May 9, 2018
This was Lion country (but not today)
00 19 says my GPS, referring to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It’s 7824 miles from home—or about 27 hours by plane (via Atlanta and Amsterdam), just north of the Equator.
Three street names near the hotel help me put the history of Uganda into perspective. The first is “Entebbe”, a word in the Luganda language that means “seal’, supposedly in reference to the court that for 500 years administered judgments on behalf of the well-organized Bugunda tribe. The centralized government created a strong state in what is now southern Uganda that the British used to rule, as the British were wont to do, indirectly. No such unity existed in the north and the northern and southern parts of the country still maintain differences, the south being better developed economically.
The second street is George VI, king of England, whose country claimed Uganda in the 19th century as part of the Congress of Berlin. Britain’s main area of interest was the Suez Canal (opened in 1869 accompanied by Verdi’s Aida). As 19th century explorers sought the source of the Nile (we’ll see it next week), the Germans got a treaty to parts of the area; Britain swapped Heligoland to the Germans for the Uganda Protectorate, a kind of federation of 56 tribes, 5 kingdoms under British “supervision”. Unlike most other British colonies, Africans could own land; like other British colonies, the British played one ethnic group against another. 40000 Indians arrived at the turn of the century to help build a railroad from land-locked Kampala to the coast. 2000 died from fever—and lion attacks (hence, the title today); the lions are gone, at least from this city of nearly 2 million people. So, mostly is the rail traffic. The station remains, serving mostly domestic traffic because the tracks were stolen for steel (steel was stolen?) and the gauge was non-standard. However, English is spoken widely (one legacy), and the currency is the shilling (another), plus there is a Parliament.
The third street is named for Nasser, the Egyptian ruler, who helped topple King Farouk and the British indirect rule in Egypt. That (and the success of the Chinese revolution and the spread of the Cold War around the world) helped convince African nationalists to push for independence. That happened here in October 1962, which ushered in a turbulence that has left its mark to this day.
For one thing, the British used mostly Northerners in the military; and if you’re old enough to remember Idi Amin, he was a northerner who “moved to the Left”, resulting in 300,000 dead (if you criticized, you were done); the enforced departure of all Asians, crippled the economy since Asians dominated businesses, paying up to 90% of the taxes.
Several civil wars later (today), Uganda has a population of 43 million, with an average formal income of around $700. Much of the income is “informal”, partly because of the difficulty of doing business here. We got to see the local market, a fascinating open air “Saturday market” type, with farmers bringing produce to the city—bananas, mangos, potatoes, garlic, and some not so Western additions: I liked the fried
grasshoppers, as well as the usual pigs, cattle, etc. With so much of the economy informal, it’s not surprising that there were government sponsored posters “Thanks for paying your taxes so we could pay for schools, etc.
We had a few speakers from the American Chamber of Commerce talk about doing here business here, -one a Quad Cities UIowa grad, who has been here 5 years , and sounds like he runs about 10 businesses. He talked about the great opportunities for entrepreneurs, despite the fact that the corruption ranks 150 of 179 countries; the lack of infrastructure; the bureaucracy in starting and maintaining a business; and the fact that employees get paid by you while working to start and run their own businesses.
I think his point was that you need to be on the ground to understand how to do business in any country, especially here. “That’s just the way it is here,” he repeated several times.
More inspirational was a fund manager from Impact Africa, whose goal is to put money into organizations that result in economic, political, or social improvements. I took lots of notes on her presentation to share with my classes—IWU president Myers used to say, “Go forth and make good—and do good” and her talk insisted it was possible to do both—and make money. One of the faculty and I were discussing how mission statements have changed from “make money for shareholders” to “feed the world.”
I’m taking the notes to my stockbroker too. Both the lion and I will sleep tonight.