There’s One Job That Matters in New Cabinet – And It’s Not Presidency

Charles Onyango-Obbo

1 June 2011

opinion

When I looked at President Museveni’s new Cabinet line-up, I remember a heated discussion I had at one of those fancy Nairobi hotels with a Ugandan friend who was visiting. He told me that while the camps for internally displaced persons in northern Uganda – which at their highest had nearly 1.6 million people living in dehumanising conditions – were one of the “greatest shames in Ugandan history”, he thought one of the biggest mistakes the Museveni government made was to close them.

I like out-of-the-box ideas, but that one caught me off-guard. I gave him a long laundry list of the terrible things about the IDP camps, and he listened with a bemused smile. Eventually I became open-minded and heard him out. He said his view was that IDPs had lost the skills necessary to survive in their plots as peasants. Secondly, that most governments try for decades to edge people away from eking out a miserable life on land into more productive cash-paying jobs, with no success. The IDP camps, he argued, were both a curse and blessing.

A blessing because the tragedy of war had handed the Uganda government something that will probably not happen in the next 30 to 40 years – the movement of people enmass from the villages into a peri-urban environment. Instead of sending people back to the villages, he argued, the government should have arranged land swaps – they give up some of their land “back home” in exchange for new plots near the old IDP camp.

Then it would have invested in building new houses on more roomy compounds in and around where the IDP camps used to be (which it would sell to the former camp residents in an innovative mortgage scheme); built new schools, and set up tax-free zones for companies near the camps to absorb the former IDP labour.

In his view, within 15 years, that would have transformed the north into the richest and most advanced region in Uganda (maybe Gulu would have become larger than Kampala in population!) Over time, I have thought of his model, and have grown sympathetic towards it. After all, Rwanda and China have done a version of something like that – and despite problems, on the whole, they have done well out of it.

Which brings us to the new Cabinet. If I had to pick one ministry that I think is MOST CRITICAL to Uganda today, I would say it’s the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. My friend John Nasasira had stayed there too long, and became too acclimatised to see what was wrong and the new opportunities. He has been replaced by James Byandaala. Whatever Nasasira’s weaknesses, I think his failings were partly structural. What we need is a mega Infrastructure Ministry that does roads, railways, housing, and telecommunications, and looks after some elements of the energy sector.

It’s true that power, for example, is critical if Uganda is to grow its economy. But the way nearly 70 per cent of Ugandans live is not efficient; it means you have to run electricity lines longer than you need to get to them, and you can’t have critical mass, so rural electrification is doomed to fail. Without electricity, you have an environmental crisis – people cut down forests for fuelwood, destroying vegetation and water sources.

So while Nasasira could claim to at least have built a relatively good network of roads upcountry, these couldn’t convert into significant social or economic change, because most of the roads run in uninhabited areas and tiny townships. He didn’t have the critical mass to make a return on road investment.

What Uganda needs is a new circle road and extended railway that does a loop from Kampala, through to Mbale, onwards to Karamoja, Kidepo, Kitgum, Gulu, Arua, down to Masindi, then up to Fort Portal, linking with Kasese, through Mbarara, Masaka and back. One should be able to fall asleep on the train in Kampala, wake up for breakfast in Gulu, have lunch in Arua, dinner in Fort Portal, and breakfast in Kampala 48 hours later without getting off the train (with connections to the towns further in).

With the road running along the railway, but could layer on a loop power line. Then adopt a policy to encourage (and even gently nudge) people to move and live along the railway, road, and power line. Basically, this is the plan that my friend was suggesting for the IDP camps, but on a grander scale.

All other things would follow the road and railway, and the electricity line. We would have an efficient economy; good returns on investment in infrastructure, and radically open up the country and revolutionise how we live, play, trade, marry, vote, and our view of what it means to be a Ugandan.

However, Mr Museveni is creating more ministries instead of consolidating (as Rwanda and Kenya are doing); and as he goes into his sixth term (two unelected in power), it is hard to see that he still has the imagination to do the bold things he did in 1987/88.

Even less certain is, if Byandaala has a radical mojo.

AllAfrica – All the Time