Recently, in the month of June 2021, the government of Uganda announced that it would be distributing relief aid to the more impoverished of its citizens, as a means of supporting these families to acquire basic necessities. As expected, it was met with praises being thrown from left and right at the government executive for their ‘timely’ intervention. A list was then released, each recipient to receive one hundred thousand Uganda shillings (about 28.18$) with no commitment to a similar gesture in the future.
So? Sounds like a good cause right? Free money! Well think again. Sit back and let me widen your understanding of this stimulus check.
We live in a country where the volume of imports is $1.697 billion greater than that of exports, a term economically referred to as trade deficit. This means that our industry is quite underdeveloped, this including the agro-processing industry which, ideally, should be the stronghold of our economy. So how does the average Ugandan spend their money? Probably on Colgate from the US, Geisha soap from Ghana, Royco from Kenya, Blue Band from Germany… you get the point. Basically in Uganda, a stimulus check (the free money) empowers the expenditure of ugandans on exports as opposed to empowering them to create opportunities or support personal endeavours; creating a cycle of dependence and poverty. To contextualize this statement, ask yourself on what would a stimulus check in USA be spent by the less privileged.
Now don’t get me wrong; these people absolutely need this money. However, we should question the government’s willingness to give out cash that goes into basic expenditure, but inherent laxity to fund farmer co-operatives.
Long ago, my grandfather was a cotton farmer (still alive by the way) who relied on selling his produce to these co-operatives to pay school fees for his children (my dad inclusive). He can testify to the central role played by said bodies in providing extension services, farm implements, operational loans, obtaining market and well, paying him.
Fast forward to 2021 where co-operatives, these days called SACCOS, are formed to target election money in the name of emyooga and after that simply vanish! Members of legitimate ones can’t pay back their loans or the management simply embezzled the funds.
WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT’S URGENCY TO BUILD INDUSTRY and create a nation of job creators rather than job seekers, or in this case, relief seekers? Basically our economy is non-productive and one could call it a failed economy. Let’s analyse it anyway.
With 71.9% of the Gross Domestic Product, GDP(a scorecard measure of the health of a country’s domestic production) contributed by agriculture and 71% of Ugandans obtaining livelihood in this sector, it should baffle any reader how 41.9% live on less than $1.9 a day. So how is a villager aggressively tilling his land supposed to contribute to or benefit from the economy? How is a farmer rewarded for their efforts towards raising the GDP of Uganda, with poverty? And a sympathetic 100k?
(Perhaps a better way to distribute aid is through food which additionally supports the economy by buying from farmers but that’s a topic for another day; it is what it is!)
This dependency on aid is a problem engrained not only in the natives but also the government. The government itself is funded a great deal by foreign aid; even this 100k you’re getting is from the pockets of a muzungu😄. So who exactly is supposed to think about our economy? When will the government focus on creating an optimal conducive environment for a farmer? Constructing multiple silos, subsidizing prices of inputs, setting up processing plants, offering the best market price, extension service delivery, to mention but a few.
In a nutshell, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a a day, give him a fishing net and he’ll eat for a lifetime. It’s high time the government returns to us our fishing nets because the fish they serve will run out!!
That’s if the fish comes anyway. At this rate perhaps we should be feeding on lists. Please share, drop your opinion in the comments and stay tuned for part 2. Also please subscribe to the blog and check me out on social platforms and my other websites.
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