITORIAL
11 October 2008
Posted to the web 11 October 2008
Thursday was Independence Day. And, as always, it was time to take stock of where the country stands 46 years on. President Museveni spoke of the lost years under Obote and Amin. And then the recovery under his leadership starting in 1986. That was self-serving but not entirely incorrect.
Among other highlights, the President said a third of the population is now in school, the GDP per capita has nearly doubled despite an increasing population, and the foreign reserves have soared from being equivalent to only two weeks of imports in 1986 to seven months. He also spoke of the critical need to improve infrastructure as a way of lowering the cost of doing business in Uganda.
Indeed, Uganda has covered some distance in the last couple of decades. That said, one-third of our population (about 10 million people) presently lives in abject poverty. So whatever we do as a country must be aimed at lifting everyone out of poverty. We do not need a development path that favours just a part of the population. That would be a recipe for unrest, even violent unrest.
It would therefore have been even more encouraging to have heard the President address himself to the specific measures he will take to ensure that the government delivers timely on his plans. Good plans do not implement themselves. We need all those dual carriage roads and new railway links Mr Museveni spoke about. But the decidedly lacklustre attitude that pervades the state bureaucracy is not one to rely on to get the job done.
The government must find creative ways to infuse a sense of purpose into the public service to deliver on national development. The government's record is really mixed. Apart from the ongoing construction of Bujagali hydropower dam, which is ahead of schedule, there is not much else to point to when it comes to implementation of big projects.
The delayed completion of the Northern Bypass is an embarrassment. If we cannot finish building a road over such a short distance in time and on budget, how are we going to manage building expressways from border to border? And why no one has been fired over the Northern Bypass nonsense boggles the mind.
Relevant Links
All this goes to show that our country could be at a higher level of development if only we tried harder and operated at an even higher standard. But all this may not happen without the people making tough demands of their government. It is time Ugandans loudly demanded value for their tax shillings. Or else the country may waste more years.
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Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
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